Keep the Busses Coming

Sen. Obama just keeps throwing people & positions under them. A few years ago, the NBA had a video ad campaign showing players wooing the Championship trophy. I thought of that image and it morphed into an Obama secularly-kneeling before his pseudo-Oval Office desk [you know he has it picked out], when I read of his latest reversal in his one year of national exposure. The flip-flop list now includes:

• Disavowal of Rev. Wright
• Federal funding of faith-based services
  
• Gun control
• Iraq surge - prospects for success
  
• Offshore drilling
• Public funds for presidential campaign
• Wiretapping - FISA legislation

Amazing. As David Brooks has written, don't underestimate how serious he is about getting elected. I'm sure his grandmother would agree, if the Winnebago firmly resting on her upper torso would only allow her to speak.

Interesting to note that the list of Sen Obama's reversals does not include abortion rights. This despite the fact that in “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama had written:

... the willingness of even the most ardent pro-choice advocates to accept some restrictions on late-term abortion marks a recognition that a fetus is more than a body part and that society has some interest in its development

That would seem to argue for a yes vote on partial birth abortion. But clearly there are some constituencies which he can not afford to upset. But given his reversals to date, not a long list.

Our guy, Sen. McCain, strikes me as more concerned about his post-defeat legacy than winning. That's the most charitable assessment because if it isn't that, some are asking if he's just stupid. Although I thought his recent video ad mocking Obama was a good sign. I think selecting someone like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for VP is critical in recognizing that a business as usual approach [Pawlenty, Crist etc] will not work in 2008. The influential Bill Kristol also seems to like the idea

McCain would do well to follow the advice of the WSJ Editorial Board, who made the following point regarding Obama's most recent reversal:

Even as he proposes to arbitrarily soak the profits from oil exploration, Barack Obama is finally beginning to bend on offshore drilling. Late last week he said he could perhaps support more U.S. energy exploration, so long as it was part of a larger "bipartisan" deal that presumably includes more rules for conservation, subsidies for noncarbon fuels, and other favorites of his green backers.

Leave aside the economic contradiction in allowing more drilling to find more oil only to strip the profits from companies that succeed in finding it. The real news here is political, as Mr. Obama and his advisers have begun to see the polls move against them on energy. With gas at $4 a gallon, voters even in such drilling-averse states as Florida increasingly see the need for more domestic oil supplies. So Mr. Obama is now doing a modified, limited switcheroo to block any John McCain traction on the issue.

Only last week, Mr. Obama couldn't have been more opposed, calling more drilling a "scheme" that wouldn't reduce gas prices. He's also been telling voters that we don't need to open more areas to drilling because the oil companies weren't drilling enough on the leases they already have. That is nonsense, since not every lease yields oil in amounts worth developing and drilling permits aren't automatic even on leased land.

The question for Mr. Obama is whether this latest switch is merely a rhetorical move for campaign purposes. If he's serious, he'll start to publicly lobby Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to allow a vote on drilling when they return from their August recess. The McCain campaign should keep the pressure on until he does, and until Congress moves.

Read more!

Pucho [Pero Why Not?] Fernandez, RIP

I don't know how his material will hold up, but no matter. I will remember him fondly. Pucho 'Cartucho' Fernandez made my friend, fellow sports degenerate and current Herald Boxing writer, Santos Perez, laugh on literally hundreds of occasions in either listening to his material [classic 'pero why not' riff], but more often recalling that which [inexplicably] made us laugh back then. Truth be told, we knew he wasn't any Richard Pryor, but he was ours [Cuban-born] dammit. Just learned that he was the son of the more-famous comedian, 'Tres Patines'. Godspeed Leopoldo Fernandez.

See photo

Read more!

Microsoft Has a Cuba Policy, Who Knew?

I kid Bill.

Actually Don Tennant from Computerworld weighed in on the matter and brought Allison Watson of Microsoft along for the ride.

"Frankly, from a Cuba perspective, Cuba's not a bad word to anyone outside of the United States," she said. "I don't know, outside the United States, if [doing business with Cuba] is a good or bad thing, per se."

She's right, of course. The U.S. pretty much stands alone in its obstinate refusal to engage Cuba and enable the citizens of both countries to benefit from investment there.

To which I replied on his blog:

Greetings from the heartland of said obstinance, Miami FL. But fret not, this will be an outrage-free response.

Your article quotes Allison Watson of Microsoft as follows: "Frankly, from a Cuba perspective, Cuba's not a bad word to anyone outside of the United States," she said. "I don't know, outside the United States, if [doing business with Cuba] is a good or bad thing, per se."

First I am going to assume that when she notes 'Cuba,' she is in effect referring to the Cuban government. That said, if the first sentence were true, why the ambivalence in the second?

Leaving aside the fact that you conveniently blew past said ambivalence in your subsequent comments, the reason is elementary, while perhaps not to someone in dear Ms. Watson's position. Her position being one of devising corporate strategy for Microsoft, not someone whose job it is to take responsible positions on foreign regimes which routinely violate their citizens human rights.

The elementary reason I refer to is that it is palpably untrue that the Cuban government is not criticized outside of the US. The list would include, but not limited to, the UN, the EU, Mexico, Spain and France.

Perhaps the problem is geographical. No one ever washes up on a raft [dead or alive] in the glorious northwest region with a connection to Cuba, aside from those sporting Che t-shirts.

Just another day on the Cuba dilettantes watch.

Read more!

What Should Government Do?

Forcing fast-food restaurants to disclose calories seems like a safe 'no' by my way of thinking, but it's not the clear cut answer I thought before I read the following from the Becker-Posner blog - this is Posner:

A law aimed at reducing obesity would be paternalistic if obesity did not produce external costs, but it does, because obese people consume a disproportionate amount of medical resources, and there is extensive public and private subsidization of medical expenses (private through insurance pools that are unable or forbidden to identify and reject high-risk insureds). However, the size of the externality is in question, because obese people die on average at a younger age than thin people, and so consume medical resources for fewer years on average than thin people do.

