A Blog for the People... + one.
This story caught my eye this Friday afternoon. There is a book coming out October 6 that presumably will help explain the link between the literature and geography.
Myself, I'm heading out for the weekend to visit my folks. Haven't been there all summer, and it sounds like a good weekend to go walking in the forest preserve. (Illinois euphemism for "woods" owned by the county.)
Back in the day, the winter I first got my computer -- not my first computer, that was a commodore 64 -- I had fun discovering the Internet. An encyclopedic compendium of information, with your own curiosity serving as guide. What could be better? I also found some fun chatrooms to play in. Bizarre personalities probably not encountered in real life, who seemed to be there 24/7. You typed, someone typed back. Quite interactive.
When I read comments now in people's blogs, or personal information shared on-line, today I am more wary. It takes little to create a persona, like putting on a mask at Halloween. The first character I encountered in one particular chatroom *streaked the room*, albeit more descriptively than what I've typed between asterisks here, denoting not talk but action. It was funny, and for a while, I was hooked, visiting that particular chatroom often.
A passel of online characters kept me entertained a few hours here and there, with my r/l friend in the next room being entertained by evening t.v. Sure you could see my little life that particular winter as loser-dom, but I figured the "tv" characters in this new medium were a little more uncensored, unfiltered and quite frankly, more funny than anything on primetime. And they dressed way better too. :) I'm not proud, but at the time, I was working, taking care of my business, and planning for the future. When the winter hibernation was over and the weather changed, I played there a lot less and was outside a lot more. The cast of characters must have trickled away, on to new places.
Nowadays, when you see how creeps like that guy in the Pacific NW who slaughtered a family, use the Internet for contacts, well my early experiences make me realize there's a lot of potential danger in those bizarre characters. I became convinced that the places I went online were populated by characters created by one or two sitting in front of a keyboard directing the *actions* and affectations of multiple personas. I'm not poking fun per se -- no doubt some of these creators are computer savvy and highly intelligent, capable perhaps with Internet help of discussing scores of topics. They say you can hide your tracks too, where you're coming in from, though I've personally never needed to investigate this further.
My screen name in one room started with a "D", a made-up name I settled on that sounded cool. Later, elsewhere, I posted rude comments under that same screen name, apologized, and moved on. Still, you wonder who's really out there. It sure would be easy, if you had the time and faster technology, to populate a place online and manipulate other "real" players through the devious use of your skills. Not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily. It's not honorable, for sure, but short of crossing any lines, let the reader beware seems to be attitude.
Sometimes I think it's lousy that our best instincts are stifled because we have to act defensively. Sometimes I think that's the price you pay initiating a new technology and gaining the benefits that come with shared info instantly at our fingertips. Mostly though, I try to learn and adjust according to that. It's hard to know what comes next in unstable times, but by positioning oneself with an eye towards tomorrow, and taking care making personal choices, hopefully it all works out.
In the meantime, to lift a quote from the early Hill Street Blues series... "hey, let's be careful out there."
Tomorrow is a CLE day-- continuing legal education, seminar for me. We're leaving at 7am from the office. Sounds interesting.
Today was a good rainy day here. Windy, starting to take down some of the leaves and coat the streets and walks. I love autumn best of all.
"If I did die, I wasn't going to heaven and say, `Oh, excuse me, God. Let me wipe my nose, because I just did some drugs before I got here."
the Notre Dame/Washington game Saturday? Wonder why N.D. passed from their own 1-yard-line, risking a safety? Because Coach Weis made a promise to Montana Mazurkiewicz.
Weis asked Montana if there was something he could do for him. He agreed to let Montana call the first play against Washington on Saturday. He called ``pass right.''
Montana never got to see the play. He died Friday at his home.
Weis heard about the death and called Mazurkiewicz on Friday night to assure her he would still call Montana's play.
``He said, 'This game is for Montana, and the play still stands,''' she said.
