It's Better To Speak To The Facts

The Guardian presents an editorial, a curious cross of self-pity and self-indulgence, that repeats two arguments that are inevitably presented every time Israel engages in an asymmetric battle with the Palestinians or Lebanon. First, the suggestion that to criticize Israel is somehow anti-Semitic. Second, that if you're not presenting equal condemnation of human rights abuses in other parts of the world, you are somehow suspect when you question Israel's actions.

Even acknowledging the continued existence of anti-Semitism in the world, and that some of Israel's critics (and defenders) are driven by attitudes that are reasonably characterized as anti-Semitic, both of those arguments are misplaced.

While I would prefer to equate the fate of the Palestinians with that of Israel – meaning, I'd like to believe we're all on the same side – I think that might be a difficult political fiction to maintain at the moment. And while I'd like to artificially separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism, like most American Jews, I'm not willing to make that false distinction: when there is more than one Jewish state, the world's hatred of Israel might become no different from its exasperation with any other country, but since Israel is the only homeland, and really it is nothing more than six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey, I can't pretend that the problem with Israel is that it's a poorly located country that happens to be at odds with its neighbours and only coincidentally happens to be Jewish. The trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews.

Here's the thing. Israel may be the "only" Jewish nation state, but that doesn't mean that it's the "homeland" of all Jews, nor does it mean that it speaks for all Jews, nor does it mean that all Jews support its policies, nor does it mean that criticism of its policies is criticism of Jews or their faith. More to the point, criticism of Israel's policies and combat operations can be profoundly pro-Jewish, both theologically and in terms of its role as a "homeland" or "safe haven". As the story goes, Hillel once advised, "The main idea of the Torah is 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Everything else is commentary." How effective have Israel's policies been, either at making Israel a safe haven for the world's Jews or in walking the walk of Jewish theology? Unless we're talking "near perfection" in both areas, it's not anti-Jewish to suggest that Israel's policies haven't worked and aren't working.

Moreover, the author conflates Israel with Judaism, thereby lending credibility to the people she is supposedly opposing. There's no honest way to simultaneously argue, "Israel represents the world's Jews", and "You're anti-Semitic for suggesting that Israel represents the world's Jews."

The other argument,

But here is what I finally know: with all the troubles in the world, with the terrible things that the Chinese do in Tibet, and do to their own citizens; with the horrors of genocide committed in Darfur by Sudanese Muslims; with all the bad things that Arab governments in the Middle East visit upon their own people – no need for Israel to have a perfectly horrible time – still, the focus is on what the Jews may or may not be doing wrong in Gaza. And it makes people angry and vehement as nothing else does.

In reality, for the most part the Israel-Palestine conflict flies under the radar screen. There's little to no news coverage, no attention is paid to the plight of the Palestinians, and for people not directly involved life goes on as usual. During those times, protests occur in relation to other conflicts, such as the Iraq War, that don't look much different from the "angry and vehement" reaction the author purports is unique to Israel's military actions.

There are multiple problems with comparing the Israel-Palestine conflict to other conflicts, starting with the fact that it's not at all flattering to Israel. If the argument is that the conflicts are comparable, Israel is being compared in its conduct to China, Sudan, and Middle East tyrannies. If the argument is, "What they're doing is worse", look at the measure you're using for Israel's conduct. When a nation claims to be a member of the modern, western world, it's more than fair to say that it's conduct should be much better than that of a communist dictatorship or despotic state or kingdom.

The biggest problem here is that if you compare Israel's conduct to that of other western states, the people who criticize Israel also criticize similar acts by their own government or by the U.S. The author implicitly concedes as much when she whines,

Whereas it actually hurts my feelings when someone says something nasty about Israel, or even the United States, for Israelis, this is just the way of the world: they probably manufacture their flags to be flammable.

I recognize that some people like to pretend that criticism of the United States only arises out of "anti-Americanism", whatever that means, but that only serves to highlight the absurdity of the thesis that every anti-Israeli sentiment is anti-Semitic. If it hurts your feelings when somebody points out that your country has done something wrong or stupid, let alone criticizes another nation whose residents are largely unfazed by the critique, the problem may just be with you.

Excepting a business trip I took to England, Scotland and Ireland in early 2002, I have not been to Europe since 9/11. It's become an unbearable place to be, as the anti-American feelings in light of the Iraq war have mingled with antisemitism to a point where they are indistinguishable, the new phobias of the First World.

And you know what? I went to London and Paris last year, and was treated wonderfully in both places. Without discounting the fact that it's easier to imagine Europe as a boiling sea of anti-American and anti-Semitic sentiments if you don't actually go there, if what I experienced truly was anti-Americanism "mingled" with anti-Semitism "to a point where they are indistinguishable", life's pretty good.

An accusation of anti-Semitism is a sword best kept sheathed until you encounter bona fide anti-Semitism. Using that accusation shotgun style weakens it, angers people you wrongly accuse, and casts a shadow of doubt over everything else you declare to represent anti-Semitism.

The second problem with the comparison is that the nature of the conversation is different. If I were to go around the country angrily declaring, "What China's doing in Tibet is terrible - they're violating the Geneva conventions, they've committed war crimes, their leaders should be in prison," I would not get much of a reaction. I would probably have to attempt to intrude on a Chinese embassy before I inspired any strong reaction to my statements. Simlarly, "What Sudan is doing in Darfur is atrocious" - who's arguing? Or, "The despotic kingdoms and tyrants of the Middle East, and the pseudo-democracy in Egypt, need to stop oppressing their people, allow freedom of religion, democratize, allow a free press...." at what point does somebody rise up in anger and tell me that I'm being anti-Islamic? Heck, I could try that at a CAIR office, and they would probably agree with me. There's no debate, let alone angry debate, when virtually everybody is on the same page. Any outrage is directed at the powerful group acting atrociously toward the less powerful group.

In contrast, the unfortunate tendency of certain very loud voices in the Israel-Palestine conflict is to try to shut down the debate. They attempt to brand Jewish critics of Israeli as "self-hating Jews", and every other critic as an "anti-Semite" or at best reflecting latent anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, another set of voices spin the conflict, presenting skewed, self-serving histories, distorting or misrepresenting the facts, and complaining incessantly that the slightest criticism of their side's conduct represents "media bias". That happens on both sides of the debate but, at least in the United States and Canada, Israel's public relations efforts are far professional and far more successful.

Meanwhile, unlike any of the other conflicts mentioned, there's actual participation in the conflict by certain western nations. The "Quartet" and its British emissary, Tony Blair. The long role of the United States and certain European nations in trying to broker peace agreements. The role of the United States and Britain in shielding Israel from Security Council action and providing it with state-of-the-art arms. Billions of dollars in U.S. aid, every year. An obsequious Congress. Reasons exist why people in the west can perceive this conflict, and their own government's role in perpetuating what they see as an injustice, differently than they do with other conflicts where their own nation plays no meaningful role.

I have an invitation for the author. I'll post a scathing critique of the Arab world, in relation to this conflict, along with my feelings on Hamas and Fatah, their past and present leadership, and their role in creating and perpetuating this crisis. She can then argue the other side. No? Well, then, she can find me somebody who will provide a spirited defense for the other side. Or not.

Admittedly, she may be able to find somebody who tries to shout me down as being biased against Arabs and Islam. But then....

Say It Ain't So....

Counter-blogging? And I thought I got the USAF comments here because I was so clever and witty.

Bad Karma (Chameleon?)

Boy George jailed for 15 months.

He's no longer, one might say, a man without conviction.

What Truly Amazing Timing

Good news - after years of diligent searching, literally days before he ducks out the door, G.W. finally found his missing emails!

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

This is interesting....

Once the e-mails are transferred to the National Archives, federal law allows them to be requested under the Freedom of Information Act after a five-year interval.

Without digging deeper, I'm not sure: Does this mean Bush has put off disclosure of these potentially embarrassing emails until 2014, where they would otherwise have been open to FOIA requests next year?

Simple Ideas Can Return Huge Savings

Savings both in financial and human costs:

A simple operating room checklist, similar to the one pilots use in the cockpit before takeoff, can dramatically reduce major complications in patients and even save lives, according to a just published study.

Performing that brief task in eight hospitals in as many countries caused an overall drop in the death rate by more than 40 per cent and major complications by more than a third, according to the New England Journal of Medicine study released online today and in print later this month.