Here is Becker's reply:

But the alleged "externality" with regard to obesity is due only to the government's subsidy of medical expenditures, so that it is a case of one government intervention - justified or not - causing another intervention - control of eating. It is not a path of intervention causation that most people would be comfortable with in many situations. For example, since the government subsidizes the medical care of children of poorer parents, a mechanical application of this type of externality argument would say that this justifies governmental control over the number of children that poor parents can have. Additional children of these families create an "externality" by raising taxes on others to pay for the medical costs of these children. Many similar examples can be given where government regulations and other government programs cause certain types of behavior that raise taxes or subsidies and adversely affect taxpayers, even though there would be no externality from this behavior in the absence of the government programs.

I know what you're thinking, 'this stuff is awesome,' I agree. See Posner's entire post. See Becker's entire post.

Read more!

Difference between Popularity and Leadership

From a July 25 WSJ Editorial about Sen Obama's remarks in Germany:

For our money, the best line in Barack Obama's speech yesterday in Berlin came in the form of a quote from Ernst Reuter, the city's mayor during the period of the Soviet blockade and the American airlift, in 1948:

"But in the darkest hour," said Sen. Obama, "the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city's mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. 'There is only one possibility,' he said. 'For us to stand together united until this battle is won…. The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty'." This, from a U.S. Senator whose consistent message to the people of Baghdad, a similarly besieged city, also dependent on America's protection, has been, in effect, to give up.

What Mr. Obama "knows now" is that the surge he opposed has saved Iraq, much as Harry Truman's airlift saved Berlin and underlined America's intention to defend Europe throughout the Cold War. The surge has also saved American lives in Iraq, with combat-related deaths (so far, there have been seven this month) at an all time low.

Mr. Obama also knows that Gen. Petraeus opposes setting a fixed timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. This military judgment ought to count for something, particularly since Congressional Democrats have long scolded President Bush for failing to pay sufficient heed to the advice of generals such as former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki. Yet Mr. Obama, who has always been careful to cite the views of military commanders to justify his 16 month withdrawal schedule, now says that heeding less congenial military advice would mean an abdication of his responsibilities as a prospective commander in chief.

But the significant debate is not over whether and when the U.S. will withdraw. It's over whether the U.S. will win. In his Berlin speech, Mr. Obama was at his most forceful when he insisted that "this is the moment when we must defeat terror," adding that "the threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it." This is well-said and true. But it squares oddly with a political campaign whose central premise is that losing in Iraq -- and whatever calamities may follow -- is a matter of little consequence to U.S. or European interests. It squares oddly, too, with Mr. Obama's broader promise to "stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, the voter in Zimbabwe" and virtually every other global cause.

* * *

It is hard not to be moved by the sight during the speech of hundreds of American flags being waved, rather than burned. Then again, the last time a major American political figure delivered an open-air speech in Berlin, 10,000 riot police had to use tear gas and water cannons to repel violent demonstrators. It was June 1987, the speaker was Ronald Reagan, his message was: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Press accounts characterized the line as "provocative"; the Soviets called it "war-mongering"; 100,000 protesters marched against Reagan in the old German capital of Bonn. Two years later, the Berlin Wall fell.

Reagan's speech is a lesson in the difference between popularity and statesmanship. Watching Mr. Obama yesterday in Berlin, and throughout his foreign tour, was a reminder of how far the presumptive Democratic nominee has to go to reassure people he is capable of the latter -- "people," that is, who will actually get to cast a ballot in November.

Read more!

Marco Rubio on Cuba

Please check out this video clip of Marco Rubio addressing the press at a luncheon attended by Sen Obama in May of 2008. The video was posted on the Babalu blog. Rubio is the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

Rubio explains with great conviction why Cuba's future freedoms should not be negotiated with the Castro dictatorship. He notes that their ability to maintain power should not be confused with the legitimacy which is earned by those who win free elections. They never have and therefore should not be treated as such. Very well said by Rubio and I wholeheartedly agree.

Speaking of even more local politics, check out the review of the Miami Herald's new columnist, Myriam Marquez on the 26th Parallel blog. The post has numerous links to Marquez's earlier columns in Orlando and quotes her opening column:

When your parents leave behind everything they hold dear, including their own parents, to save their children, you're sure to grow up with lots of chutzpah. When you're taught to ''duck and cover'' in a Miami classroom during the Cold War, you learn to value freedom. When you spot a number tattooed on a tailor's wrist at a fabric shop near Cielito Lindo, the old downtown Miami courthouse, you never forget the Holocaust survivor, for you have witnessed God's perseverance over evil.

And the first time you have to translate for your mother that the white man with a Southern drawl is telling us to move up because we're sitting in the ''colored'' section of the bus, you learn to question authority.

And embrace empathy. When Haitians and Venezuelans flee their own despots, how can you not empathize?

Or feel grateful for this nation's promise?

Had the U.S. government turned us away, I would have been forced to wear a red kerchief, shouting slogans about wanting to be like el Che. (A victory for this wife and mother of two sons: The boys know not to bring home a Che Guevara T-shirt from college.)

Now I have the privilege of sharing my perspective in this column three times a week, to try to explain what too often in South Florida seems inexplicable. I don't take this assignment lightly.

Read more!

This is the Day, the Lord Has Made and ...

... here's one way to rejoice and be glad in it - a bike ride through a beautiful part of my hometown of

Miami

1.1 miles into my bike ride - looking west on just past the toll booth to Key Biscayne.





2.5 miles in - Miami Seaquarium.






6.5 miles in - Crandon Park Tennis Center - During March, home to the Sony Ericsson.




9.5 miles in - Crandon Park Beach - across from the Tennis Center - turnaround point was at 8.0 miles



Still 9.5 miles in - A long view of the area before the beach - ABC's Superstars competition once held here.



10.5 miles in - the view from Virginia Beach.