Weis said he told the team about the visit. He said it wasn't a ``Win one for the Gipper'' speech, because he doesn't believe in using individuals as inspiration. He just wanted the team to know people like Montana are out there.
``That they represent a lot of people that they don't even realize they're representing,'' Weis said.
When the Irish started on their own 1-yard-line following a fumble recovery, Mazurkiewicz wasn't sure Notre Dame would be able to throw a pass. Weis was concerned about that, too. So was quarterback Brady Quinn.
``He said what are we going to do?'' Weis said. ``I said we have no choice. We're throwing it to the right.''
Weis called a play where most of the Irish went left, Quinn ran right and looked for tight end Anthony Fasano on the right.
Mazurkiewicz watched with her family.
``I just closed my eyes. I thought, 'There's no way he's going to be able to make that pass. Not from where they're at. He's going to get sacked and Washington's going to get two points,''' she said.
Fasano caught the pass and leapt over a defender for a 13-yard gain.
``It's almost like Montana was willing him to beat that defender and take it to the house,'' Weis said.
Mazurkiewicz was happy.
``It was an amazing play. Montana would have been very pleased. I was very pleased,'' she said. ``I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn't watch much more.''
Weis called her again after the game, a 36-17 victory by the 13th-ranked Fighting Irish, and said he had a game ball signed by the team that he wanted to bring to the family on Sunday.
``He's a very neat man. Very compassionate,'' she said. ``I just thanked him for using that play, no matter the circumstances.''
Allegiance to the state, or to the mosque?
In related news, Laurie Goering of the Chicago Tribune remembers a brave friend:
The next day he was there again at the edge of another crowd. Again he stepped forward to help. This time, when we finished, I asked him if he would like to work with me. He said the Basra fertilizer factory where he worked had closed before the war. He would be glad to help. He didn't want any money. Seeing Iraq change, he said, was enough.
Over the next three weeks, Fakher became my interpreter, my unlikely bodyguard, my dear friend and my chief source of insight into Iraqi society. We slept in the dirt beside my four-wheel-drive as rocket-propelled grenades shook the ground. He found fuel and food when both were scarce; he translated verses of the Koran to help me understand his fervent faith. More than once, he saved my life.
On Monday he lost his.
Not all Cubs fans are evil primates, just the evil ones, the chimper boys and girls, and as they ask about the Sox, something happens to their faces: Their lips stretch to reveal teeth, their jaws jut forward, their eyebrows twist in the manner of, well, evil primates. They make strange hand gestures.
In chimps, these are non-verbal cues indicating anxieties, fear and aggression. In Cubs fans, the anxiety is repressed but quite obvious: They're afraid that the Sox won't choke.
And I'm here to tell you, they should be afraid. Because, quite simply, the Sox won't choke.
"It's almost like playing summer shinny hockey, where there's no contact and everybody just kind of does their thing," said Kevin Weekes, the Rangers' No. 1 goalie, referring to the new rules.
Weekes allowed goals on four of the first eight shots he faced. "It's going to take some time for us to get used to," he said.
Rangers Coach Tom Renney said: "This could be very exciting, quite honestly. It could be fun to coach. And it could be a little bit frustrating at times, for sure. And I think the fans are going to be the beneficiaries of that."
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12,787 in New York;
18,064 (sell-out) in St. Paul
Britain frees soldiers jailed by Iraqi police
Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Violent clashes erupted Monday between Shiite militia and British soldiers in the southern city of Basra, after British tanks stormed a local jail to free two of their commandos detained earlier in the day by Iraqi police.
The daylong violence in Iraq's second-largest city raised troubling questions about the relationship between the nominal allies in what once was considered a relatively safe area of the country.
The clashes, which involved members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's army, apparently began when the two undercover British commandos fired on Iraqi police, who took them into custody.
