China: It's Just a Question of Time

I watched the Todd Solondz film "Life During Wartime" tonight and I think this was my favorite scene by far:





The movie includes lots of references to terrorism and war. At one point two characters trade Bush-era clichés -- should a person "stay the course" or "cut and run" in a dismal situation?

The final line of the film is also about the "war on terror" and is spoken by a 13 year old boy:  “I don’t care about freedom and democracy. I just want my father.”

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Bear cam

Have you wasted any time viewing Bear cam? This Wired story explains:

Media company Explore has teamed up with Alaska's Katmai National Park to install webcams that will deliver live video feeds of brown bears catching salmon in a popular feeding ground.

Each year, around a hundred bears travel to a stretch of Brooks River to fill their bellies with salmon. Now anyone with an internet connection can witness this gathering thanks to four high-definition cameras that have been set up in this remote part of Alaska. 

One camera is positioned at Brook Falls, where the larger male bears fight it out for salmon that are desperately trying to leap their way upstream.

This is the link to that camera: Brown Bear & Salmon Cam - Brooks Falls - Bears - explore

Warning: this is highly addictive.

Compare that to this 1980 Reagan campaign commercial to see how far we've progressed in our tolerance for bears (right?):




Yesterday, I watched as two bears postured somewhat violently towards one another. Meanwhile, a nearby bear was dining on salmon. This demonstrated that the two in the foreground learned nothing from the 2012 Republican primaries.


Note: Cross-posted at Duck of Minerva.

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Property Rights

The Nation recently published a book review by Princeton historian Hendrik Hartog that addresses a new work on property rights: American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own by Stuart Banner.

These are the key paragraphs in the review:

Central to the secret knowledge of property law is the recognition that property rests on the state. Most of the land that white America first lived on had to be expropriated—whether purchased or taken more or less violently—from Native America. Expropriation required an active and militarized state. To know what one owned, to be recognized as a legitimate possessor of property, relied on a series of steps usually including the payment of taxes and the recording of title in the county records office. Ownership usually involved the protection of the local police, and sometimes the state militia or the army. Even when a property owner exercised what property law calls “self-help”—for example, by evicting a tenant, pulling a gun on a trespasser or hiring Pinkertons—he or she knew (or should have known) that it was necessary to follow the rules of self-help set out by the state; otherwise, legitimate self-help would be redefined as criminal violence. Over the course of the past two centuries, the realm of legitimate self-help has dramatically narrowed. Meanwhile, throughout the twentieth century, the value and use of what one held increasingly depended on engagement with zoning boards and a variety of regulatory agencies.

The presence of the state is pervasive throughout Banner’s narrative. There is no period in American history that lies “before” regulation or public vexations. Private property has always found its origins, its recognition and its security in the largesse of the state, even as much of the sentimental claptrap that passes for historical understanding continues to deny that truth.

Obviously, the section at least indirectly speaks to some of the key issues in the current trumped up controversy being stirred by the Romney presidential campaign. As I discussed a few days ago, President Obama's "you didn't build that" remark, in context, was clearly referencing the underlying social contract.

As Banner and Hartog emphasize, every bit of private property in the U.S., even a private business, is deeply embedded in the power of the state.

Incidentally, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama largely agree about the government's role in promoting business, as Jon Stewart's The Daily Show has been illustrating the last couple of nights. This quote used by Stewart tonight is taken here from Think Progress:

ROMNEY: I know that you recognize a lot of people help you in a business. Perhaps the bank, the investors. There is no question your mom and dad, your school teachers. The people who provide roads, the fire, the police. A lot of people help.

Compare the highlighted text (from Think Progress) to the Obama speech I quoted the other day.

Update: Here's The Daily Show bit on this from Wednesday, July 25: 

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democalypse 2012 - Do We Look Stupid? Don't Answer That Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

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The Underlying Social Contract

By now, these lines from Barack Obama have been burned into the 24/7 news cycle by the American right: "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen." Mitt Romney on the campaign trail and Fox News in its programming (presuming you see a difference) have apparently been using it relentlessly.

Here's the video for those who have missed the uproar:



Here is the wider context from the White House website:

     I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them.  So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way.  We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more.  (Applause.)  And, by the way, we’ve tried that before -- a guy named Bill Clinton did it.  We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine.  We created a lot of millionaires.

     There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  (Applause.)

     If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

     The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people

Typical socialist, eh? He's talking about how government can promote free enterprise to grow the economy for everyone. Not exactly how Marx and Lenin mapped the future.