11.5 miles in - Miami Marine Stadium - boarded up for now.

Below in its heyday.







12.0 miles in - Rickenbaker Marina. Guess which is my pic.





12.5 miles in - Quick hellos to the former Ms Evert & Mr Norman.





13.0 out of the 16 mile round trip done - even the view from the gutters are ...






... spectacular atop the Key Biscayne bridge.







The view atop the Key Biscayne Bridge.





Most pictures courtesy of the great Treo 755p.







But not these.

Read more!

MSNBC Dream Report

Dateline: January 2, 2010 - Las Vegas, NV

[AP-BHO] President Obama addressed an adoring throng of approximately 1.5 million Americans yesterday in the outskirts of Las Vegas and urged them; to keep hope alive, to bring change to America, to realize that they were the change, but not to change [their voting patterns] since, ‘we are so close.’ The unusually large crowd was made even more conspicuous by the fact that they were sitting in the desert wearing cloth vestments [the Common Era look].

The spectacular event was almost marred when a San Diego accountant yelled out, “Brother we’re behind you, just do something already.” The president’s security team had to move in quickly as the crowd itself had turned on the man and began stoning him. The man was later asked that if by referring to the president as, 'Brother,' he meant to imply that he was black. He replied, 'of course not, isn't he though?'

When Obama realized that the man was being attacked, he raised his hands, which froze the throng immediately. Instantly grasping the parallels to the biblical story, he told the crowd, ‘as one who came before me once said, in granted what were less complicated and dangerous times, let he who is without sin …” Nothing further was heard as the crowd began chanting, ‘yes we can’ for the next 3 hours and 12 minutes. Some who stopped chanting after only one hour, were beaten [although not about the face] by the more enthusiastic members of the crowd.

It reminded all there of the political skill which earned Obama an unprecedented 49 state sweep in the general election. Alabama, you will recall, actually voted for McCain but it’s electoral voters refused to cast their ballots for McCain and boycotted the College. Instead the Alabama electors held a one-day symposium on the sins of slavery outside the home of former NBA great, Charles Barkley. In a scene reminiscent of the movie Babe: Pig in the City, persons suspected of past Republican voting were 'asked' to parade past union halls across Alabama and ask for forgiveness. One repentant McCain voter's shame went so far as to cause him to attempt suicide by swallowing a print-out of the state's voting tabulation report, but was saved by a nearby Obama precinct captain.

[Editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, the reporter who filed this story voted for Obama and donated 6% of her after-tax tax home pay to his campaign, but has assured us that it will not affect her reporting].

Post-post
I don't think even my family would believe this one. I wrote the post above yesterday and then I found a similar kind [i.e. except funnier and well written etc] of satire about Obama linked on on one of my favorite local blogs, Babalu - July 25

Read more!

Opportunity Knocks

If at first [pre-trial mediation] she doesn't succeed, she'll try [postpone her ruling so that Miami-Dade County's megaplan will be dependent on a coming Florida Supreme Court ruling] again. Charles Rabin of the Herald described Tuesday's ruling in his article:

Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Jeri Beth Cohen on Tuesday tossed a late, surprising wrinkle into Norman Braman's attempt to derail a Florida Marlins stadium, declaring she won't rule on a significant count for more than a month.

Cohen said she'll wait to make a decision on a key remaining count until the Florida Supreme Court finishes work on a case involving the use of public money without a vote. The justices are on break until the end of August.

When Marlins attorney Sandy Bohrer told the judge she had an obligation to rule and city of Miami attorney Henry Hunnefeld said there was no guarantee the Supreme Court would rule anytime soon with three members set to retire by year's end, Cohen said she resented the pressure.

''This is about me doing what is intellectually honest. They're going to make this opinion before these justices leave. I have an obligation to wait,'' she said. ``I have a Supreme Court that is in flux.''

Cohen, also up for election in August, is stuck on Braman's highest-profile count: That the funding plan for a $3 billion face-lift in downtown Miami is illegal because it uses millions of dollars of community redevelopment money without a public referendum.

Can a judge recuse themselves due to an upcoming election? I had an earlier post, which speculated that the judge would have to deal with the perception that the ruling from her courtroom was either an indictment or endorsement of the county's megaplan. Clearly she wanted no part of either perception. I just didn't realize that her election was right around the corner. In retrospect, it's a miracle she didn't flee the country when the first judge, Pedro Echarte Jr., bailed.

Judge Cohen began the trial by asking both sides to attempt to reach a settlement. Nothing seemed to come from that initial mediation attempt, but there was an indication as to the type of compromises which would placate Braman [South Florida's version of Hillary before the final primaries]. Again, from the Herald's Charles Rabin's July 10th article:

Some close to the mediation said items being discussed included the possibility of building a community center near the planned ballpark, or awarding more public access to the facility. Such moves may help satisfy Braman's quest for more public benefit from the megaplan.

Others said the standoff -- being mediated by former judge Bruce Greer -- hangs on whether the Marlins will give back some of the concessions the team received in December's Baseball Stadium Agreement [BSA] engineered by Burgess.

Though the county would own the stadium, the Marlins would receive all monies from its naming rights, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to some Major League Baseball teams.

The Marlins & MLB likely felt that they had the upper hand and refused to compromise at that time. It is doubtful that they remain that confident today. I like what the judge has done. Even if the Marlins had won, everyone expects that Braman would proceed with appeals, guaranteeing further uncertainty. The best possible outcome for our community is one in which the Marlins and MLB go the extra mile and compromise. Bringing someone with Braman's track record on-board would effectively eliminate any additional political hurdles.

In reading about various testimonies throughout the trial - see the Sun-Sentinel's Sarah Talalay's blog - it was amazing to see how every government witness proceeded to give 'expert' testimony that they were clueless as to the finances of their partners in the stadium venture. [If this blogger jumps up and down in cyberspace, does anyone ... never mind, I've seen my Google analytics, the answer is no]. If there is a stadium, those guys deserve box seats for their performances. Hell, they should be in the dugout.