Iraqi police cars circulated downtown, calling through loudspeakers for the public to help stop British forces from releasing the two. Heavy gunfire broke out and fighting raged for hours, as crowds swarmed British forces and set at least one armored vehicle on fire.
The tanks bore down on the jail, knocking down a wall before the men were freed -- along with dozens of other detainees who took advantage of the chaos to escape, according to local reports and news agency accounts.
Two Iraqis were reportedly killed in the clashes, and several British soldiers were wounded.
In London, authorities said the two commandos were released after negotiations. But the BBC quoted British defense officials as saying a wall was demolished when British forces went to "collect" the men.
The provincial governor, Muhammad Walli, told news agencies the British assault was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible."
Growing tension
Monday's violence underscored the increasing volatility of Basra. Tension has been growing between British forces in the city and Shiite police and militias that operate there.
The clashes followed the discovery Monday of the body of Fakhr Haidar al-Tamimi, 38, a journalist who worked for local TV and radio, as well as the New York Times, the Guardian in London, National Geographic and other publications, according to the New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Basra, a city of 1.5 million, is heavily under the control of Shiite political parties and fighters of the Badr militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite religious party that leads Iraq's government.
Though Basra has not suffered the same level of violence as other cities in Iraq, residents say peace has come at a cost. Armed militiamen rule the streets, enforcing perceived infractions of Islamic law with beatings and even killings, residents say. In the once cosmopolitan city, women can no longer go unveiled on the streets, and physicians have been beaten for treating female patients.
Citizens and authorities allege that Badr fighters have infiltrated police forces and are carrying out abuses under the guise of police authority. Rivalry also runs strong between those militia fighters and the militia of Al-Sadr.
Attacks on Westerners -- once a rare event in Basra -- have targeted British and U.S. diplomatic convoys in recent weeks and killed at least eight Britons and Americans.
Britain is the second-leading contributor of foreign troops to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, with 8,500 troops compared with 140,000 Americans.
Roundup of events
In other developments Monday:
• Across Iraq, militant attacks killed 24 police and civilians and wounded 28 others.
• In a report in the Independent newspaper, Iraqi Finance Minister Ali Allawi said $1 billion has been stolen from his ministry. The money allegedly disappeared under the interim government of Ayad Allawi.
• Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi purportedly issued a vow pledging not to attack followers of Al-Sadr and other Shiite leaders opposed to the U.S.-backed government.
• In the holy city of Karbala, an estimated 3 million pilgrims attended a major Shiite festival in defiance of insurgent declarations of all-out sectarian war.
• A court in Baghdad sentenced one of Saddam Hussein's nephews to life in prison for funding the insurgency and bomb-making.
• A lawyer for Army Pfc. Lynndie England said she will abandon her earlier courtroom strategy and fight charges that she was a key participant in detainee abuse by guards at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The 22-year-old reservist, who appears in a series of graphic photos taken inside Abu Ghraib, was to go on trial today at Fort Hood, Texas, on seven counts of mistreating prisoners.
• World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said he is looking into putting staff members back in Iraq -- two years after a bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad led the lending institution to pull them out.
The Washington Post and Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Hmmm.... not sure where to put your money just now? Why not ask ... a psychopath?
A team of U.S. scientists has found the emotionally impaired are more willing to gamble for high stakes and that people with brain damage may make good financial decisions, the Times newspaper reported Monday.
"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," (fire official Henry) Barton said.
"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.
In Monday's PBPost, "Basking in Free Market Magic":
Since we put our values on a cash basis during the 1970s, the arts have flourished. Our painters rival Rembrandt. Best-selling novelists plumb the depths and explore the heights of the human condition. The sheer range of our top actors is astonishing, but, of course, their predecessors in the profession never had such fine material to work with.
That happened because the market demands excellence and rewards it. In what looks like a happy coincidence but really is just another result of our discovery of how the world works, every year our schools confer diplomas on students fully prepared to appreciate the arts, to say nothing of the students' abilities to contribute in science, business and politics. The level of conversation in the typical college dorm is up to Plato's Symposium.