As others have noted, these words from Obama echo those of Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (starting about 0:50):



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Applying Skinner's Behavior Modification

As I've sometimes mentioned, I've been serving on the University's Sustainability Council for some years. Throughout that time, the group has often discussed the prospects for influencing behavioral change in the students, staff, faculty and administrators.

The June 2012 Atlantic Monthly had a piece by David H. Freedman about "Skinnerian" behavior modification. Freedman demonstrates that psychologist B.F. Skinner's ideas have earned a bad reputation over the years, but they potentially offer a good deal for the modern world. Many people fail to understand that "Skinner sought to shape only consciously chosen, directly observable behavior, and only with rewards."

Readers of this blog might want to check out the lengthy article as it is filled with interesting anecdotes and explanation.

I found the following paragraphs to be especially useful as they suggest practical application of Skinnerian thinking to address contemporary problems related to sustainability and health:

At Palo Alto’s storied University Coffee Cafe, I recently found myself sitting next to a young fellow named Yoav Lurie, who turned out to be running a Boulder-based company called Simple Energy, which uses Facebook as a social-reinforcement tool for conserving energy by tracking, sharing, and reinforcing certain behaviors. The product, like many of its competitors in the booming field of energy-related apps, is sponsored by large utility companies incentivized to reduce their reliance on conventional power sources.

Government agencies are in a similar position to benefit. I was speaking with a manager at the U.S. Department of Transportation about public transit when he mentioned that the agency is testing an app that provides local travelers with various transportation options for specific trips and that could gently reinforce decisions to use public transit by pointing out the extra calories commuters would burn by walking to the station and the carbon they’d avoid emitting by leaving their cars at home.

Once we reconvene, I'll bring this to the attention of some others on the Council.


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Lobbying Power

I do not really study American politics and lobbying, but this tidbit from a year- old Time magazine (June 20, 2011) recently caught my attention:

...the fossil-fuel industries are lobbying Congress hard to block any legislation that would impose federal standards for renewable energy or diminish their special status. This includes $5.5 billion each year in tax breaks and discounted royalty payments as a result of $200 million in lobbying and political contributions. By contrast, the clean-energy lobby, which includes wind and solar, spent $30.7 million in 2010.

Wind energy, which currently makes up just 2.4% of the U.S. energy grid, has received some fairly significant subsidies in recent years.  Indeed, earlier in the article, the journalist pointed out that Spanish energy company "Iberdrola received over $1 billion in cash grants from the U.S. Treasury" as part of the Obama stimulus plan. 

According to the National Journal, the renewable energy industry received in total about $7 billion in "tax credits and grants for energy from solar, wind, geothermal, and ethanol." Those have now mostly expired, I think.

Unfortunately, green energy subsidies have not been popular in the new "tea party" Congress, partly as a result of the half billion lost in the Solyndra deal.  As the NY Times  reported in late January:

As of early this year, the cash-grant program, known as the 1603 program, had awarded $1.76 billion for more than 22,000 solar projects, according to the Treasury Department.

The Obama administration supported an extension of a tax credit plan that would have provided another  $6.8 billion from 2011-2015. Of course, these policies are being framed around jobs more than the environmental or geopolitical implications:

“Because of federal investments, renewable energy use — sources like wind and solar — has nearly doubled,” Mr. Obama said at a stop at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo., where he promoted the increasing use of renewable power by the military and repeated a call for Congress to approve the tax credits. “Thousands of Americans have jobs because of those efforts.”

One-third of the growth in renewable energy in recent years has been in wind power. Solar has also grown quickly, but it is still relatively expensive in the face of cheap coal. In any case, it would appear that even modest lobbying can be effective if the audience is receptive to the requests. Perhaps the fossil fuel industry spends so much because most politicians realize that the subsidies are bad policy. 


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Cliché Time: Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics

If I had more time, I'd examine this June 25 Courier-Journal op-ed by John David Dyche in more detail. Dyche fills his paragraphs with "facts," implying that this means it is not biased or distorted in any way.

Wrong.

Here's a sample of the mediocy:

The Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that 46 percent of households will not pay federal income tax for 2011. The Heritage Foundation asserts that in 1984 only 14.8 percent of the population paid no federal income tax.