The Marlins & MLB are asking a lot of our community and compromising with Braman would constitute a much needed act of good faith. Their initial $158 million investment has grown in just 6 years to a self-acknowledged $250 million [see pg 11 of BSA] and would likely continue increasing with the additional revenue streams a new stadium would entail. This without probably even having to come out of pocket for their portion of the stadium construction costs [$120 million], thanks to their disciplined hoarding of revenue sharing monies.

The frustrating and fascinating aspect of this trial has been all the misdirections. Braman's lawyers attack the Marlins financial viability because they realized that the Marlins couldn't counter that assertion, given their own false claims of poverty recently. But in reality, the essence of their case is that the Marlins got too good a deal from the county. Why else grill the county's brain trust about how they never saw the Marlins financials or inquired as to their solvency? But if, as they imply, the Marlins suckered the county, that would seem to address their supposed financial woes.

Let's keep a watch on the areas of compromise discussed during the coming negotiations. If the Marlins are requested to put up additional guarantees or letters of credit, then perhaps the Braman team really believed that the Marlins are in financial distress. But if the issues addressed relate to additional dates for the county, community centers and naming rights etc., we'll know their trial strategy was a bluff. After all, if the Marlins were really almost insolvent, that would bolster their argument that they are unable, not unwilling, to compromise on the initial Baseball Stadium Agreement [BSA] with the county. The Marlins are very profitable and they can afford to compromise.

From the county's perspective, Braman and Judge Cohen may not appear to be their allies, but they are. County manager Burgess has been handed a big stick to go back in and get concessions which he likely previously left on the negotiating table.

Let's be clear - what stands between the Marlins & MLB to have a new facility built and paid for with 75% public monies, in an area with more financial difficulties than typical, is some combination of the following:

• Allowing local governments more than 16 days a year access to the facility
• A Community Center
• Sharing a portion of the naming rights to the facility

My suggestions for changes would be the following:

• Concrete language in BSA regarding the Marlins responsibility for construction cost overruns.
• Disclose how the county would pay those overruns, if the Marlins manage to sue and win to avoid paying for those costs - over/under on date Marlins would sue is now October 2009.
  

The bottom line is that the Marlins & MLB can afford to compromise, local politicians already have [it's like breathing for them]. If the Marlins & MLB don't compromise, they will have hung those politicians out to dry and would then deserve to have their fates decided by the Florida Supreme Court. A court which is danger of giving the term, 'flaming lefties,' a bad name.

Read more!

Batman's Secular Miracle at Local Mall

The Dark Knight movie was great. I saw it in a packed movie house with downscale demographics [Mall of the Americas], and yet there were no detectable acts of rudeness in the audience during the movie. Perhaps not a Saint certifying-type miracle to you, but very surprising to this cheap theater aficionado. Granted they are 'mi pipole' and I'm just a mild-mannered accountant, but in a typical showing there, you can usually count on at least 3 acts of random rudeness. It's why I keep the Minuteman Patrol on speed-dial.

Anyways, here's my problem with the movie, the damage inflicted on the Gotham district attorney's [Harvey Dent] face after his encounter with the Joker. The damage was extreme to the point of distraction, but not in a horrifying way. It made me conscious of the fact that someone was showing off their special effects on the audience. I kept wondering why some epidermis or saliva was not dripping out and if there was no saliva, how he was able to continue speaking with his regular voice. I would have been fine with either a dry raspy voice or a voice punctuated with a post-sentence slurp, like a kid with braces, but not a regular voice.

By the way, why I enjoy Roger Ebert as a reviewer so much is because he has written with passion about stuff like this. We don’t mind that certain characters are given special powers, but they need to be logical. Not even in science fiction, but especially in science fiction. For example, Superman can fly, but not teleport.

First, kudos to Anthony Michael Hall for carving out a supporting actor and producer's career. A minor complaint was the scene where the hostages were disguised to appear as Joker soldiers. Early on in the scene, everyone knew what was about to happen, which was the exception, not the rule for this movie. How that long scene in a very long movie made the cut is a bigger mystery than why no homeless people were staking out Bruce Wayne's inner-city hideout in the movie. Ya gotta figure he's a huge tipper and those dirty windshields should have acted like a magnet on the downtrodden.

OK, now what I liked about the movie. As usual, great villains make for great movies. Heath Ledger’s Joker was so good, that his character managed to have the audience both scared and laughing. Also, I'm a big fan of Aaron Eckhart [Dent], since I believe he delivered one of the best opening lines in movie history in Thank You for Smoking, when he said:

You know the guy who can pick up any girl? I'm him. On crack.

The same movie had the following classic line from a tobacco company executive [J.K. Simmons] addressing his cowed sales team:

People, what is going on out there? I look down this table, all I see are white flags. Our numbers are down all across the board. Teen smoking, our bread and butter, is falling like a shit from heaven! We don't sell Tic-Tacs for Christ's sake. We sell cigarettes. And they're cool and available and addictive. The job is almost done for us!

Read more!

The Dark Knight by Nicole Galego #?

I recently went to the movies with my family to see The Dark Knight, the most recent Batman film starring Christian Bale. Though there were many things going on at once involving different parties, the plot was not too difficult to keep up with. I was very impressed by the special effects and action scenes. My favorite character was the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger. I believe he did an excellent job staying in character and kept up a strong balance between comedy and fear towards the character.

In summary, I was very pleased with the second installment of Batman and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to be entertained by a film that keeps you on edge from start to finish.

Read more!

See no *EBIT, hear no EBIT, definitely speak no EBIT

Why would local government officials testify in a trial [or deposition] under oath and say things which no one believes? An article by Sarah Talalay from the Sun-Sentinel, describes testimony in the Braman trial yesterday:

Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess admitted in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on Wednesday he has never asked for or seen the Florida Marlins' financial statements or any proof the team can meet its obligations to finance a $515 million ballpark.