Ethical performance never has been higher in business, politics and the professions. Those who cut corners will be punished by the market. All that is as expected when we forced overbearing governments to get out of the way and let life follow the collective wisdom of markets. And the best part is that we are exporting our ideas to the rest of the world.
I josh, of course.
...
Mr. (John Ralston) Saul is one of those world citizens known to everyone but Americans. He's neither a red state nor blue and doesn't do our shout-and-scream television. He's Canadian and, in fact, married to the royal governor general. He has run an investment firm and advised a national oil company, and he has also written award-winning novels — the first one in French, one of his languages — and philosophical nonfiction. One of the latter, Voltaire's Bastards, was even noticed in the United States. It gleefully exposed the intellectual nakedness of technocrats.
His new book, the one I've been citing, is The Collapse of Globalism, published this month by Overlook Press. It shows what those naked technocrats made of the world's economy. Mr. Saul has a mean streak that keeps him entertaining, and he's better at stinging description than soothing solutions. But if you read him, you will think twice before repeating today's conventional wisdom.
Not that my e-mail shows any sign of second thoughts. So Danielle Steele is Jane Austen and Tom Cruise is John Barrymore. And I am the Sultan of Brunei.
"Referees are trying to make their point and call everything."
PB Post editorial: Work for better jobs.
Tom Blackburn:
"But when Katrina ripped into the Gulf Coast, no one sent up the cry of 'Send in the free market.' Government can't replace markets, but it can help them work, prevent them from being perverted and alleviate the collateral damage of market decisions. None of that has been done very well lately."
Dan Moffett looks to the rare Monday night double header. (This is honest writing, which is good writing, and worth a read even if you detest sporting events.)
Stories in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on NWA: here here and here
Take a step back and see the little people...
Burro bookmobile. "The donkeys are cheap, reliable, don't need any fuel and can go almost anywhere," he said.
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Cheap dish.
Just getting home from a PFC hearing, which we had last night, and tomorrow afternoon too. Sunday is a board of directors mtg at the office, that goes into Monday, where the gov. is expected to speak briefly. Word has it, he's courting our votes. And dress nice Monday. Just in case you weren't planning it...
I really like this work. I'm observing a lot, and I have a good supervisor who happens to be a former English teacher. Bonus: master storyteller and related-trivia sharer. I couldn't have asked for a better fit in that we share basic values. Words do matter. Even as they're diluted and misused, I still hold the proper choice and arrangement, in the right hands, can be as precise as coding. Not as user-friendly in their precision, perhaps, which makes the quality listener a rarity, more and more these days.
But don't blame the game for the poor skills of the players. The language, whose variations both join and separate us, is there. Always will be. Always. No matter how much it gets mistreated and generally fucked with, diluted and disgraced, as we wind down. The potential for beauty remains, as in nature, even in the dreariest landscape. And it's no less there if passers-by can't see it. Dig?
Also, I've decided for reasons of my own not to type here that story I referred to from a Torts class. So if you've been coming for that alone, sorry. And in general, if you don't like what you briefly read here, or how it's written -- too personal, too light, whatever -- don't break your finger clicking out, to paraphrase a cliche.
Beyond commitments and lack of options, why anyone would go, stay or return to a place they weren't happy in, is beyond me. Be good to yourself b/c nobody else has the power to make you happy.
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two suicide car bombers struck within a minute of each other and a half-mile apart in southern Baghdad on Thursday, killing seven policemen and raising the day's death toll from blasts in the capital to at least 31, police said.
Earlier Thursday, the day's first suicide car bombing killed 16 policemen and five civilians in the same neighborhood, signaling a new round of violence one day after residents suffered through Baghdad's bloodiest day since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — 160 dead and 570 wounded.
A roadside bomb struck a Ministry of Industry bus Thursday in eastern Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding 13, said police Lt. Col. Ahmed Abbod.