Obviously, Dyche is trying to imply that the U.S. has so expanded the social welfare state that few Americans now pay income taxes. Compared to 1984, that is obviously untrue. Rather, the problem is that since 1984, the wealthiest Americans have acquired a far greater share of the country's wealth and capture a very large portion of annual income. Just between 2002 and 2007, the wealthiest captured two-thirds of all income growth. The data over the last 30 years is particularly depressing. And since 2008, the Great Recession has further concentrated wealth and massively increased poverty at the bottom.

Moreover, the Earned Income Tax Credit explains some of the change as well.

Dyche also ignores the payroll tax.

This set of "facts" from the op-ed is also misleading:

NPR, using inflation-adjusted dollars, reports that, “In 1962, federal spending was $707 billion and accounted for 18 percent of U.S. GDP. In 2011, federal spending was $3.1 trillion and accounted for 24 percent of GDP.” As recently as 2008, total federal spending was about $2.5 trillion, and the long term, historical average of federal spending is 20 percent of GDP.

Why pick 1962 as the baseline? That was before Johnson's Great Society, so it ignores Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Does Dyche mean to suggest that America was a better place when those social welfare protections were not in place? The "long term, historical average" is fairly ridiculous since the U.S. had fairly limited federal spending until the Great Depression. The social safety net that is in place helps protect against the wild economic swings capitalism periodically suffers.

One fact Dyche did not note: federal revenues (thanks to tax cuts, as well as the recession) are now lower than they have been as a portion of GDP in over 60 years. Obviously, deficits would be much lower if taxes on the wealthy had not been repeatedly reduced. What was the top rate in 1962? Answer: over 90%!!

Incidentally, a significant portion of current spending is debt service, meaning that higher revenues over the past 30 years would have meant a lot less government spending now.


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ACA Today

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Surprisingly, Chief Justice John Roberts voted in the majority and was thus the swing vote. Many court observers expected he would vote to uphold the act only if Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote. But Kennedy dissented. Roberts got to assign himself the task of writing the majority opinion, but few expected this to occur in favor of ACA unless the vote was 6-3.

Did Roberts abandon his fellow conservatives altogether? No. Roberts, in fact, did not agree with the four more liberal justices that the ACA could be justified by the Commerce Clause of the constitution. Readers might recall the back-and-forth about whether consumers might be required to purchase a product like broccoli under the interpretation of the Commerce Clause offered by the President's lawyers in the courtroom. Incidentally, while Roberts may have been quite concerned about forced broccoli purchases, Justice Ruth Ginsberg destroyed that argument in her concurring opinion.

In any event, Justice Roberts ruled with the liberal justices that Congress had the authority to implement an individual mandate via its power (from Article I and in the Sixteenth Amendment) to tax individuals. After all, both the House and Senate versions of the ACA enforced the individual mandate using the Internal Revenue Service to impose a modest fine -- or tax: 

Since the ACA’s fine for failure to carry insurance is very low (and statutorily calibrated to the price of insurance so that no one will ever pay more for refusing insurance than for buying insurance), since the fine applies regardless of whether the individual knew she was uninsured, and since the fine is assessed and collected exclusively by the IRS, the Court held that it is a tax rather than a penalty under the long-standing constitutional test.

Many conservatives are hotly claiming that the mandate was NOT explicitly sold as tax policy. Some even point to this video of Barack Obama vehemently denying that ACA is a tax. However, if you watch the video, Obama denies that the law is a tax increase, he doesn't say it is not a tax. His argument is that people who don't pay for health insurance effectively force taxpayers to expend their resources when the uninsured seek medical care for emergency care that they cannot otherwise afford.

Certainly by mid-July 2010, as this New York Times story demonstrates, the Obama White House was arguing that the law was constitutional as a tax even in the face of Tea Party opposition to higher taxes and more spending. Incidentally, that Times story also claims that Obama argued ACA was not a tax, but it then quotes from the same ABC-TV interview where he says it is not a tax increase. The newspaper cut short an exchange and make it appears as if the President directly challenges the idea.

"ObamaCare" will likely become a major issue in the presidential election, though Democrats have some powerful arguments to counter the likely Republican attacks. After all, as Ezra Klein and others have demonstrated, the Obama health care law was grounded in ideas borrowed from Republican think tanks over the past two decades. In the Heritage Foundation Lectures, Dr. Stuart Butler argued in  1989 for the government to simply "Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance." http://IBa BBack in 2010, left-leaning critics of ACA who favored the "public option" charged that this was a boondoggle for the private insurance companies as they would be getting millions of new customers thanks to this policy change.