It follows a similar admission by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez during an earlier deposition. An article by Paul Brinkman from the South Florida Business Journal, describes his testimony:

Alvarez's taped statements said he never saw financial statements for the Marlins before approving public funding for the stadium, and that he had no guarantees the Marlins could pay for cost overruns, as required. Alvarez also said in the recording that he never asked why the county couldn't keep naming rights for the stadium, which were assigned to the Marlins, or why the county couldn't retain scheduling at the stadium when the Marlins' season ends.

The questions and answers are designed to lead casual observers to conclude that the respondent is either lying or incompetent. How could they not inform themselves of such basic information?

Braman's lawyers know that MLB's veil of secrecy would prohibit the sharing of financial statements exactly for this reason - lawsuits against any one of their 30 franchises could open the door to reveal financial data which involves all of MLB. For example, if the Marlins financials were made public, the amount of Central revenues which is derived from external sources and distributed evenly among all the teams [currently estimated at $40 million annually] would be disclosed etc.

Now there are many other documents and testing which could satisfy the County's concerns about the Marlins financial viability, not the least of which is the credibility of the MLB brand in wanting to avoid one of it's franchises leaving a local community holding their debt. The ultimate guarantee in these cases is the potential sale of all or a part of the franchise to raise funds, as Huizinga did recently with the Dolphins.

Braman lawyers question the Marlins financial viability, but would oppose the stadium irrespective of the Marlins finances. In fact, a case can be made that their opposition would be even more strenuous if the Marlins admitted to their profitability. On the Marlins side, they have been very profitable in the past 3 yeras, but have pretended otherwise to solicit public funds for the stadium. Nothing is what it appears.

I recently saw the movie Disclosure, directed by the great Barry Levinson. I wonder if the County manger is getting anonymous emails late at night which say, 'nothing is what it appears, solve the problem.' The main problem with the stadium deal is the coming cost overruns in the construction, which the Marlins are supposed to pay, but with which there is much [earned] concern that the Marlins will avoid doing so at all costs - based on legalities, not financial solvency.

Braman and the local governments may be sitting at different tables at this trial, but their incentives - getting a better deal for taxpayers - are more aligned with each other than with the Marlins ownership & MLB. I hope the leverage this trial is granting them will allow the government to get stronger and more concrete language in the agreement regarding the likely construction costs overruns.

*EBIT = Earnings before interest and taxes. Also called operating profits.

Read more!

Braman, Petards and Hoisting

Turns out a petard is a small bomb.

During Braman's testimony in the trial yesterday, there was the following exchange as reported by Charles Rabin in the Miami Herald:

Auto dealer Norman Braman opened his lawsuit against Miami's megaplan Monday by sparking a short, but fiery, debate over the financial well-being of one of the project's prime recipients: the Florida Marlins.

Braman lost the skirmish, but his opening salvo gave a glimpse of what will likely be a bitter fight over the plan that would bring a new stadium to the Marlins and reshape Miami's urban core.

The judge had already ruled the ball club's money issues had no bearing on whether the use of $395 million in public money to help build a stadium served the public good.

That didn't stop Braman from going to the heart of his argument -- which brought a string of objections and triggered something of a disjointed appearance by the wealthy businessman in the crowded, stately Miami courtroom.

''I know as a matter of fact that the Marlins do not have the financial capacity,'' was all the 75-year-old former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles could utter before he was cut off by Marlins attorney Sandy Bohrer, who also represents The Miami Herald in unrelated matters.

''Has he seen their financials?'' Bohrer asked Circuit Court Judge Jeri Beth Cohen.

Cohen sided with Bohrer, not allowing a document Braman said he received during a 2003 visit from Marlins President David Samson that he claims shows the team was more than $150 million in debt. Braman also said Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria tried to persuade him to take on partial ownership at the time.

In my dream movie version, when Braman was asked if he had seen their financials, he would have produced a copy of the 2008 Forbes Business of Baseball magazine and David Samson would have suddenly appeared, snatched it from him and thrown himself through the nearest window - invoking Law #11 of Cartoon Thermodynamics - no real injuries would have ensued.

I love this stuff. I can't wait until Tom Wolfe or Carl Hiaasen writes about it. But for now, please note the following points:

• Braman must know that the Marlins operating results have vastly improved since 2003 [see the Marlins P&L since 2002], given their salary cutbacks, the increase in revenue sharing monies and MLB Central revenues, but since the Marlins are always crying poverty in order to get the stadium, they are in no position to counter his argument. Hence, Braman is the 'hoister' and the Marlins brought the 'petard' to this relationship.
• Whatever document Braman was presented to encourage his investment, could not have been Florida Marlins debt as of 2003, since Jeffrey Loria purchased the team for $158.5 million in 2002 - $38.5 million of which was a conditional loan and the other $120 million was the value ascribed to the Expos franchise which was exchanged for the Marlins. So at the time of purchase, the Marlins under Loria had a debt of $38.5 million.
• According to Forbes, the Marlins had operating loses totaling $26 million for 2002 & 2003 - let's say Forbes was off 10% and call it $28.5 million in loses for those two years. So the Marlins would have had debt totaling approximately $67 million in 2003. By the way, the Marlins operating profits since 2003 have totaled $70 million. Goodbye debt. Hello stadium fund.

Perhaps the document Braman saw also included monies which Loria had invested in the Montreal Expos franchise - estimated at $30 million. An excerpt from that article below documents how Loria got control of the Expos:

He then initiated capital calls on the other owners in 2000 and 2001 to fund rising operating expenses. When they chose not to meet those calls, Loria funded them himself with about $18 million. That triggered a clause in the partnership agreement that allowed him to dilute the interests of other owners down to 6%. Loria thus gained 94% of the Expos for roughly $30 million. He would soon sell the team for four times that amount [value given for Marlins - JC].