* * *

Data collected from 3,733 patients before implementation of the checklist and 3,955 after the checklist was implemented, showed an overall drop in major complications from 11 per cent to 7 per cent. Inpatient deaths following major operations dropped from 1.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent.

Potential annual cost savings? Possibly $15 to $25-billion per year.

Walking... or is it Crossing a Fine Line

Thomas Friedman expands his "suck on this" psychology to the Palestinian territories, arguing that Israel's principal goal in its recent armed conflicts is to destroy civilian infrastructure, and to frighten and punish civilians:

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.

Glenn Greenwald responds that Friedman's approach to asymmetric warfare sounds an awful lot like terrorism.

The war strategy which Friedman is heralding - what he explicitly describes with euphemism-free candor as "exacting enough pain on civilians" in order to teach them a lesson - is about as definitive of a war crime as it gets. It also happens to be the classic, textbook definition of "terrorism."...

Other than the fact that Friedman is advocating these actions for an actual state rather than a "subnational group," can anyone identify any differences between (a) what Friedman approvingly claims was done to the Lebanese and what he advocates be done to Palestinians and (b) what the State Department formally defines as "terrorism"?

I'm not endorsing Friedman's interpretation here. As is his wont, he's describing what's happening in his own mind and projecting it onto the rest of the world. But really, it's a deplorable position and one likely to result in even more blowback.

Friedman yammers about how he believes Israel's infliction of pain on Lebanese civilians has deterred Hezbollah from launching missile attacks during Israel's Gaza invasion but, in giving a rather skewed history, he glosses over the fact that Hezbollah and Hamas have different political agendas, and also are of different religious sects. And why even if we assume that Hezbollah has been "deterred" from small attacks, that means next to nothing if hostilities again break out between Israel and Lebanon. As Dan Larison has repeatedly argued, if you choose a strategy of disproportionate response, you may deter smaller conficts, but at a significant potential cost:

If every incident, no matter how small, results in a large-scale response, there is nothing – short of their physical annihilation (which may or may not be achievable) – to keep those whom you are trying to deter from making ever larger and more destructive attacks. They will attempt to do the maximum of damage before the inevitable large-scale response comes. The more disproportionate the response now, the less restrained an enemy will be by deterrence in the future.... The disproportionality of response seems effective in pummeling your adversary this time, but it is only truly effective as a deterrent to others if the adversary is wiped out or permanently disarmed (an objective that would currently require an even more disproportionate response than Israel has so far employed).

Perhaps Friedman hasn't been paying attention, but by all appearances Hezbollah has rearmed and has better, longer-range rockets and missiles and better defenses than ever before. And it's political standing in Lebanon seems undiminished. For what use does Friedman imagine Hezbollah has amassed its new arms, and how much of a popular uprising have the battered civilians of Lebanon managed to present in order to prevent its rearming? Meanwhile, let's look at an important international relationship - Israel's relationship with Turkey. How his all of this going over in Turkey? (Don't you hate it when facts get in the way of armchair chest-thumping?)

On Looking Forward

Dahlia Lithwick doesn't seem to have much patience for the argument that we should look forward as the Bush Administration is replaced by Obama's:

Those who say that there should be no investigation or prosecution of senior officials who authorized torture and warrant-less surveillance rarely even bother offering legal justifications. They argue that the Obama administration has more urgent problems to contend with. They insist that any such process would devolve into partisan backbiting from which this country could never recover. And they insist, as did Attorney General Michael Mukasey in early December, that there is no basis on which to prosecute the architects of torture and wiretapping policies because each was acting to “protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful.”

I personally wouldn't say "there should be no investigation or prosecution of senior officials who authorized torture and warrant-less surveillance"; I would say "If Justice Department officials are aware of crimes, they can consider whether or not to prosecute them". (And here I mean "consider" in the sense that any prosecutor evaluates a case, and choose to prosecute some while passing over others.) I take issue with bringing out the muckrakes and trying to dredge new indictable offenses out of the Bush Administration's... I suppose there's no real need to continue that metaphor; you get the point. There's lots of muck to rake, but there's a real cost and risk in choosing that path.

Of all of the reasons not to prosecute that Lithwick attributes to opponents of (large-scale investigation and) prosecution, the only one I agree with is this: "the Obama administration has more urgent problems to contend with". Sure, the cost of any distraction that resulted from a full-scale investigation of "the crimes of the Bush Administration" would have to be weighed against the benefits of finding and prosecuting crime. Would the benefits, either in the long- or short-term, outweigh the costs? Lithwick apparently believes they will; I suspect otherwise. Lithwick implies that the decision should be made on legal grounds, not practical or political grounds, but even if that's technically possible the nation will nonetheless interpret the choice to prosecute through a political filter.

Others — including unnamed officials on the Obama transition team — have already claimed that there is simply no political will for criminal prosecutions, or even a truth commission.

Is that untrue? I personally haven't sensed a strong public sentiment toward either an independent counsel or a truth commission. If Lithwick is seeing a strong grassroots movement, or is aware of opinion polling suggesting otherwise, I would welcome more information.

We are telling ourselves that bad people did bad things under bad circumstances, but that it’s better to forgive and forget, that we are really truly sorry and it won’t happen again. We sound like a nation of drunks after a bender. We are full of good intentions, but unwilling to hold ourselves to account.

Actually, I have very little sense that a large number of people on either side hold that mindset. I sense that there are people, including myself, who are very worried that the Bush Administration's bad policies will happen again, and that some will be carried forward into the Obama Administration. I've even heard some Bush critics cynically suggest that Obama doesn't want to take action because he doesn't want to tie his own hands. On the other side, there are partisans who would not admit (and perhaps can't contemplate) that any act contemplated by the Bush Administration was wrong, or that any action nominally taken "in the interest of national security" should ever be second-guessed. The number who argue, "We meant well but we were wrong, so let's let bygones be bygones?" They're probably out there, somewhere; I'm just not running across them.

Lithwick argues,

Nobody is looking for a series of public floggings. The blueprints for government accountability look nothing like witch hunts. They look like legal processes that have served us for centuries.

and

Some commentators have suggested that any such truth commission should promise immunity or a pardon in exchange for truthful testimony, but I believe that if it becomes clear that laws were broken, or that war crimes were committed, a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate further.

Although Lithwick correctly states, "It’s not a witch hunt simply because political actors are under investigation", I disagree with her suggestion that nobody wants the witch hunt / public flogging of former members of the Bush Administration. I believe that some people very much want that, and that they will overshadow the motives of those who want an investigation focused upon determining facts and preventing the recurrence of bad acts. Frankly, as long as you leave the threat of special prosecutors and indictment hanging over the witnesses, all you're going to get at your hearings is a long succession of people who either refuse to testify or, after being subpoenaed, recite, "On advice of counsel, I hereby respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination...."

If our world were more ideal, Lithwick's view would prevail - and an efficient, entirely non-political investigation would quickly reveal important truths, help ensure that crimes were punished, help prevent similar crimes in the future, etc. Nobody would have to worry that the prosecution would be perceived as politically motivated, because that would be unthinkable. (But in a world that ideal, we wouldn't be in this position in the first place, would we?) I hate to drag practical concerns and politics into this, but in our often dystopian world and under our imperfect political system that's an unfortunate necessity.

Didn't Ken Starr initially have a very high approval rating, and broad popular support for his Whitewater investigation, before it went metastatic in its "leave no stone unturned" quest to get Clinton? "Oh no", his defenders protest, "he only investigated possible criminal acts he found during his other investigations". "Even if Starr ran amok, this time will be different", proponents of a sweeping investigation of the Bush Administration contend. Yeah, right.

Obama's Correct To Look Forward

Without wishing to minimize the bad acts committed by members of the Bush Administration, the need to prevent recurrence, or even the instinct to seek a bit of revenge for the Clinton impeachment, I just can't get on board with this mindset:

Worst of all, Obama (in response to Stephanopoulos' asking him about the number one highest-voted question on Change.gov, first submitted by Bob Fertik) all but said that he does not want to pursue prosecutions for high-level lawbreakers in the Bush administration, twice repeating the standard Beltway mantra that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards" and "my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing." Obama didn't categorically rule out prosecutions -- he paid passing lip service to the pretty idea that "nobody is above the law," implied Eric Holder would have some role in making these decisions, and said "we're going to be looking at past practices" -- but he clearly intended to convey his emphatic view that he opposes "past-looking" investigations. In the U.S., high political officials aren't investigated, let alone held accountable, for lawbreaking, and that is rather clearly something Obama has no intention of changing

Now I'll grant that there are circumstances when we should look backwards and criminally prosecute bad actors from an outgoing administration, and I'll concede that it's difficult to articulate the circumstances under which that is or is not appropriate, but here's one small measure: If the sins aren't sufficient to trigger impeachment by a Congress controlled by the opposition party, that alone raises a serious question not only about whether they are so serious as to trigger criminal investigation and prosecution, but also whether the opposition party shares culpability for having failed to act sooner.