In any case, conservative critics are also in trouble because Mitt Romney supported and helped pass a very similar bill in Massachusetts ("RomneyCare") during his tenure as governor. The Massachusetts individual mandate is enforced via the tax code. Thus, how can he, in particular, argue effectively against the ACA? I guess we will all find out in time.



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That’s a clown question, bro’

Rookie Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals is a very talented young (age 19!) baseball player. And now, he has his own catchphrase. Watch and enjoy:



The Washington Post helpfully provides the text of the exchange:

As you can see, one zealous Toronto media member in the postgame scrum asked Harper if he’ll be enjoying a “celebratory Canadian beer” after his monstrous home run. Nats PR quickly shut down the question, but not before Harper uttered the phrase that is sure to end up on a T-shirt by noon.

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Global Film

Last night, I watched "Outsourced," a 2006 film that was the original source material for a short-lived television situation comedy of the same name. I never watched the TV program, but the film was well-reviewed, so I gave it a try.

"Outsourced" turned out to be an entertaining film about a young man working in phone sales (his shop fills orders) who must travel to India to train workers to replace displaced American workers. As a double ironic twist, the company sells mostly "patriotic knick-knack" that is made in China. It might make a good double feature with "The Coca-Cola Kid," a movie I last saw in the 1980s.

While I am unlikely to screen this movie in my "Global Politics Through Film" class, I will certainly add it to the list of acceptable films for students to review. The movie hints at the economic forces behind outsourcing, reveals interesting cultural aspects of globalization, and specifically addresses the notion that "globalization is Americanization" (or perhaps westernization).

Perhaps most importantly, the film reminded me of this chart I saw last month in the Atlantic Monthly:

Chart source: The Atlantic Monthly, May 2011. 

In 2010, the U.S. had less than a one-third share of the world film market. A half dozen or so wealthy (and mostly western) states accounted for roughly another one-third of that market and the BRIC states were just under one-sixth (14.6%). 

The globalization of the film industry will undoubtedly continue to have a large effect on the content of movies -- influencing character development, narrative storyline, etc.



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Additional Blogging and Writing

This week, Millennium: Journal of International Studies has published my article on "Cooperative Security: Grand Strategy Meets Critical Theory?" The piece is a revised version of the paper I delivered at the London School of Economics conference during October 2011. Here's the abstract:

Major powers are frequently urged to embrace grand strategies tied to particular International Relations theories. In the case of United States foreign policy, scholars generally analyse a well-known set of strategic choices – primacy, selective engagement, offshore balancing, collective security and cooperative security – favoured by relatively mainstream realist and liberal thinkers in International Relations. This article explores the evolution of cooperative security as an idea from its clear ties to liberal and neoliberal international relations theory to its current understanding in world politics, which is surprisingly consistent with many emancipatory ideals of critical International Relations theory. Cooperative security no longer merely implies multilateralism, negotiation and arms control. Rather, security is now more frequently described as indivisible, and genuine cooperation is said to require shared decision-making and consensual practices. Non-governmental organisations are more and more granted a voice in security discussions, as are international institutions. While weapons and warfare remain important security concerns, the cooperative security agenda today includes ideas associated with human security, including environmental calamity, global inequality and hunger.

Last Tuesday, May 22, I posted "How the Sausage is Made" on the Duck of Minerva group IR blog. Andrew Sullivan kindly linked to the post and nearly 15,000 people have viewed it to-date. Apparently, in the 7-year history of the Duck, it is the most-viewed post!** Thank you Zack Beauchamp.

If you haven't read the piece, it includes audio (with pictures) of world leaders speaking frankly about their negotiating position on greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The audio track is from  the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit and the leaders apparently didn't know the session was recorded. I cross-posted "Making Sausage" on the e-IR climate blog as well on May 23.

On May 5, I posted "Climate Change and Godwin's Law" on Duck of Minerva and it was cross-posted on e-IR on May 6. In case you are not familiar with the phrase, "Godwin's Law" refers to the implications of someone referencing Hitler or the Nazis in an internet debate.

This is me a few years ago, playing poker.

** It appears that the Google source I used for this information has only been tracking Duck of Minerva since July 2009.

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Pakistan: Failed or Rogue State?

Pictured: A.Q. Khan, "Father of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program." 

It has been a few weeks since the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. However, I meant to blog this line from a May 2011 piece by Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Pakistan's widely-read Dawn.

"If we [Pakistan] didn’t know [bin Laden was in Abbottabad], we are a failed state; if we did know, we are a rogue state."