But even that $30 million, properly understood is not a debt to the Marlins, but rather represents Loria's investment in the Montreal franchise which he subsequently sold for $120 million. The resulting difference represented a taxable capital gains to Mr Loria. But MLB ownership is the gift which never ceases giving to Mr Loria. There is a special IRS provision which allows sports franchise owners to amortize 50% of their purchase price over the first five years after the purchase. So Mr Loria was the beneficiary of about a $78 million tax write off which served to offset the capital gains tax from the estimated $90 million dollar profit related to the sale [or exchange] of the Montreal franchise.

His initial investment in the Marlins for $158.5 million is now acknowledged [see pg 11 of BSA] to have grown to $250 million. Further, any consideration of Loria's or the Marlins financial viability, should really factor in that the owner was able to donate $20 million to Yale University as of 2007. If someone donates $20 million, what would be a reasonable estimation of their net worth?

Bottom line, the Marlins and Mr Loria's investment in them are doing just fine. But in a reminder of Aesop's [not Hee-Seop's] boy who cried wolf classic, they cannot admit financial well being when they most need to.

Read more!

Forbes Florida Marlins Valuation was 97.4% Accurate

I thought I had been following this issue closely, but in preparing a longer post regarding the stadium deal, I came across an amazing number in the Florida Marlins Ballpark Project Report issued on January 22, 2008 by Miami-Dade County Manager, George Burgess. In section 22 (i), Community Benefit Obligations, the Florida Marlins assumed team value is stated at $250 million.

Forbes estimated the team's value back in March of 2008 at $256 million. In doing so for every MLB team, Forbes estimates each team's operating profits, non-operating expenses [depreciation and the interest associated with their debt] and then applies its internally developed metrics [i.e. the hard part] to arrive at the team valuations. The point is that the revenues and expenses are the most straight forward aspects of the data they provide. The valuations themselves are subjective, short of a sale which would provide a benchmark. Or in the case of the 2008 Florida Marlins, a publicly issued document which was negotiated between local governments and the Florida Marlins in which the team ties itself to a reasonable valuation.

End of manufactured controversy. In being off just 2.4% [256/250], Forbes basically nailed the number on the head. Contrast that with Marlins President David Samson's comments to the Sun-Sentinel's Juan Rodriguez at the time the Forbes 2008 numbers were publicized:

'Every year I continue to be surprised at the absolute inaccuracy that a so-called reputable magazine is willing to print,' Marlins President David Samson said. 'We've never gotten called by them. We've never been asked to verify, deny, confirm, nothing. It's just a shame their readership is forced to read numbers that aren't true. 'I know the number they have for the Marlins is simply wrong. They have no information of any kind on which to base that article.'

Left unsaid is the fact that if Forbes had called, they would have been denied any information or confirmation as have all the local writers, that's just how MLB & the Loria's roll. Anyways, I had earlier posts which delved into why the Forbes numbers are credible and how Mr Samson has the unenviable task of trying to debunk perceptions as to the Marlins recent profitability. No need to speculate now. The Marlins, through Samson, are purposely being misleading about their finances and the county manager's memo is the proof.

It would be too easy and counter-productive to conclude that Mr. Samson is a liar. In his role as Marlins President, it's basically his job to deny what some casual fans may think and what is obvious to people who have familiarized themselves with MLB finances. The 'why' the Marlins, and most other MLB teams, with the recent notable exception of the Pittsburgh Pirates, feel it's in their interests to mislead, even if it causes them to make absurd comments [e.g. Marlins have the highest marketing budget in MLB and (#2 on my fav 5) Forbes assumes that the Marlins don't have any non-player expenses], is more interesting to me.

I think there are a couple of reasons:

The main reason I believe is that the job of asking for public monies [albeit not local taxpayer dollars] to build a new facility would be much more difficult if the public knew unequivicably that the Marlins, according to those wacky kids at Forbes, were in terms of operating profits, the most profitable team [$43 million] in 2006 and the 2nd most [$36 million] in 2007 - despite having the lowest revenues in MLB for both years. FYI, 2008 is looking good too. Toss in that the owner, Jeffrey Loria, recently gave a $20 million donation to Yale University, and you have the makings of a tough sell.

Now, once teams already have their stadiums built the incentive to mislead is significantly lessened. But to drop the facade has implications to their fellow owners, as I'm sure the Pirates recently found out.

The second reason is what they do with the revenue sharing [RS] dollars they receive from other MLB teams. What RS was meant to do, especially in the eyes of fans, was to help smaller market [lower revenue] teams compete with the larger market teams in being able to sign players. The language in the collective bargaining agreement, even states that it is intended to "improve on-field performance."

But that language has proven to be no obstacle for owners like Bob Nutting in Pittsburgh or Jeffrey Loria here. In the case of the Pirates, paying down team debt was considered, and the MLB Commissioner's Office and the Players Union implicitly agree [no protest has ever been filed as to the use of RS monies], to be a legitimate interpretation of "improving on-field performance."

So who is left to complain if the Marlins financial strategy since 2006 is to attempt to break-even while ignoring the RS monies they are receiving in the equation. Instead they are accumulating those RS monies to fund their portion of the planned stadium construction costs of $120 million. From the incentives angle [i.e. who has the most to lose], it should be the Player's Union, but they have been silent. Perhaps their silence is the last side effect from the steroids era.

Anyways, how does a MLB team remain very profitable despite having the lowest revenues? In 2008, a year where they can expect to receive around $75 from MLB [at least $35 million in Revenue Sharing and around $40 million in Central Revenues], their opening day salaries totaled $22 million. Imagine selling that at FanFest and you then have a better idea of why Mr. Samson makes nonsensical remarks regarding the Marlins finances and Forbes' credibility.

Read more!

Name One, I Dare You

When Ted Kennedy first ran for the Senate in 1962, his opponent in the Democratic primary [the equivalent of a general election in MA] - Edward McCormack, state attorney general of Massachusetts and nephew of House Speaker John McCormack [not exactly an outsider himself] - commented during a debate on TV:

"If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke."