An after-the-fact appointment of a special counsel, whose job is essentially to dig for criminal acts and prosecute those who committed crimes, not only can be easily spun as "revenge for the Clinton impeachment", but sets a precedent that could haunt any outgoing administration, no matter how squeaky clean. Didn't Ken Starr teach us, no matter where you start out, if you keep expanding the scope of your investigation you will eventually find some opportunity to accuse somebody (rightly or wrongly) of crimes, coerce witnesses, set perjury traps... create a great deal of pain and disruption for the nation and its governance and, at the end of the day, quite possibly accomplish nothing meaningful?

Another problem is that when you create a sideshow of the type proposed, it can take everybody's energy and attention away from the very real issues we must address, while looking forward. Thanks in no small part to Bush, this nation has a lot of very serious problems that need to be quickly addressed. The investigation and prosecution of a host of officials of the outgoing administration has the potential not only to interfere with the new administration's focus, it could polarize the nation, and make the Dems seem as small, petty, obsessed, biased and vindictive as Ken Starr looked to them when he finally released his report.

If Justice Department officials are aware of crimes, they can consider whether or not to prosecute them. There are issues that the new Congress should investigate, and it's possible that crimes will be uncovered there as well. We don't need to look away from the past. But despite the temptation and opportunity, and a mile of muck to dig through, I don't think it's necessary or wise to start appointing special prosecutors to ferret out people and acts to prosecute. Even if it doesn't end up looking as counter-productive as Ken Starr's investigation run amok.

How... Nice For Him

Just when you thought Joe's fifteen minutes were over, we get another dose of tragi-comic relief:

Is he scared that one of the Hamas rockets might have his name on it? Not really. After all, as he explained, he's a Christian so God will keep him safe.

"Being a Christian I'm pretty well protected by God I believe," he said.

So basically, we'll see "Joe the Plumber" follow up on stories of tragedy and loss by asking, "Have you considered converting to Christianity so you, too, can be protected by G-d's magic umbrella?"

Do you think that Joe will stop by Bethlehem for a few "man on the street" interviews with the local Christians? (Do you suspect, as I do, that Joe doesn't even know where Bethlehem is located?)

Lessons from Fifth Grade

Really, lessons about teaching. It's not the ideal way to be reminded of somebody's life work, but...

He moved to Saskatchewan and began teaching in the fall of 1976 in Saskatoon. He was a gifted teacher who inspired his students through music, history and the love of nature. He championed children with learning disabilities, founded Camp Tamarack in 1977 and initiated the formation of the Saskatchewan chapter of the Learning Disabilities Association.

Ken Marland's fifth grade classroom included a large contingent of learning disabled and emotionally disturbed kids, and the categories weren't mutually exclusive. When it came to helping troubled kids, Ken walked the walk.

Having spending almost a year in that classroom I can tell you that having a caring, dedicated teacher can make a difference, but you'll never be able to convince me that the baggage a child brings in from home doesn't affect their classroom performance, or that you can "have it all" - that the time a teacher spends maintaining classroom order, and providing structure and support for struggling students, doesn't take something away from everybody else. At the same time, you're going to have difficulty finding a teacher who either tried harder or could have done better under the same circumstances.

No Blackberry?

Apparently they're a security risk. (I blame.... Paris Hilton.)

Citing Scripture

In terms of the invidious citing, distorting, and fabricating scripture to justify the unjustifiable, this remains "right up there":

In Gaza a few years ago, I conducted an on-camera interview with the political leader of Islamic Jihad, Mohammed al-Hindi. With his finely trimmed beard and gracious manners, he symbolized the modern - and moderate - Muslim man.

But his interpretation of the Koran suggested something else. "Where," I asked, "does it say that you can kill yourself for a higher cause? As far as I know, the Koran tells us that suicide is wrong."

Through his translator, the physician assured me that the verses endorsing suicide operations could be found "everywhere" in Islam's holy book. I challenged Dr. al-Hindi to show me just one passage.

After several minutes of reviewing the Koran, then calling for help on his mobile, then looking through companion booklets, he told me he was too busy and must go. "Are you sure you're not pulling a fast one on me?" I asked. He smiled, clearly understanding popular American lingo. "I want to know that you're telling me the truth," I repeated.

The essay continues exactly as you should expect, but not from reading the popular media, listening to western political leaders, or listening to most religious leaders.

Of course, most people - not just Muslims - could use more independent thinking. This point grabbed me at the Gaza office of Mohammed al-Hindi. As we left, I asked his translator why Dr. al-Hindi would give me an on-camera interview, knowing that he could not find a single verse to prove his claim that the Koran justifies suicide operations.

The translator replied: "He assumed you were just another dumb Western journalist." Reporters from the West had never asked this veteran terrorist the most basic of questions: Where is the evidence for what you do in God's name?

It's widespread, abject, unforgivable ignorance that leads dolts like George W. Bush to glorify suicide bomers as "homicide bombers", "jihadists" or "Islamofascists", rather than emphasizing their suicides and the distance between their actions and Islam.

Parenting a Toddler

If you've done it, this is worth your 1:44. If not, well, you still might think it's cute.

Choosing the Surgeon General

Quick - name a surgeon general.

Dr. Koop? That was easy. Name another.

Sorry, Elders didn't get the job. Got a second? I'm waiting....

Perhaps I'm being unfair in your case, but we've really only had one celebrity Surgeon General. And since Koop retired, Presidents have seemed happy to keep it that way. So, other than to provide fodder for bad jokes, why is Obama apparently choosing somebody who is already a celebrity for that job?

I suspect that there are several reasons, but that they all tie together.

1. Gupta has incredible media access and connections. When he makes an announcement, he's pretty much guaranteed that it will get ample news coverage.

2. He has a popular persona of being trustworthy and competent. He has already been introduced to the American public, and he has an established, good reputation.

3. When necessary, he has enough personality and public access to bypass the media and take his message directly to the public.

This choice, to me, suggests that Obama truly intends to initiate sweeping healthcare reforms, and Gupta is going to be the public face of reform.

Despite his relatively conventional choices for most positions, I personally expect Obama to follow the model of his campaign, using community organizing techniques and Internet outreach to bypass traditional media and even political channels, in order to get public sentiment behind proposals that face opposition - Republican or Democratic opposition. In that context, with health care reform being an exceptionally thorny and controvercial subject, Obama's choice of Gupta makes perfect sense.

A Reminder from Thomas Friedman...

Of what the Israel-Palestine conflict is ultimately about:

If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

It would be refreshing, though, if he would spend a column or two explaining why he reached that conclusion and how such a two state solution might be implemented, rather than treating it as a throw-away line. I recognize that it's easier to write a column that preaches of the threat of Iran, Hamas rejectionism and radical Islam. But how many people aren't already in that choir?

Hedge Fund Transparency?

Mike's alerting me to a huge expansion of the federal bail-out into hedge funds - yes, hedge funds - made me think (for some reason) of Sebastian Mallaby. Although he wrote this a couple of weeks ago, I think it deserves a bit of attention:

Madoff illustrates a problem with investment outfits that claim to have some special sauce that is too valuable to discuss. People who entrusted their money to Madoff thought he had a clever options trading strategy; they were wrong. Worse, people who entrusted their money to respected banks and investment advisers had no idea that their savings were being passed out the back door to Madoff. On Monday, I happened to be visiting one of the most famous traders in Manhattan. He had invested with a hedge fund that had in turn invested with Madoff, hot-potato style.

The good news is that Madoff's fraud was so brazen that any future imitators may be spotted. A newly chastened wealth management industry will be warier of people who hire bucket-shop auditors; the "fund of funds" industry, which gets paid to do due diligence on hedge funds, will feel appropriate pressure to redouble its efforts. Even though hedge fund managers may legitimately refuse to disclose their trading strategies, there are some things they can be open about. Do they trade through a respected external broker? (Madoff apparently didn't.) If their returns clock in at 1 percent per month with eerie consistency, can they explain why? (Madoff could not have.)