Almeida continues with a question, "But does anybody really believe they didn’t know?"

Some readers may recall that I presented a conference paper about Pakistan as a possible target in the "war on terror" back in October 2008. In that paper, I argued that Pakistan could easily have been viewed as a foe all the way back in September 2001.

Actually, I've not been especially kind to Pakistan on this blog for some years:

• In 2003, I noted that Pakistan was viewed by many security analysts as the "typhoid Mary" of nuclear proliferation. Thanks, A.Q. Khan.
• In 2004, I noted Pakistani apparent support for militants in Kashmir that were interlinked to al Qaeda. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is typically implicated in this sponsorship.
• In 2006, some of the (allegedly) ISI-sponsored militants committed a violent act of terror in Mumbai. Also, Hamad Karzai worried openly about militants operating in Afghanistan based in Pakistan. 
• By 2007, the national security apparatus of the U.S. government considered Pakistan's border areas with Afghanistan a sanctuary for al Qaeda. 
• Since 2008, the U.S. has been committing acts of war inside of Pakistan. 
• Moreover, throughout 2007 and 2008, Pakistan played a significant role in U.S. electoral politics, as Democrats were especially willing to sound hawkish about this long-time U.S. ally. 

Pakistan is the "ally from hell" according to a December 2011 Atlantic piece by journalists Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder. While they discuss many of the same problems I've been addressing on this blog over the years, the authors end their piece by taking on the question of command and control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Indeed, they urge U.S. policymakers to remain "focused on the most important goal: keeping Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal secure and holstered." That might not be easy, as they report:

In 2006, General Kidwai, the SPD [Strategic Plans Division] leader, told a U.S. audience at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, that Pakistan maintained for its nuclear arsenal the functional equivalent of two-person control and permissive action links, or PALs—coded locks meant to prevent unauthorized arming of a weapon. When asked about Pakistan’s PAL protocols, one former U.S. defense official replied, “It has never been clear to me what Pakistani PALs really entail. The doctrine is ‘two people’—but is it two people to unlock the box around the warhead, or is it two people to launch the thing once you’ve mated the warhead to the missile?”

In short, bin Laden is dead, but there are still many reasons for security analysts to worry about Pakistan. A nuclear-armed failed state is just as worrisome as a rogue state with the bomb.  

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2012 Bolts from the Blue

For years, I've been posting the roster of my entry in the Hardy House fantasy baseball league. On Saturday, April 14, in Louisville, I attended my 24th consecutive auction draft. Only one owner had to participate by phone, but the rest of us enjoyed the auction, a local baseball game, some beer, and camaraderie.

As a reminder: the league has 12 teams and uses American League players exclusively to accumulate statistics in various hitting and pitching categories. For 22 years, we tabulated results in the traditional 8 categories (HR, RBI, SBs, Batting Average, Wins, Saves, Earned Run Average and ratio/Walks-plus-Hits per Inning Pitched), but in the 2011 off-season we voted to dump BA in favor of On Base Average. Also, we added runs scored (R) for hitters and strikeouts (K) for pitchers.

My 2011 team finished 3rd, but was 10 points behind the championship squad. It featured terrific starting pitching as the squad won ERA, WHIP, and strikeouts and finished 2nd in wins. The team finished 7th in saves, so I hoped to do something about that this season. Offensively, the team had good power, lots of regulars (so plenty of RBI and runs scored), but was weak on speed and horrible at OBA.

Please note one roster quirk now in its fifth year: we added a 10th pitcher and subtracted an outfielder from the "normal" roto squad. We continue to believe that this better reflects roster management decisions that real baseball teams have made over the past 20 years. Again this year, we allowed the purchase of any player on an American League 40 man roster. After the auction, only players on 25 man active rosters or the major league Disabled List (DL) can be obtained. We did vote to allow teams to retain ownership of players sent packing to the National League.