Can you imagine Sen. McCain turning to Sen. Obama during one of the upcoming debates and making the following comment:

"If you were a WASP, your candidacy would be a joke."

I can't either. It would take real skill to deliver that remark without appearing to be racially insensitive. He would of course go on to say that it says great things about our country that someone of color ... yada yada yada. Some would be offended of course, but they probably aren't McCain voters anyways.

The idea would be to highlight Sen. Obama's lack of significant experience or accomplishments. If he wins, he would become the president with the least elected experience since Dwight Eisenhower [elected 1952]. Generally, Supreme Allied Commander trumps community organizer, so let's keep going back to find out which previous president had less accomplishments or governmental experience than Barack Obama.

Here we go - Herbert Hoover had never been elected to office before being elected President [1928] - let's check that bio:

During the time in the early 1920s when legislation was being crafted to authorize a dam on the Colorado River, Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) served as Secretary of Commerce for President Warren Harding. Secretary Hoover drafted the Colorado River Compact. The Compact proposed dividing the Colorado basin into two parts, the upper and lower. Water from the upper basin would supply Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, while the water from the lower basin would be used by Arizona, California, and Nevada. The terms of the compact seemed to quell the complaints of each of the states (with the exception of Arizona.) Hoover was congratulated for his skill and efficiency in handling the matter.

A millionaire before age 40, Hoover was admired for his talent as a mining engineer and his administrative skills. During World War I, he distinguished himself as director of the American Relief Committee, a London organization charged with assisting stranded Americans escape war-ravaged Europe. Following that assignment Hoover had similar success as the chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, where he coordinated the distribution of clothing, food, and medical supplies to civilians in France and Belgium. Having gained high marks for his war-time efforts, Hoover gained political prominence in the administrations of Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He served as Commerce Secretary for both men. In 1928, Hoover benefited from Calvin Coolidge's decision not to run for re-election. Hoover handily defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith to win the presidency.

Perhaps we were too rash. Relax, we'll find somebody.

Looks like we may have a chance with Woodrow Wilson [elected 1912] - let's check that bio:

In 1890 Wilson was appointed professor of jurisprudence and economics at Princeton. These were busy years for the popular teacher, who also devoted his energies to the publication of Division and Reunion (1893) and History of the American People (1902), as well as public lecturing and writing for popular magazines. A frequent theme that emerged at Princeton was his belief in the wisdom of having a strong executive at the helm of the nation. In 1902 he was unanimously elected president of Princeton, the first layman to hold that position.

As a college president, Wilson was an innovator and reformer whose stands eventually wore out his welcome. He was dedicated to the goal of making Princeton an institution of the first rank and fostered instructional reform through the use of “preceptors” — young academics who were assigned to live with the students and to hold discussion sessions related to the class work. Wilson also was successful in updating the university’s curriculum. Wilson’s victories and defeats were widely reported in the New Jersey press, making him a popular figure.

Tiring of butting heads over academic issues, and capitalizing on recent publicity, Wilson accepted the Democratic nomination for governor of New Jersey in the summer of 1910. James “Sugar Jim” Smith held the reins of the state machine and thought the college president would lend an aura of reform to his tarnished party. Wilson won an overwhelming victory in the fall and then quickly divested Smith of any notion that he would be easily manipulated. Smith had anticipated a Senate seat for helping Wilson, but the new governor spearheaded a movement on behalf of another candidate — and won.

Wilson aligned himself with legislative progressives and managed to record major accomplishments in short order. Laws were passed providing for regulation of public utilities, school reform, workmen’s compensation, direct primaries, and later, state antitrust legislation for the formerly permissive New Jersey. These successes made Wilson a national political figure.

Doesn't seem like a 'voting-present' kinda guy. OK, forget Wilson, let's keep hope alive.

Here's Chester Arthur's [elected 1880] bio:

Arthur became principal of North Pownal Academy in North Pownal, Vermont in 1849. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. Arthur commenced practice in New York City. He was one of the attorneys who successfully defended Elizabeth Jennings Graham [black woman], who was tried after being denied seating on a bus due to her race. Arthur also took an active part in the reorganization of the state militia.

During the American Civil War, Arthur served as acting quartermaster general of the state in 1861 and was widely praised for his service. He was later commissioned as inspector general, and appointed quartermaster general with the rank of brigadier general and served until 1862. After the war, he resumed the practice of law in New York City. With the help of Arthur's patron and political boss Roscoe Conkling, Arthur was appointed by President Ulysses Grant as Collector of the Port of New York from 1871 to 1878.

This was an extremely lucrative and powerful position at the time, and several of Arthur's predecessors had run afoul of the law while serving as collector. Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur sided with the Stalwarts in the Republican Party, which firmly believed in the spoils system even as it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House but nevertheless staffed it with more employees than it really needed, retaining some for their loyalty as party workers rather than for their skill as public servants.

Sorry, I can't go against a guy who served his country during the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln [elected 1860] - this is the one most mentioned as having less or comparable experience to Sen. Obama - but note the variety and depth of his experiences - bio:

Lincoln began his political career in 1832, at age 23, with an unsuccessful campaign for the Illinois General Assembly, as a member of the Whig Party. The centerpiece of his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. He believed that this would attract steamboat traffic, which would allow the sparsely populated, poorer areas along the river to flourish.

He was elected captain of an Illinois militia company drawn from New Salem during the Black Hawk War, and later wrote that he had not had "any such success in life which gave him so much satisfaction."

For several months, Lincoln ran a small store in New Salem.

In 1834, he won election to the state legislature, and, after coming across the Commentaries on the Laws of England, began to teach himself law. Admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, that same year and began to practice law with John T. Stuart. With a reputation as a formidable adversary during cross-examinations and in his closing arguments, Lincoln became one of the most respected and successful lawyers in Illinois and grew steadily more prosperous.

He served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives as a representative from Sangamon County, and became a leader of the Illinois Whig party. In 1837, he made his first protest against slavery in the Illinois House, stating that the institution was "founded on both injustice and bad policy."