I can think of three reasons why hedge fund managers might refuse to disclose their trading strategies:

1. They're "secret sauce" isn't anything special - it would be easily replicated by their competitors;
2. They're engaged in trading strategies that skirt the boundaries of the law, and people would be appalled that their actions are legal (or might conclude, even under present law, that they're not); or
3. Like Madoff, they're criminals and disclosure would reveal their crimes.

Now sure, some hedge fund managers may truly have developed secret trading methods and sophisticated models of predicting markets, that would lose their power if their competitors had even a hint of how they worked. But why am I thinking that the principal reason for the secrecy lies behind door #2, and that the net result is that the industry demands a freedom from regulation and oversight that protects those who, like Madoff, lurk behind door #3?

Although Mallaby is not skeptical of hedge funds - quite the opposite - he is concerned about door #3: As a result of the way the system is structure, he tells us, "the bad news is that less-brazen fraudsters may be impossible to detect" and "this Achilles' heel could eventually kill hedge funds". Nonetheless, "Responding to this scandal with more regulation would be like thrusting more pills on a patient who refuses medication." (Why do I suspect that Mallaby has no problem drowning hedge funds in taxpayer money, even to the likely benefit of hedge fund managers who are continuing to perpetrate their hard-to-detect frauds?) Wouldn't Madoff's fraud have been discovered even with a modestly thorough audit? "No.... Regulation bad...."

This is curious:

Perhaps half of all funds use strategies about which there is no great secret, so disclosure is possible...

If that's truly the case, how do we justify the astronomical compensation taken by hedge fund managers? How can anyone defend taxing their income at the capital gains rate, instead of as... income?

Moving to more current news:

Last month, five hedge-fund managers who each made more than $1 billion a year were called before Congress to discuss the industry's role in the crisis and the case for regulation. Four of the five said they thought that hedge funds could pose a systemic risk to the economy. "Any institution that has a pool of capital at its availability and uses reckless leverage indeed poses a potential systemic risk to the marketplace," said Philip A. Falcone, manager of Harbinger Capital Partners.

When pressed, the hedge-fund gurus agreed that they could probably live with some form of disclosure to a federal banking regulator, as long as the data are not shared with the public.

How... special.

Polishing the Résumé

A recent visitor comments,

I find that TFA attracts those who want to polish their resume. Most of them aren't really passionate and care about inner-city/urban issues. Most of them BS the interview process and just cause they're from "Harvard", they get into TFA!

I have had that thought, actually, having read a variety of stories and commentary by participants. It reminds me of how back in my college days (and possibly through the present) certain students, graduating from elite universities but without the academic credentials necessary to get into the graduate programs of their choice, would spend a couple of years in the Peace Corps. Whatever the motivation for participating, the de facto "quid pro quo" can be a win-win for the public service group and the student. Whether it benefits the targeted community? I expect that on the whole it does, although I'm sure there are some notable exceptions that, I would hope, get weeded out.

The Sound of Silence

I've read quite a few commentaries declaring that Obama has some form of moral duty to speak out on Israel's invasion of Gaza, ranging from the cautionary, to the cynical, to the hostile. This criticism comes in two forms: The first assumes that Obama secretly supports the invasion, and the second assumes that Obama has secret criticisms or concerns but is blind to "obvious" benefits of stating them now rather than keeping them to himself.

The former assumption, to me, seems silly. There is no political downside in this country for Democratic leaders who take a 100% pro-Israel stance on any aspect of the conflict, devoid of any framework in historic fact. Just ask Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. Or Senator Clinton, as opposed to the tight-lipped Secretary of State-Designate Clinton. Obama's silence may not indicate disagreement, but given how easily he could express unreserved support it should not be assumed to indicate agreement.

The idea that Obama loses credibility on the Arab street by not speaking out? Quite interesting, really, but last I checked he didn't stand for election as President of the Arab street. More to the point, what comments would satisfy the Arab street? Even if we assume for the moment that some of the more bizarre anti-Obama allegations made during the election are true - he's a secret Muslim, out to destroy Israel. Let's imagine his throwing aside this (imagined) life-long cloak of deception, and calling for "Death to Israel". Whatever the reaction of the Arab street, that would be the last moment he had any chance of affecting or resolving the conflict. If we return to reality, what type of statement do the critics anticipate? Something ranging between, "I support Israel's right to defend itself, but I disagree with their tactics," to "I support Israel's right to defend itself, but this military action against Gaza is wrong."

Further, it ignores Israel's position in Gaza, prior to this invasion:

Israel has given up any claim to Gaza. It has pulled out its settlers. It isn't trying to win hearts and minds, or create democracy. And it's in an ugly position - it knows that by the time its missiles strike the civilian neighborhoods where Hamas "militants" were launching rockets, the "militants" will almost certainly be gone. So they're striking civilian infrastructure (and perhaps civilians) because the alternatives are to either do nothing or send in ground forces, either of which probably worsens things for Israel and the latter of which generally kills and injures even greater numbers of civilians.

Sure, we could reiterate the ugly history of mistakes, bad acts, and missed opportunities that led to the now-former status quo, but finger-pointing won't change the fact that it was the status quo. Even with new Palestinian elections, there was no realistic chance of Fatah being able to assert control over Gaza and, even overlooking that reality, no realistic chance that a Fatah-governed Gaza would be able to stop Hamas rockets. So what advice should Obama have given? "Stop the invasion, ignore the rockets, wait until I'm President, then we'll work on this"? And when Israel ignored that advice, how much credibility would Obama have on either the Arab or the Israeli streets?

There's a reason that there's near universal support within Israel for "doing something" in Gaza, and it's understandable why the government is choosing a military option that it hopes will work as opposed to one that results in a quick return to the status quo. But unless you're willing to tell Israel, "That status quo, with rockets coming into Israel from Gaza, is one we expect you to live with," there is no other viable short-term option. The tragedy is, this one probably won't work, and stands a good chance of making things worse for everybody.

The most cynical interpretation I might offer of Obama's silence is that he's waiting to see what happens. If this "works" to the point that Hamas is crushed, the rockets stop, new Palestinian elections can be held, Fatah wins and successfully reasserts control over Gaza, and everybody happily returns to the negotiating table, well, great. If it doesn't work, it's difficult to say what comes next. But Obama's going to inherit what he inherits, and nothing he says is going to have any impact on Israel's actions. (As Moshe Dayan once quipped about U.S.-Israeli relations, "We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.") So why not take a "wait and see" approach?

Further, what's the benefit of attacking Israel's current leadership? If you were hoping that the next election would bring to mind Israel's apparent succession of incompetent, corrupt leaders, how do I break this to you. One way or another, Olmert's going to be gone, taken down by his ineptitude and criminality. But who's waiting in the wings to take over? Bibi Netanyahu. Somebody who is apt to condemn any military action taken against Arabs or Palestinians (other than his own) as being far too restrained. What statements can Obama make that reinforce his credibility on the Arab street, without simultaneously helping Netanyahu win the election? After which time the odds of any meaningful resumption of peace talks drop to about zero.

The Clinton-Obama silence on this incursion, to me, doesn't suggest either support or condemnation. It suggests that they don't want to say or do anything that may poison their planned efforts to bring the parties back into negotiation and, ideally, negotiate a resolution that brings this conflict to something reasonably approximating an end. Right now, realistically, what could Obama say that would help him achieve positive long-term goals for this multi-generational conflict?

"And What's Your Daughter's Name?"

We were at a local restaurant where my wife is a regular. I occasionally join her for lunch there. But today, our daughter Emma (now four) came along. One of the waitresses greeted my wife, exchanged pleasantries, then looked at Emma and asked, "What's your beautiful daughter's name?"

Emma replied, "I don't have a daughter yet."

As If You Care....

The most popular posts for 2008 were:

1. What Happened in Georgia
2. Amendment vs. Revision of the California Constitution
3. George Will Blasts John McCain
4. Really Dumb Spammers
5. Fraud on eBay? No Kidding.... (From 2006)
6. McCain's Stance on Social Security
7. What Happened to Google Knols? (They finally arrived!)
8. Michelle Rhee's Secret Plan for Teacher Pay
9. Batman and the Conservative Movie List
10. Law Firm Spammers (Another post from 2006)

Technically speaking, the most heavily visited page was not a post, but was this archive section, popular with thousands upon of thousands of fans of pygmy tarsiers.