The 2012 Bolts from the Blue (9 retained players in blue):

C Mike Napoli (TEX) $19
C Hank Conger (LAA) $1 (AAA)
1B Adam Dunn (CHX) $14

2B Chris Getz (KC) $1

3B Mike Moustakas (KC) $15

SS Elvis Andrus (TEX) $30

MI Jean Segura (LAA) $1 (AAA)

CR Mike Carp (SEA) $3

OF Eric Thames (TOR) $8

OF Ben Revere (Min) $3

OF Josh Willingham (MIN) $21
OF Michael Brantley (CLE) $11
DH Billy Butler (KC) $23

Hitting $150 (down $25 from last season, which is a lot)

P Jered Weaver (LAA) $24
P Jon Lester (BOS) $26
P Matt Moore (TB) $19
P Alex Cobb (TB) $1 (AAA)
P Francisco Cordero (TOR) $2
P Mark Melancon (BOS) $9
P Aaron Crow (KC) $4
P Glen Perkins (MIN) $5
P Greg Holland (KC) $3
P Matt Capps (MIN) $14 (acquired in pre-draft trade for C Jarrod Saltalamacchia TEX)

Pitching $107 ($24 more than last year)

Andrus cost about 10% more than his price in most guides or early expert drafts, but our league typically has an inflation rate of about that amount. I think he is the best shortstop in the AL and worth the gamble.

I kept Perkins because he seems to be the likely substitute for Capps if the latter should falter as the Twins closer. It meant spending $19 for a likely bad team's saves, but there are lots of potentially good innings there. I also took stabs at saves in the bullpens in Toronto, KC, and Boston.

I did not mean to buy Moore at the listed price, but because I spent the money there at that time of the auction, I barely lost out on the bidding for 2B Jason Kipnis (CLE) a short time later. Their salaries are identical and I was offered a straight-up 1:1 trade at the auction. My team would certainly look more as intended if I had taken that trade, but I didn't really like very many of the remaining starting pitchers.  So far, Kipnis is far outperforming Moore.

Additionally, I rejected the deal because I thought one team was hoarding cash and I therefore feared that inflationary pressures were about to kick in big time. It turned out that a team left a great deal of cash unspent -- over $30, which is enough to purchase a star player!

I left $3 on the table, but I had reserved some extra cash to purchase a few AAA players at the end of the auction to fill in my roster. The guys I really wanted went for too much money (or only qualified at positions I had already filled), so I ended up with several dime AAA players instead of a couple that cost a bit more. Because of injuries and roster limits, I've already had to release Hank Conger, who was injured in the minors.

Moustakas was on my 2011 team and I bought him again for a much lower salary than he cost as a minor league free agent last year. Butler is a long-time favorite and former member of the Bolts. Lester was on my 2010 championship team.

To replace minor league players Conger, Segura, Revere (sent down early), and Cobb on my active roster, I bought C Anthony Recker (OAK) for $1, MI Jason Donald (CLE) for $2, OF Bobby Abreu (LAA/LAD) for $11, and P Casey Janssen (TOR) for $3. I also nabbed CI Eric Sogard (OAK) for $2 to replace the then-injured Carp. Donald and Sogard have already been waived. So has Cordero, once he lost his job to Janssen.

Obviously, I'm hoping for a big bounce back year from Adam Dunn -- and the decision looks good to-date as his HR total in mid-May 2012 already exceeds his 2011 output. Also, I bought a large number of KC Royals, the hometown-favorite team of my youth. I've got a lot of confidence in Moustakas and Butler as hitters. Eric Hosmer cost too much for my tastes. I avoided KC starting pitching.

As I noted above, my team's OBA was terrible last year, so I intentionally sought to avoid guys with poor on-base skills. It was a major reason for trading Saltalamacchia. He and Vernon Wells were a bad 1-2 combination of sub-.300 OBA in 900 plate appearances during 2011.

You can find posts about the 2005, 2007 , 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 auctions elsewhere on this blog.

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Ethnic Cleansing in Freedonia?

Faithful readers may remember that in early 2010 I promised to blog about real-world references to film.  While I often write about film and teach a course on "Global Politics Through Film," I'm not sure I've been faithful to that promise.

In a recent book review of a satirical novel, I found an old reference to film. Specifically, literary critic Liesl Schillinger reminded readers of this 1993 prank that was apropos of its Marx Brothers film reference:

It’s worth remembering that in 1993, when Spy magazine prank-called U.S. congressmen, asking what the administration should do about ethnic cleansing in Freedonia, several of the officials demanded immediate action. Freedonia, as it happens, was not a warring Balkan land but the fictional setting of the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup. Spy soon exposed the trap it had laid...

If readers are unfamiliar with the 1933 film Duck Soup, my advice is to watch it! Turner Classic Movies airs it frequently. For now, however, suffice to know that it is a farce about the buildup to war between Freedonia and Sylvania. Groucho becomes Prime Minister and his brother Chico serves as his Secretary of War. The storyline is wacky and as I wrote a few years ago, one would be "hard-pressed to learn any valuable lessons about international relations or war from the film."