The U.S. military and Iraqi police drove through Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, where the bombings were concentrated, warning residents to stay indoors because five more car bombers were said to be ready to attack, police Capt. Ali Abdul Hamza said. Streets in the southern neighborhood were abandoned.
Al-Qaida in Iraq said it launched the attacks on both days.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the insurgents had become desperate as Iraqis prepared to vote in an Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution.
"Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency. So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum. ...That's power, that's movement toward democracy," Lynch said at a briefing.
He opened the session on the first day after the extraordinary carnage in Baghdad by detailing improvements in Iraq's transportation system, saying: "I could devote the whole press conference to good news stories."
Al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, purportedly declared "all-out war" on Shiites, Iraqi troops and the government in an audiotape posted Wednesday on an Internet site known for carrying extremist Islamic content.
Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, fired back during a news conference Thursday.
"We will not retreat or be silent. There will be no room for you in entire Iraq. We will chase you wherever you go," he said.
The massive bombings have taken place with both Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the United States. Talabani is scheduled to address the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and has met with President Bush. Both presidents agreed it was not yet time to discuss any withdrawal of the 140,000 U.S. forces now in Iraq.
U.S. forces and insurgents, meanwhile, reportedly clashed in the troubled western town of Ramadi, a militant stronghold on the main road to neighboring Jordan. A Web posting purportedly from Al-Qaida in Iraq said its forces had engaged the American military in the predominantly Sunni city of about 800,000.
Many of the 160 people killed in Wednesday were day laborers lured by a suicide attacker posing as an employer.
In its claim, Al-Qaida called it retaliation for the rout of militants from their base in Tal Afar, the northern city near the Syrian border.
Thursday's attacks in the capital began at 8 a.m. Four hours later, the twin bombing boomed out across Baghdad — one minute and a half-mile apart, said police Capt. Firas Gaiti said. He said at least seven policemen died and 10 were wounded.
In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb next to a passing patrol, killing two police officers and wounding four, said Col. Anwar Hassan, head of the local security unit.
U.S. and Iraqi troops in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad, came under mortar attack Thursday morning as armed militants roamed the streets, police Capt. Nasir Alusi said.
All shops in the town were closed and the streets were empty as automatic gunfire echoed through the town's industrial zone, Alusi said.
Wednesday's spasm of violence terrorized the capital for more than nine hours. The first attack, at 6:30 a.m., was the deadliest: a suicide car blast which tore through the predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Kazimiyah.
In what was believed to be a new tactic, the bomber set off the explosive after calling the construction and other workers to his small van and enticing them with promises of employment, a witness said. At least 112 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded.
Iraqi forces arrested two insurgents in connection with the bombing, one of them a Palestinian and the other a Libyan, Iraqi TV quoted al-Jaafari as saying. He also said the suicide bomber was a Syrian, without offering any details how the identification was made so quickly.
Al-Qaida in Iraq said in a Web posting that it launched the attacks, some less than 10 minutes apart, in response to the Tal Afar offensive, which began Saturday.
"To the nation of Islam, we give you the good news that the battles of revenge for the Sunni people of Tal Afar began yesterday," said the statement, posted on a militant Web site. Its authenticity could not be confirmed.
The audiotape was posted later Wednesday. The speaker, introduced as al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, said his militant forces would attack any Iraqi they believe has cooperated with the Tal Afar offensive.
A spokesman for the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars condemned al-Zarqawi's threats, and said he was trying to foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.
"Zarqawi speaks from the position of revenge," Muhammed Bashar Faidi, a spokesman for the group, said on Al-Arabiya television. "This position by Zarqawi is aimed at provoking sectarian war (but) if he wants a war he should fight the occupation forces and not innocents."
In other violence Thursday:
• A gunfight between insurgents and paramilitary police broke out in Baghdad's southern Saydiya neighborhood, killing one policeman and wounding another, a spokesman said.