Happy New Year!

For The Record

Apparently I have caused some confusion by using fake pictures with my posts. So in the interest of absolute clarity:

Real picture:

Henry Paulson responsibly manages TARP funds.

Fake picture:

Dennis Prager, Stud Muffin

Real picture:

The iPod of Motor Vehicles!

Fake picture:

Thomas Friedstein

Real picture:

William Kristol works the night shift.

Or maybe I got all of that backwards. Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Dennis Prager's Conservative Man's Guide to Sex

Remember how, a while back, Ann Coulter would rant about how married couples have better sex lives than singles. And you couldn't help but wonder, "How would she know?" Dennis Prager has thoughtfully provided us with the answers: Married women have a better work ethic. (At least if they want to stay married.)

It seems almost gratuitous to make fun of Prager, not that it's going to stop me. He's apparently in the grip of a bizarre form of the whore-madonna complex for which the only cure is his demand that madonna "put out". According to Prager, here's how women think:

A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.

Here's how men react:

A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

Prager admits that there are rare occasions when a husband "should not initiate sex", although the exceptions to his "24/7" policy aren't enumerated. But make no mistake, as much as the husband may be writhing in undisclosed self-doubt if his wife doesn't put out all the time, it's the woman's job to clearly communicate those times when the husband shouldn't ask for sex ("women should not expect men to read their minds"). I'm thinking Prager might forgive a wife's lack of accommodation at times of severe illness although, on the other hand, if she's already in bed....

Seriously, rather than writing columns lecturing women that, even though it's not in their nature to like sex very much, and certainly not very often, they should accede to their husband's sexual demands on almost all occasions he could have written a column lamenting to men, "Women don't like sex very much, perhaps not at all, so don't let your feelings get hurt when they say 'no'." Sure, people would still make fun of him, but maybe not quite as much. But at least it would be honest.

What sort of marriage does Prager envision, where a wife is to "give her body to" her husband as she acts "happy no matter what [her] mood", all the while keeping secret the fact that he isn't sexually attractive to her? For all of his whining about how women allow themselves to be "governed by feelings and moods", implying that men are rational beings, why not simply encourage men to be rational, accept their women for what they are, and build a marriage premised on mutual respect? Under Prager's logic, isn't it men who are being irrational, becoming angry, distant, ashamed, and unfaithful because they aren't willing to learn or accept basic "facts" about female sexuality?

This is where it gets interesting. When madonna doesn't "put out", the Pragers of the world feel justified in seeking out that other type of woman. Except Prager's already told us that there's really only one type of woman - there's no evil vixen of "the kind you don't take home to mother" who actually likes sex. According to Prager's columns, sex for women is always a quid pro quo. They don't get a great deal of pleasure from it, so they need to get something else. When Prager warns wives,

To ask that [your husband] also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman.

What type of woman is he suggesting would "fill his need"? Prager's attentions always turn to the material:

What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man.

Or maybe she would tell him, "Honey, you hate your job. Let's work on your résumé, and help you find a new one where you won't be so miserable."

What woman would love a man who was so governed by feelings and moods that he allowed them to determine whether he would do something as important as go to work? Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can - indeed, ought to - refuse sex because she is not in the mood? Why?

I almost wish there were a webcast of this, as I would like to know how much anger, fear, frustration, even rage at God explodes out of Prager as he cries, "Why?" But there you have it. Women benefit from men going to work and providing them with material stability, geegaws and doodads. And a woman's equivalent responsibility in marriage is to willingly "give her body to him" pretty much any time he asks. If only women worked for a living, maybe then they would understand....

In the rest of life, not just in marital sex, it is almost always a poor idea to allow feelings or mood to determine one’s behavior. Far wiser is to use behavior to shape one’s feelings. Act happy no matter what your mood and you will feel happier. Act loving and you will feel more loving....

Okay, Dennis, if that's truly what you believe, how about trying this at home: "Act like you're getting lots of sex from your wife." Don't blame her when you feel dissatisfied in the marriage, feel insecure, or start picking up hookers.

As one bright and attractive woman in her 50s ruefully said to me, “Had I known this while I was married, he would never have divorced me.”

I can almost imagine the conversation:

Woman: "I am so upset. My husband was cheating on me, sleeping with prostitutes, and now we're divorced."

Prager: "If he was sleeping with prostitutes, he obviously wasn't getting enough sex at home."

Woman: "Well, he would come home from work late, reeking of alcohol, lipstick on his collar. It was a real turn-off. Not to mention I was concerned about sexually transmitted disease.

Prager: "He went to work, and you still didn't reward him with sex on demand? It's the same thing, you know. We all have jobs we hate, but we gotta do 'em. He goes to work every day for the pay and, when you think about it, he's merely asking you to do pretty much the same thing. By rejecting him for sex you're making him feel ashamed and emasculated, and the only way he can recover from that is by getting sex somewhere else. Since women don't like sex very much, are you really surprised he sometimes had to pay for it?"

Woman: "Had I known this while I was married, he would never have divorced me."

Prager: "I told my ex-wives the same thing, and boy are they sorry now."

And there you have it - everything Prager knows about sex. Don't you feel silly now, that you were afraid to ask?

Paul Krugman's Word Search

Paul Krugman is looking for a word:

There has to be some word for the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people. But I can’t think of it.

Although it's not quite the word he's looking for, the phenomenon he's describing is narcissism. It's not that their pain is so much greater than everybody else's - it's that only their own pain has significance. You're seeing a combination of narcissistic character traits - a lack of empathy crossed with grandiosity, self-importance, and envy of others who are getting the sympathy and attention they deserve.

More Like A Black Hole Than A Supernova

What happens when you punch a hole through Joe Scarborough's veneer of narcissism on-the-air? Something like this?

Poor Joe - let down by all the publications he reads. If only the New York Times had published an article about the negotiations that he didn't know occurred. Here's an article that obviously didn't appear in the Washington Post. And what a shame it is that Foreign Affairs didn't publish this.

Oh, Spare Me....

Richard Cohen is amazed that G.W. Bush is an avid reader. And he knows, for a fact that Bush is an avid reader because... Karl Rove told him. Seriously.

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong. Still, in fairness to these critics (see Rove above), Bush himself has encouraged this approach. Aw shucks is an infuriating defense of a policy.

And Cohen knows this because he read what Bush critics have to say, or because that's what Karl Rove told him about Bush's critics?

What a Long, Strange Tri....

How does that family come up with these names?

Down the Memory Hole

Although the editorial has disappeared from the Washington Post's website, I am reminded that some years back, when he was relying upon common sense rather than dubious "secret sources", Jackson Diehl made some good points about the Israel-Palestine peace process.

Getting Played

It is interesting, although unfortunately not surprising, to see a nationally syndicated columnist "getting played" by somebody who pretends to have inside information. Today's case study, Jackson Diehl. After telling us about Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's various failures, in relation to his failed negotations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Diehl shares the information he garnered from his secret source - obvious nonsense:

Worst of all, Abbas followed in a long tradition of previous Palestinian leaders by reacting to a far-reaching Israeli offer with an uncourageous demurral. Olmert has never publicly disclosed the terms he discussed with Abbas, but sources say he went well beyond what Israel agreed to at the Camp David talks of 2000, previously the closest approach to a deal. I'm told Olmert offered to support the groundbreaking concession of allowing thousands of Palestinian refugees to "return" to Israel over a period of years; he also agreed to divide Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine. Abbas, like Yasser Arafat at Camp David, refused to sign on to a compromise that the world would have hailed.

So we start with the assumption that an enormously generous offer was made - under a veil of complete secrecy - and was "demurred" by Abbas. That's an odd choice of words, as a demurral is not actually a rejection, but a reference to objection, doubt or hesitation. Without knowing more, it's childish of Diehl to be calling this "demurral" the "worst" reason the, well, fictitious offer was not accepted. On the other hand, the fact that Diehl either doesn't know enough about the conflict, or doesn't care enough about his credibility, to recognize when he's being gaslighted....