In any case, I found a news item about this old prank in The New York Times of January 13, 1993, which means the congressional interviews must have occurred about the same time as the U.S. humanitarian intervention into Somalia.  The newspaper of record supplied some details about Spy's methodology:

Posing as the host of a New York radio talk show, Spy's staff called about 20 first-term House members and, after a series of innocuous questions, asked, "Do you approve of what we're doing to stop what's going on in Freedonia?" or "Do you approve of what we're doing to stop ethnic cleansing in Freedonia?"

The Times also quoted some of the responses: 

Representative Corrine Brown, Democrat of Florida, said she approved of what the United States was doing in Freedonia, and added, "I think all of those situations are very, very sad, and I just think we need to take action to assist the people."

Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, was candid. "I have to be honest with you, I'm not familiar with that proposal," he said. "But it's coming to the point now that a blind eye to it for the next 10 years is not the answer."

Representatative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana, said, "Yeah, it's a different situation than the Middle East."

The magazine also called Nick Smith (R-MI),  who said that "moving through the United Nations effort has a great deal of merit."

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel noted January 27, 1993, that "All 20 of them were tricked by the clever editors of Spy magazine, who concocted this little exercise in political embarrassment.....not one of the gullible freshmen caught on to the joke."

Before closing, I should note that members of the general public also provide answers when pollsters ask them questions about fictitious issues.




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Obama's Drone War

This is just a quick note to save some statistics I read recently. In the April 30 issue of The Nation, University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole referenced some hard numbers about US use of drones:

American drone strikes on individuals and groups in the tribal belt of northwestern Pakistan, as well as in Yemen, also typify Washington’s global shadow wars. The United States has 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, which it has deployed in strikes in six countries. Both the CIA and the US military operate the drones. Rather than being adjuncts to conventional war, drone strikes are mostly carried out in places where no war has been declared and no Status of Forces Agreement has been signed. They operate outside the framework of the Constitution, with no due process or habeas corpus...

...the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that not only are civilians routinely killed by US drone strikes in northern Pakistan; often people rushing to the scene of a strike to help the wounded are killed by a second launch. The BIJ estimates that the United States has killed on the order of 3,000 people in 319 drone strikes, some 600 of them civilian bystanders and 174 of those, children. Some 84 percent of all such strikes were launched after Obama came to office.

Those are some disturbing stats. Even worse, as Cole notes, this is not an area of great government transparency or publicity. Quite the opposite -- secrecy prevails:

...the drone operations are classified. When asked about strikes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refuses to confirm or deny that they have occurred. The drones cannot be openly debated in Congress or covered in any detail by the US media. Therefore, they cannot be the subject of a national political debate, except in the abstract. The Congressional intelligence committees are briefed on the program, but it is unlikely that any serious checks and balances can operate in so secret and murky a realm...

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2012 Louisville Sluggers

This is my annual post about the Louisville Sluggers of the Original Bitnet Fantasy Baseball League. We drafted many weeks ago in March, but I didn't get around to putting this together until now.

The OBFLB crowns champions for both the "A" first half and "B" second half of the baseball season, divided by the All Star game. For obvious reason, I can only report results of the draft in preparation for the first half season. As I list the team roster, keep in mind that the OBFLB is a 24 team head-to-head fantasy baseball league using 10 categories: home runs, stolen bases, batting average, runs produced average, plate appearances, innings pitched, wins, saves, earned run average and "ratio."

Here are the 2012 Sluggers (players in red were retained from 2011). Since I kept 11 players, I started the draft in round 12:

 Starters

 C: Nick Hundley(16th round)

1B: Joey Votto (CIN)

2B: Jason Kipnis (CLE)

3B: Scott Rolen (CIN) (17th round)

SS: Troy Tulowitzki (COL)

OF: Cameron Maybin (SD)

OF: Jeff Francouer (KC) (12th round)
OF: Chris Heisey (CIN) (15th round)

DH: Billy Butler (KC)

SP: Tim Lincecum (SF)

SP: Josh Beckett (BOS)

SP: Brandon Morrow (TOR)

SP: Chris Capuano (LAD) (14th round)
SP: Joe Blanton (PHI) (18th round)
RP: Joel Hanrahan (PIT)

RP: Chris Perez (CLE)

RP: Jonathan Broxton (KC) (13th round)

Bench

 C: Jose Lobaton (28th round)
IF: Maicer Izturis (LAA) (19th round)
3B: Wilson Betemit (BAL) (21st round)
SS: Jurickson Profar (TEX)  (minors)
UT: Kyle Blanks (SD) (23rd round)
OF: Craig Gentry (TEX) (24th round)
OF: Roger Bernadina (WAS) (26th round)

SP: Kevin Slowey (CLE) (20th round)
SP: Alex Cobb (TB) (25th round) (minors)
SP Felipe Paulino (KC) (22nd round)
RP: Tom Gorzelanny (WAS) (27th round)

Already, Blanks has been lost for the season and I replaced him with Todd Frazier (CIN).