• Police found the bodies of seven unidentified men in various parts of the capital. All had their hands tied and were blindfolded.
• In northern Baghdad, police said they found the body of a policeman who had been handcuffed and shot in the head.
• In Baqouba, one policeman was killed and three injured in separate attacks by insurgents using mortars and small-arms fire.
• A police major was shot to death in Samarra, north of Baghdad, after being abducted by masked gunmen.
one more time." Ah, I'm not a nay-sayer here who is going to comment on the child's parentage, or having a celebrity as a mom. I wish Britney well, truly.
On a related note, RIP baby Susan. Not always sure why things happen the way they do, but to everything turn, turn, turn, as the song goes...
This afternoon, we're heading over to LaCrosse for a hearing scheduled for tomorrow and the next day. Funny coincidence to read this referring to the city, from the Tomah Journal.
What's new here? Well, I was sworn in as a Wisconsin attorney on Thursday, and had my folks and a good friend there as my support section. There were several classmates swearing in then as well -- 27 of us in all from UW, Marquette, and the one person who was without the diploma privilege and actually had to take the Wisconsin bar exam. My folks stuck around for a few days to help with handy little things around the new apartment; it was great to play host and even take them out to lunch after the ceremony to celebrate.
Friday, I turned in my first official brief. It was a manic day, lotsa coffee, but I think the draft turned out good. We'll see what the arbitrator has to say. We work after the fact from a transcript, which is nice, and a lot of the brief writing appears to be separating the wheat from the chaff, emphasizing important details and discounting non-relevant facts. I really enjoy this work so far, and think I could be extremely good at it with practice. Plus, my office is a bright, comfortable place that makes me smile in the morning when I come in. Not to jinx myself, but how good is that?
The Ironman competition was in town this weekend (a Ukranian man and a German woman won, despite competing in 90-degree temperatures.) A sign we noticed downtown Friday night, apparently posted for a competitor, read "Go, Mary, go." I know it wasn't meant for me, but took it as an encouraging sign as my career starts. :)
Finally, this post, detailing another law school classmate's encounters with the Socratic method, inspires a post of my own from Torts class first year. Unfortunately, there is no time to type now, as we'll be hitting the road soon, but if you've had the class, you'll recognize the situation. It involves a donkey/ass, a tortfeasor, and a professor who wanted to structure the hypothetical to make a joke. I'm sure it's repeated year after year, and truth be told, it was kinda funny, but it worked the trick of making me realize early that the Socratic method was overhyped and easily manipulated in certain hands. The dialogue is still fresh in my head, so come back in a few days and I'll try to recall the situation as best I can...
New Orleans Patrolman David Harris stayed.
But you can step up and work to change things that common sense and fairplay sometimes say need changing. Good job, ladies!
This weekend, of course, is Labor Day. Many people today, educated people, scoff at the idea of unions. They hold up examples of financial abuses in a categorical way, unlike the corporate abuses at the top levels we have seen in recent years. Maybe this will change, and people will remember those failures of leadership too.
Lots of unionized workers work in not necessarily dangerous or unsafe conditions, but riskier lines of work than your average office or clerical jobs. By choice, of course. Sometimes heavy machinery fails, sometimes supervisors pushing for higher rates of production ignore safety details, sometimes job openings are not posted, and preferences are given to buddies of supervisors. Unions help not to eliminate, but at least to acknowledge some of these problems, and put them on the table to bargain about. Labor helped our country grow and become, in the past six decades, the amazing country it is.
Here are some personal examples for those of you who may come from totally white-collar environments: My friend's brother, in the 70s, was working at a paint factory in South Chicago. He had an epileptic seizure, fell into an open vat of acid from a catwalk above, and died. No one's fault really, but a unified organization can work with managers to help prevent something like that from happening again. Namely by safety proofing open machinery. Someone who might die would have more concern, naturally, in correcting these situations through preventative measures than someone who does not work under the conditions present. These workers might have better ideas too than outsiders regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of work procedures. (And yes, there are good places who work proactively with risk managers to protect their assets. Some might just need a little more encouraging...)