Let's step back for a moment in time, some eight years, to the collapse of the Camp David talks at the end of Clinton's presidency. The conventional propaganda twist on the failure is that Arafat received an exceptionally generous offer, the likes of which would never be seen again, and that all fault for the failure of the talks lies with the Palestinians. Israeli peace activists point out that the "generous offer" wasn't so generous, and former Clinton Aid Robert Malley points out that a different spin is possible:

The question is whether, as Barak claims, the Palestinian position was tantamount to a denial of Israel's right to exist and to seeking its destruction. The facts do not validate that claim. True, the Palestinians rejected the version of the two-state solution that was put to them. But it could also be said that Israel rejected the unprecedented two-state solution put to them by the Palestinians from Camp David onward, including the following provisions: a state of Israel incorporating some land captured in 1967 and including a very large majority of its settlers; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in the city's history; preservation of Israel's demographic balance between Jews and Arabs; security guaranteed by a US-led international presence.

What's also forgotten in this is that, even had Arafat accepted (and if we presuppose that the democracy in the Palestinian territories was a sham, such that the agreement could be foist upon the Palestinian people despite likely strong opposition to its terms), it's not at all clear that it would have passed in Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

But what is clear, and should be abundantly clear to even the most ignorant, tin-eared syndicated columnist, is that there is no chance that Olmert would have been able to pass a proposal equivalent to the Camp David offer, let alone one more generous. For goodness sake, Diehl just got through telling us about Olmert's impotence in restraining settlement activity in the West Bank,

Instead of a groundbreaking accord with Abbas or Assad, he will leave behind scorched earth in Gaza, a Lebanese front bristling with Hezbollah's missiles and an Israeli West Bank presence that has expanded rather than contracted during the past two years, with thousands of new homes for Jewish settlers under construction.

And how he lacked the spine to shut down even the flagrantly illegal "outpost settlements", whose residents have engaged in acts against Palestinians that are so atrocious that even Olmert describes them as pogroms. The man who gets all weak-kneed at the thought of standing up to extremists settlers who have almost no popular support in Israel is going to expand on Barak's offer, close down a number of full-scale West Bank settlements, and offer "thousands of Palestinian refugees to 'return' to Israel" and divide Jerusalem? Diehl believes that was promised, let alone that there was any chance of its being delivered? Even after observing,

Despite his bold intentions, Olmert proved unwilling or unable to stand up to the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank; his government failed to dismantle even those outposts it has repeatedly declared illegal.

How charmingly naive.

Further, were there even a hint of truth to the allegations, Olmert wouldn't be keeping it secret. In the manner of Barak, he would be trumpeting how his generosity was rebuffed, and how the Palestinians deserve their misery. It should also be noted that an agreement with Abbas would have no bearing on the situation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

I'm left wondering what would happen if I sent Diehl an email, pretending to have inside information that Olmert was prepared to turn the entire nation state of Israel over to Abbas, and that Abbas had still said "no". If I am to judge Diehl by his track record of credulity, my guess is it would be the basis of Diehl's next column.

The Business of Charity

You know, sometimes I get a bit tired of columnists who (uncritically) read a book, decide it has the answers to some or all of the world's problems, then pen a column espousing the book's thesis. It's not as bad as stenography of the latest party memo, but generally speaking it's a path to a weak column.

Nicholas Kristof recently read a book by a failed businessman, Dan Pallotta, lamenting how after he raised a ton of money for some wealthy charities he was cast aside. Kristof makes a huge assumption, that the reason Pallotta's company failed was his salary:

But Mr. Pallotta’s company wasn’t a charity, but rather a for-profit company that created charitable events. Critics railed at his $394,500 salary - low for a corporate chief executive, but stratospheric in the aid world - and at the millions of dollars spent on advertising and marketing and other expenses.

Kristof then wrestles, in a peculiar way, with the question of whether higher salaries for the leaders of charities would lead to better or worse results:

I also worry that if aid groups paid executives as lavishly as Citigroup, they would be managed as badly as Citigroup.

Is that the issue? Pallotta worked with the Avon Foundation. Did Kristof call Avon and ask, "Does the person who heads your multi-million dollar charitable trust earn $400,000 or more?" Does he know that the CEO of the Red Cross earns more than $500,000 per year? That the President of the United Way has a salary of about $400,000 in compensation and an expense allowance (plus benefits), but pulled in an additional $800,000 in bonuses in 2007? $1.2 million isn't sufficiently "corporate" compensation? Here's where I'll give Pallotta his due - he was innovative, and shifted the ground for large charitable fundraising events. Have you noticed that the United Way has done anything particularly different or innovative that would justify the huge bonuses "earned" by its president? If so, it has occurred way below my radar.

Sure, it may raise people's hackles that charities are paying their executives astronomical bonuses, but despite some brief negative publicity the United Way hasn't failed. So perhaps we should take a step back, and consider why people give to charity? By spending few minutes on Google, Kristof would have come up with this interesting case study:

When the individual gives money to a charity, no product or service is necessarily provided to them. What the individual purchases is much more ethereal. A contributor to charity receives a sense of reward, self-satisfaction, pride, or deeper purpose from the act of giving. Donors receive the pleasure of altruism as the product of their economic transaction.

The pleasure of altruism is the product supplied by charities. For example, a dollar given to a homeless person on a street corner might buy a small amount of altruistic pleasure, but a million dollar grant to find a cure for AIDS might buy much more. The homeless person and the AIDS cure charity provide different altruistic pleasures. You may not know the homeless man, but you may know someone who has or has died from AIDS. Or perhaps the opposite is true. But such a personal connection is just one example of how a charity creates differentiation among the many suppliers of altruistic pleasure. We most often correlate a charity’s purpose with its worthiness, and therefore with the quantity of altruistic pleasure it can provide.

Here is where the traditional Neo-classical view of markets begins to fall apart. The charity market is not a perfectly competitive market that balances the supply of worthy causes with the demand for altruistic pleasure because no two worthy causes are the same. While the supply of worthy causes is practically infinite, the market is highly differentiated. One cause may be deemed more worthy by more people, create more altruistic pleasure, and therefore receive more funds than its competitors. Price is not the primary means by which the resource of altruistic pleasure is allocated.

Pallotta's company, Pallotta TeamWorks (PTW), was truly innovative in maximizing the altruistic pleasure felt by participants in its events - and then it dropped the ball. Their innovation was in designing targeted events

tailored to elicit the extreme emotions of altruistic pleasure.... such as biking across a dessert to support AIDS charities or walking 60 miles for three days in the footsteps of breast cancer survivors. The events supported people in doing things that they never achieved before in the name of a worth cause, a desirable vehicle for acquiring altruistic pleasure.

They used sophisticated marketing to communicate to participants "the altruistic pleasures that could be received" through participation in an event. They also provided front-to-back support for participants, to help them succeed first in raising a substantial amount of money required simply to enter the event, and carrying through equipment purchases, training, and support during the event itself.

And at the event, PTW created mobile cities in which the participants ate, slept, and most importantly, intermingled with others inspired to champion the same cause. Through such support PTW was able to keep existing participants involved in future events while continuing to attract new ones. “The organizations that are going to survive and effectively provide services,” says Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People With AIDS, “are going to be the ones that figure out ways to market themselves to new private donors and, at the same time, successfully keep their old donor base”

Although none of these ideas were new, Pallotta's innovation was in bringing them together and creating more efficient fundraising processes. If a charity could afford his services, for a flat fee he would provide them with soup to nuts support for their event - they needed no experience or expertise. The only requirement was that they pay his seven figure event planning fee. And while there were events that were not successful, most of Pallotta's events returned considerably more than his fee.

By 2001, PTW’s ideas, people, and competitive fundraising events were creating real economic growth. PTW’s charities had received more than 3 million donor contributions, equal to more than 1% of the US population (Pallotta TeamWorks 2002, p. 30). But in 2001 PTW’s fundraising numbers began to decline and its participants began dropping out. PTW carefully designed an attractive set of attributes, created a higher value product, and lowered transaction costs for their market by reaching a huge audience. So where did the firm go wrong?

The article suggests that PTW's success depended upon "participants’ approval and excitement over the emotional, engaging way that the firm produced money for charity". Early events returned an average of about 67% of the proceeds to charity, but by 2000 that amount had dropped to about 53%, raising concerns about PTW's management of funds. An alternative theory that, to me, seems more intuitive is that annual events were starting to burn out their participants and their participants' sponsors, and may have started to seem like "the same old thing" rather than a new and cool thing you could do for your charity. But no question, when the money stops rolling in, people start looking at the money trail - and that's where a salary that may have been an irrelevancy a year or two before can suddenly seem excessive. And there is no question that, for example, participation levels for Avon's breast cancer walks were dropping. Low participation makes the high cost of these events seem unwise - for the 2002 D.C. AIDSRide, it's reported that 86% of the proceeds went to overhead and expenses.