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Lego House

One of my neighbors has built three houses on our street out of Lego blocks. This one is mine:



Check out his Flickr page to see the others and additional photos of my home.

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Jim O'Sullivan

On occasion, former colleagues read this blog. For those who remember Jim O'Sullivan, I am saddened to pass along his obituary:

James L. O’Sullivan, retired Foreign Service officer, retired Head of the Political Science Department at the University of Louisville (KY) died at the Connecticut Hospice Center in Branford CT on Tuesday April 10, 2012. O’Sullivan was born on October 23, 1916. He attended Orange Center School (Orange CT) and Hillhouse High School (New Haven) and Canterbury School in New Milford before attending Williams College (AB 1938) studying economics and receiving a letter in golf. In addition, one of the things Jim was most proud of was his receiving the Eagle Scout medal in 1933 as a member of Derby ’s Troop 3. He served in the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service from 1942 until 1971. In 1945 he served in the American Embassy in Chungking , China after an adventuresome ride over the Hump in a C-140. He met Chang Kai-Shek and Chou-en-Lai and other important figures while there. He then continued on to Hanoi where he served from spring of 1946 until December 1947, observing Ho Chi Minh and the conflict with the French colonial forces as the only American official in northern Indochina.

Following those early years he served in Rome , Tunisia , Brazzaville , Congo , Kinshasa Congo/Zaire, Djakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney , Australia. Jim joined the faculty at the University of Louisville in 1967 as a visiting Diplomat in Residence. Following his final posting to Australia as the Consul General in Sydney (1968-1971) he returned to Louisville and joined the political science department. He served as head of the department from 1974-1977. He was an active member of the faculty senate and served on the Athletics Committee and as the faculty representative to the NCAA committee. Jim was the 1st recipient of the Minerva Award for the University of Louisville . Jim was an avid and excellent golfer, playing nearly to the last day of his life. He was a life member of the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur and won championships in Italy , Tunisia as well as being a renowned player in Louisville and on courses across Connecticut . He was also a life member of the Oronoque Country Club. Jim was very active at the Oronoque Village Condominium and served as an officer on the board of OVCA. Jim is survived by step-son Robert Hilgendorff of Fairfield, CT and step-daughters Katherine Blanchard of Oxford, NH and Jane Huggins of Altamont, NY as well as step-grandchildren Stevens, Emily, Jeffrey and Andrew. Additional survivors are his brother Robert and family, ( Lakewood CO ), and sister Patricia ( Orange CT ), Jeff, John, Kathy, Patrick and David, children of his brother Thomas and his friends and acquaintances in Oronoque Village , especially his friend Myrtie Hall. He was predeceased by his first wife, Eleanor Goode (d. 1977) and his second wife, Jean Fraser Hilgendorff (d 2008). A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday, April 14,2012 at 10:00 AM Directly at St. Margaret Mary Roman Catholic Church, Shelton, with father Chris Samele officiating. Interment will follow in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Stratford . Friends may greet the family on Friday, April 13, 2012 from 3 to 7 pm at the Dennis & D’Arcy – Abriola & Kelemen Funeral Home, 2611 Main Street Stratford . For online condolences please visit www.dennisanddarcy.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions are requested for the Community Soup Kitchen, 84 Broadway in New Haven Ct (06511).

Jim would have been 96 years old this October, so he certainly lived a long and productive life. I'm not sure of the last time I saw him -- perhaps when he was in town to accept the University's Minerva award. At the ceremony honoring Jim, I sat directly behind Denny Crum.

In the early 1990s, Jim used to warn everyone about the possibility of future disorder in China -- perhaps a return to the brutal politics of the warlord era. He and I had several discussions about "gender norming" in the State Department. And he wanted  outsiders to realize that Kentucky farmers are incredibly dependent upon marijuana as a cash crop.

One last memory shared by others: Jim used to trounce various junior colleagues in racquet sports -- he repeatedly challenged me to play, but I declined.

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