In the mid 90s, my friend was working for a natural gas company in northern Wisconsin. By December the ground was frozen solid, but because the company wanted to get the lines laid to a future subdivision, they continued working, jackhammering into the frozen ground. My friend is a good German, and never questioned his job until he started waking up in the middle of the night with his hands numb and pain going up the arms. He was never properly trained on the equipment, nor given special gloves that would have helped protect his hands from the pneumatic pounding. He is a big guy, not much of a questioner, and just plugged along doing his job. The employer had an incentive to keep his charges working, not to protect their health necessarily by calling off the job when the conditions changed. He sold the company, the next year, to NSP -- Northern States Power.
In my work now, we routinely see, in smaller areas especially, preferences given to workers who have pleased their supervisors (perhaps by campaigning for them on the off hours, or from previous family/friend relationships). These are public jobs, supposedly open for application to all workers who have been receiving good job evaluations. I am not arguing, necessarily, that managers not be allowed to select for a position based on who they like for the job. But when a successor for a position is appointed without the job even being posted, there is an efficiency question about whether you truly are getting the best person for the job, or just surrounding yourself with yourself, as they say. Also, every now and then, you see older workers get hung out to dry, not because they are not doing their job, but because they are too costly too keep around. Previous promises get broken. (see the steel mill closures, where I'm guessing men like John Roberts' father did not feel, or help share, the pain of an industry and a region restructuring.)
Union haters don't see some of these problems. Sometimes they have the "God bless the guy who is willing to do it cheaper" mentality that is so highly touted in right-to-work states. I understand this point of view, but to embrace it so whole heartedly, so one sidedly, tells me you are kinda clueless about how things can work in a part of the real world that some people have to work in. (and please don't tell me everyone could get a better education and get a white-collar job. Somebody -- some worker -- has to perform some of these tasks in our society, and usually the sons and daughters do not follow in their parents' work paths.)
Take, for example, the current Northwest Airlines mechanics strike. They did their jobs, fixing and performing preventative maintenance on the planes. The people running the company -- responsible for managing the finances and other big picture items-- mispredicted somewhere along the way, and now cuts need to be made. So labor is asked to take a 25% pay cut, making less I heard than the United mechanics were offered under bankruptcy proceedings. What I want to know is, how much did the managers, the white collar people, sacrifice when they failed in their planning and budgeting role? Another example: In Wisconsin, we have just passed the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, meaning property taxes will be capped, even though expenses are rising. Public workers will be expected to absorb the cuts, in terms of less manpower and less salary.
It reminds me of the immigration fix we are now facing together in our country. If we don't want the illegal workers here, why are so many companies hiring them to work? If we are hiring them once they get here, we should take responsibility for their being here. If we are not taking on this social responsibility, we should not be hiring them and indirectly encouraging them to move here. You can't have it all, certainly not both ways, and definitely not in the long run.
Somebody is making a lot of money out there, and often it's not the people asked to risk the most or work the hardest and longest. I am all about paying more money for brain power. But please don't abuse the perks. It don't take much brains to see that we're all better off working together with each other -- crafting compromise solutions that consider the long-term interests of both the workers and the managers in preventing deadlock and keeping things running smoothly.
Happy Labor Day, America.
We'll always have showtunes, baby...
----
Try to remember the kind of September
when life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
when grass was green and grain was yellow
Try to remember the time of September
when you were a young and callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow
Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow
Deep in December it's nice to remember
Although you know the snow will follow
Deep in December it's nice to remember
without the hurt, the heart is hollow
Deep in December it's nice to remember
The fire of September that made us mellow
Deep in December our hearts should remember
And follow...
"Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can write that can't be run..."