Pallotta also started to heavily cross-market his own company and, reportedly, other PTW events:

PTW began cross-marketing events for other new events and causes to existing participants using slick brochures, kiosks, and infomercials disguised as safety videos. Event participants “saw Pallotta merchandise, like books by the company’s founder, all along the route” (Winters 2002). T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other collateral were hawked to participants, all trumpeting the PTW brand, not the cause. A former PTW employee and event participant complained that the AIDSRide events “became a Pallotta TeamWorks event, and they stopped even talking about AIDS” (Freiberg 2002). To event participants the PTW brand smacked of commercialism and obstructed their access to the real product, the pleasure of altruism.

(PTW reportedly denies cross-promoting other events at its 3-day events.) This opened the door to criticism and skepticism of PTW and its integrity, ultimately causing its flagship partners to fire PTW. There are a couple of lessons here that Pallotta and Kristof seem to have missed:

Participants didn’t care that PTW was the brand producing the altruistic pleasure. They cared about the means of how it was produced and the quality of that product. As Peter Drucker reminds us, quality “is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for”

In other words, Pallotta stopped producing the product his customers wanted. And in that respect, PTW was like any other business - if you can't sell the customer what she wants, you'll fail.

The case study goes on to describe some of the economics of scale produced by Pallotta's massive events, and how some charities managed to generate millions of dollars in donations (despite marketing costs approaching 60% of revenues) while more "cost-efficient" traditional fund-raising might have only raised a fraction of that amount. This brings me back to Kristof's piece, in which he observes, "It’s notable that leaders of Oxfam and Save the Children have publicly endorsed the book". No, it's not particularly notable, at least when you get past the notion that Pallotta's innovation was his own salary as opposed to his emphasis on effective marketing and his desire to get away from efficiency as the best measure of charitable success.

Oxfam and Save the Children spend a lot of money on marketing. At the same time, their charitable ratings depend upon their keeping their administrative and fundraising expenses low as compared to the money they apply to their programs. A multi-million dollar investment in marketing might bring in tens of millions of dollars in new donations - but could drag down their efficiency ratings and turn off or scare away another set of potential donors. Charity ratings sites often list, right along with the charity you're evaluating, a series of similar charities - it's easy to find one with a better efficiency rating, and to direct your money to that charity instead. A big part of Pallotta's failure might be attributed to the rating standards of the Better Business Bureau:

The BBB had issued more stringent guidelines, which became effective in 2003. Prior to 2003, CBBB standards limited fund-raising expenses to 50% of related donations (Heaney 2003). The Avon 3-Days historically averaged fund-raising costs close to 40% of total donations through 2001 (PTW 2001), complying with watchdog group guidelines. In 2003, the NCIB and the CBBB merged, forming the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. A new standard required fund-raising expenses to be no more than 35% of “related contributions” (BBB 2006a). This meant that Avon Foundation’s historic average level of performance would no longer be good enough to comply. Another standard called for program spending to exceed 65% of total expenses.

The trend of the Avon events’ fund-raising ratio going into 2003 was not good. In 2001, in part because of disruption caused by the September 11 attacks, the fund-raising ratio had risen from 36% in 2000 to 43%. The 2002 event season had some unusual costs related to the shut-down of PTW in August (Avon 2002), and the fund-raising ratio rose to 49% of related donations. Program spending as a percent of total expenses was only 41%, far below the 65% level specified by the BBB.

Yet it appears that part of that warm, altruistic feeling many people get from making donations arises from the knowledge that only a small part of their contribution will go to administrative costs and marketing. While this is a bit different than the environment for a traditional business, within the world of charitable giving it's something that's not likely to change. The lesson that Oxfam and Save the Children might draw from Pallotta's experience is that by providing a good altruistic experience you can push marketing and administration costs past the 30% level, but as they approach 50% you can expect the backlash to begin. As Pallotta can no doubt attest, that can turn into a microscopic examination of everything you do by the people who feel that you took advantage of your altriusm. Seemingly overnight, you can go from being seen as a helpful symbiote to being perceived as a destructive parasite.

Meanwhile, six years after his business failed, other than marketing himself, what's Pallotta offering to the rest of the world?

Kristof concludes with a couple of stories about how capitalist enterprises can return social utility. This, apparently, surprises him. He describes how a consulting firm helped Rwanda improve its public image in the United States, and significantly increase the price of Rwandan coffee and tea. He also describes how a Nigerian businessman is making money installing pay toilets - he rents, leases and sells port-a-potties. I'm not sure why this would surprise anybody - or why Kristof would see the return of social utility as the province of a charity as opposed to a business. I get my electrical, phone and gas service from profit-making utility companies - I get great benefit from those services, but none of the providers are charities. Furthermore, if there's money to be made and free market forces will result in the spread of a good in a manner equivalent to or better than that which could be achieved by a charity, the charity should invest its efforts and resources elsewhere.

Well Go Figure

Don't tell Thomas Friedman, but here's a little footnote from history.

Though [Isaac Newton] never managed to turn base metal into gold in an experiment, later in life he became Warden of the Mint - the man in charge of making the country’s money. Here, he oversaw the production of gold and silver coins, and ensured that they were made more exactly than they had ever been made before. He also went after counterfeiters, several of whom were hanged.

That's the best and the brightest for you. Always trying to make a mint in banking.

Because That's What They Would Be Doing?

Thomas Friedman sings a tired old refrain,

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money - rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

Now, I'm not saying that people who become MBA's or lawyers couldn't have productive lives as engineers and computer programmers. But how many of them do you suppose wanted to enter those professions? Friedman also seems to believe that pretty much all of the "best and the brightest" want nothing more than to chase the almighty dollar. Not everybody chooses to work for Wall Street or BigLaw.

I suspected long before I reached that point, but my second semester of organic chemistry sent home the message that I wasn't going to be spending my career in a chemistry lab. Please, don't judge chemistry by organic chemistry alone - a tedious bore of a subject that is best "mastered" through rote memorization - but for goodness sake, not everybody who is good at crunching numbers on Wall Street would be particularly useful in scientific or engineering fields. Maybe they would be accountants or lawyers, or economists, or politicians.

For that matter, who says the people who crashed and burned the world financial system are "the best and brightest" at all? Friedman seems to be falling for a pretty typical American conceit that anybody who makes a lot of money is among the "best and brightest", even if they can't change a light bulb unassisted. What makes the people who crashed Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and WaMu any better than the people who crashed Chrysler and General Motors? If it's such a big deal that GM is gushing red ink to the tune of $74 billion over four years "yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job", what's the body count over at Citigroup? It's the auto companies that are "giant wealth-destruction machines"?

When we look at the decline of the nation's newspapers, including the New York Times, can we turn a mirror on Friedman? Friedman likes to look down on GM, but what about his own employer? At what point do we declare that newspapers have "become giant wealth-destruction machines", and insist that it's ridiculous to pay people six figure salaries to write syndicated columns when they could be out inventing something?

I know, I know.... "That's different."

Strings, Strings and More Strings

As far as I'm concerned, if a bank wants another handout, it's time to tie it up in strings. My suggestions:

Accountability for Any Prior Handounts - If the bank has received a prior infusion of bailout funds, it must provide a full accounting of the use of the funds;



An Honest Balance Sheet - Any banks who want handouts must present an honest assessment of any troubled / toxic holdings they possess, with bailout money being directed based on need. If a bank wants to pretend that its toxic holdings are worth 80 - 90 cents on the dollar (or more), we are equally entitled to pretend that they're telling the truth and that the don't need our money;

A Business Plan - Require a clear statement from the bank of how it got into this mess, and precisely how the cash it requested will help it get out.

An Insolvency Plan - In case it gets the funds and still can't get its act together, a plan for how it will enter Chapter 11 proceedings, or how it will otherwise facilitate the FDIC in arranging its takeover by another bank.

Henry Paulson doesn't appear to have the cajones to stand up to even a tiny bank, and seems happy to have bailout money wasted on huge salaries and bonuses, corporate jets, shareholder dividends, or whatever secret uses a bank may find for our money, so this will have to come from Congress.

Or, perhaps better, Congress can hang on to the remaining bailout funds for a month, until Pauson is just another historic participant in the Bush Administration's sordid legacy of failure.

Creative Soaps

It's a bit too late to order for Christmas, but other opportunities will arise. We received some of these hand-crafted soaps as a gift, and they're pretty cool.

Stifling TFA's Critics?

I have heard an account that I find credible, that participants in Teach for America are not permitted to publicly criticize the program, at the potential peril of their being expelled from the program. Given TFA's apparent emphasis on its program as résumé fodder, this seems to be part of an interesting set of techniques that TFA uses to minimize criticism:

• If you're in the program, you're required to keep negative opinions to yourself;
• If you are kicked out or drop out, criticism is seen as "sour grapes";
• If you complete the program, you have an incentive to defend it as otherwise its value as résumé fodder is diminished;
• If you're an education professional who criticizes the program, it seems to me that you're depicted as a defender of a failed status quo, as shilling for unions, or both.

I'm personally wary of any program that bars participants from publicly commenting on the negative aspects of their experience. I would be interested to hear any verification or rebuttal in relation to that alleged policy.

Externally Imposed Business Models

Remember that externally imposed business model that some people and politicians, including Thomas Friedman, want to impose on the Big 3? Greener, more fuel efficient cars, with hybrid engines? Here's a bit of market reality to remind us that the Prius isn't quite the same as Friedman's "iPod of luxury SUV's", the Lexus RX400h.

No, potentially the worst piece of [U.S. economic] news passed by almost without notice: the decision by the Japanese carmaker Toyota to hit the brakes on its construction of a new factory in Mississippi. That decision wrapped up the past and future prospects for the US into one unhappy package. If Toyota cancels its plant, the US economy won't collapse, of course. But it is more than just a bad omen. It's a warning of what is to come for the Federal Reserve and the incoming Obama administration.

Toyota's new car plant wasn't just any assembly line. It was to be the first US factory to make the famous Prius hybrid. Toyota had already invested $300m in it – but it may prefer to kiss that money goodbye than commit the extra $1bn needed to open it.

Prius sales are way down - "in November 2007 Toyota sold more than 16,000 Prius models. Last month it sold just 8,000." But that's not just because gas prices have dipped; it's also a symptom of the bad consumer credit market.

Does "Teach for America" Suck?

Given the fury directed at Linda Darling-Hammond, who has dared to question the effectiveness of "Teach for America", I thought it was worth looking under the hood. Teach for America's website led me to this article from the Hoover Institute's publication, Education Next - in lauding itself, Teach for America presents only the graphic, and not the text of the article. The commentary by Arthur Wise, a proponent of the professionalization of the teaching profession, is what you should expect. He gives a pretty good synopsis of why Teach for America "works" - and what that actually means for students:

At least five studies include data on TFA. The 2004 Mathematica study says that “TFA teachers did not have an impact on average reading achievement. Students in TFA and control classrooms experienced the same growth rate in reading achievement—an increase equivalent to one percentile” [from the 14th to the 15th percentile]. In addition, many of the TFA teachers were actually more prepared than over half in the novice control group: “All TFA teachers had at least 4 weeks of student teaching, while many of the control teachers (and over half the novice control teachers) had no student teaching experience at all.” The abysmally low percentage of students at the proficiency level in both reading and math in this study demonstrates the results of the current policy of having inexperienced, untrained recruits teaching the most-needy students.

Is it truly possible for a certified teacher to be dumped into the most difficult inner city classroom with absolutely no student teaching experience? That's appalling. I wasn't aware that any states permitted teachers to be fully certified without any student teaching experience.

As a group, the studies tend to show that the students of uncertified TFA recruits underachieve when compared to students of new certified teachers, but this gap tends to disappear as the TFA recruits obtain professional knowledge through coursework and certification. Like similar studies in other areas of educational controversy, however, these results are indicative but not uniformly regarded as conclusive.

Thus, as you would expect, as TFA participants get to the point of having two years of experience and benefit from additional training, they are better able to control their classrooms and to teach their students as compared to newly certified teachers. Then, for the most part, they quit.

Whatever the relative performance of the two groups of new teachers, I know of no school or district that has made a conscious choice to hire TFA recruits instead of certified teachers. And the districts do not retain any substantial number of them long enough for the recruits to catch up to their peers. TFA recruits are placeholders in troubled schools where an adult must staff the classroom and no one else volunteers. They are hired because of the lack of certified applicants, not because they are considered more desirable.

At the same time,

Whether TFA has in fact “improved the caliber of candidates,” however, depends on the criterion used to make the judgment. TFA was designed to help solve the “teacher shortage” in “under-resourced” urban and rural schools and should be measured against this objective.

I agree. And within that context, I find Teach for America's exaggeration and triumphalism off-putting. TFA appears to be marketing itself as résumé fodder, and seems to believe that the best way to do so is to diminish the profession of teaching. It may well introduce future policy makers to the genuine problems of inner city schools, and it may well inspire a modest number of its alumni to remain in teaching professions or become school administrators. But it's not comfortable admitting that its most important service is helping to overcome teacher shortages with what, by the design of its program, amount to a succession of temps - intelligent, motivated temps, for the most part, but temps nonetheless. I expect that a lot of TFA participants get a rude awakening their first day of class.

If TFA tried to pitch itself to my local school board, it would be told that its services weren't needed. If TFA tried to convince parents in my town that they should happily have their children taught by one of its participants instead of a certified, experienced teacher, they would be laughed out of the room. If TFA tried to pitch its programs to private schools, it might be told to send over its graduates - but not its novices. It's exceptionally important that enough teachers be available to serve inner city kids, and it's wonderful that TFA helps that happen, but please, let's not pretend that this is the ideal, or even on par with having those same schools staffed with qualified, dedicated, experienced, professional teachers.

Why Rhee Wants To Break the Teacher's Union

CWD comments,

Clearly, Rhee is trying to sell the teachers a pig in a poke. On the other hand, these are the same teachers who have had union president's steal millions from them and who readily admit that they wouldn't want their children to attend the schools where they teach . . . and are surprised that anyone would expect them too . . .

I'm not sure that busting the Union is a necessary step in the process, but blowing the whole system up and starting over has some theoretical merit . . .

I'll admit, Rhee's professed goal - giving teachers a big raise and merit pay - is not the traditional opening gambit of a union buster. I do think it's a "pig in a poke" - that the proposed pay structure is unsustainable. But for now, let's assume otherwise. Obviously the goal here isn't to coerce the union into letting its members be paid more. Nobody's talking about expanding the school year. So what's left... oh, yeah....

Tenure.

Even when they offer wages comparable to other school districts, or above what other districts pay, school districts like D.C. have a hard time attracting quality job applicants for teaching positions. Why? Because teaching in an inner city school is considered to be a miserable experience. Teaching in a school where, despite your best efforts, you wouldn't send your own child? Where your best efforts, applied every single day, will do nothing to improve the status quo? Where your day is consumed with disciplinary problems and you struggle to maintain classroom order? I have admiration for teachers who can work like that, day after day, without burning out or quitting. But there aren't many of them.

So weak administrators hire weak applicants in order to fill positions, aren't diligent enough (or don't care enough) to ferret out those who don't have an adequate skill set before they get tenure, and the district ends up with large numbers of teachers who really aren't equipped to teach. Rhee supposedly will offer remedial programs for these teachers as part of her secret plan, so that they can in theory avoid being fired, but nothing is stopping her from offering remedial training right now. What she clearly wants to do is to break the tenure system so she can clean house.

I can't say that I blame her. I'm sure she can identify a lot of teachers who should never have been hired, and a larger group that may become highly motivated to improve their skills and performance if they can be threatened with termination. I have sympathy for an administrator who inherits a broken system. But let's be blunt: if teacher's unions were the cause of this problem, D.C.'s system should be typical of the nation's schools as opposed to being among the dregs. The roots of the problem lie in incompetent, unmotivated administration crossed with, in much of the system, what many teachers would find to be an unrewarding, often unpleasant, teaching environment.

Rhee was hoping that the offer of big money would be a sufficient enticement to get the union to voluntarily give up tenure, or allow teachers to opt into the merit system (possibly with the longer-term goal of trying to get the teachers who opted for the merit pay system to vote to decertify the union). But it's difficult to see why a union would regard a promise of an apparently unsustainable pay raise for some as grounds to surrender the largest benefit it has historically provided to its members - job security. And even if you're a good teacher, you have to have some concern about whether you would get merit pay, or have the bad luck of having a particularly bad class and be deemed to be underperforming despite strong efforts.