A Whig and an admirer of party leader Henry Clay, Lincoln was elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846. As a freshman House member, he was not a particularly powerful or influential figure. However, he spoke out against the Mexican-American War, which he attributed to President Polk's desire for "military glory" and challenged the President's claims regarding the Texas boundary and offered Spot Resolutions, demanding to know on what "spot" on US soil that blood was first split.

By the mid-1850s, Lincoln's caseload focused largely on the competing transportation interests of river barges and railroads. In one prominent 1851 case, he represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad in a dispute with a shareholder, James A. Barret. Barret had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to the railroad on the grounds that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer route proposed by Alton & Sangamon was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly, the corporation had a right to sue Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by several other courts throughout the United States.

Lincoln was involved in more than 5,100 cases in Illinois alone during his 23-year legal career. Though many of these cases involved little more than filing a writ, others were more substantial and quite involved. Lincoln and his partners appeared before the Illinois State Supreme Court more than 400 times.

Lincoln returned to politics in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which expressly repealed the limits on slavery's extent as determined by the Missouri Compromise (1820). Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the most powerful man in the Senate, proposed popular sovereignty as the solution to the slavery impasse, and incorporated it into the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas argued that in a democracy the people should have the right to decide whether or not to allow slavery in their territory, rather than have such a decision imposed on them by Congress.

Drawing on remnants of the old Whig, Free Soil, Liberty and Democratic parties, he was instrumental in forming the new Republican Party. In a stirring campaign, the Republicans carried Illinois in 1854 and elected a senator. Lincoln was the obvious choice, but to keep the new party balanced he allowed the election to go to an ex-Democrat Lyman Trumbull. At the Republican convention in 1856, Lincoln placed second in the contest to become the party's candidate for Vice-President.

In 1857-58, Douglas broke with President Buchanan, leading to a fight for control of the Democratic Party. Some eastern Republicans even favored the reelection of Douglas in 1858, since he had led the opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. Accepting the Republican nomination for Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered his famous speech: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'(Mark 3:25) I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." The speech created an evocative image of the danger of disunion caused by the slavery debate, and rallied Republicans across the north.

Don't be embarrassed that you entertained the thought that they had similar experiences prior to becoming president, just stop watching PMS-NBC. Bottom line, Lincoln really was a great lawyer, not someone who punched that ticket on the resume. Case closed. Onward, Christian [as far as I know] soldiers.

Zachary Taylor [elected 1848] had a 40 year career in the Army and served in various wars - buck up lads, this post has to end soon.

This is getting ugly - from Jackson [elected 1828] through Taylor they all had extensive military and state government experience. The first six are an absolute nightmare for Sen. Obama, founding the nation and all.

Open challenge to Obama supporters; Name one president who had less experience or accomplishment than Sen. Obama will have had if elected in 2008 - with the caveat that experience does not equate to success in the presidency.

Read more!

Umpiring and the Key Ingredient for Good Citizenry

Watching the Marlins @ Padres last night, I saw a borderline bad call get overshadowed by MLB umpire Joe West's subsequent imitation of the Federal Government - outwardly bloated with an impervious attitude. At the moment, I imagined terrible fates befalling Mr West with my enthusiastic assent, but in the light of day [and a Marlins win], I now thank Mr West for teaching me tolerance. Tolerance of mediocrity and the unions which shield them is needed in great supply - let's just call it the Brian Runge challenge.

On June 29th, Mr Runge, in his 2nd game coming off a one game suspension for bumping a manager, lost count of a ball 4 to Orlando Hudson and then made 2 of the worst called strikes - the mind wanders to Eric Gregg's glorious punch out of Fred McGriff in the 1997 LCS - imaginable in the same inning, one against each team.

As fans, we are aware that home plate umpires do make-up calls, but to watch him do it on pitches which were not close, essentially back to back [Mark Reynolds in the top of the 8th and Mike Jacobs in the bottom of the 8th], showed me how immune umpires feel to criticism. The NBA is not the only league with an officiating problem.

Jim McLennan, a Diamondback's fan, took a poll to find out who might be the best & worst umpires - check out his blog.

Read more!

A Big Dog You Can't Top or Forget

The Clone wars approach. Boston Dynamics, please reconsider that sale to Venezuela.

Read more!

Tom Wolfe Seed interview

Tom Wolfe interview in Seed magazine. See the 10 minute video here

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Seed Salon - The Transcript: Tom Wolfe + Michael Gazzaniga

The father of cognitive neuroscience and the original New Journalist discuss status, free will, the human condition, and The Interpreter.

by Edit Staff • Posted July 1, 2008 06:09 PM

Wolfe, who calls himself "the social secretary of neuroscience," often turns to current research to inform his stories and cultural commentary. His 1996 essay, "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," raised questions about personal responsibility in the age of genetic predeterminism. Similar concerns led Gazzaniga to found the Law and Neuroscience Project. When Gazzaniga, who just published Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, was last in New York, Seed incited a discussion: on status, free will, and the human condition.

17Salon368.jpg Click on the image to watch highlights from the Salon.

Tom Wolfe: Mike, I don't want you to think I'm giving up my right to disagree with you down the line — I may not have to — but you're one of the very few evolutionary thinkers and neuroscientists that I pay attention to, and I'll tell you why. In the '90s, when the subject of neuroscience and also genetics started becoming hot, there was a tendency to conflate genetic theory and evolutionary theory with neuroscience, as if the two were locked, which just isn't true. Remember Jose Delgado, the wave brain physiologist who was at Yale at one time?

Michael Gazzaniga: Oh yeah. Sure.

TW: The guy stood in a smock in a bullring and put stereotaxic needles in the brain of a bull and just let himself be charged. He had a radio transmitter. The bull is as far away as that wall is from me, and he presses the thing and the bull goes dadadada and comes to a stop.

MG: Right.

TW: He's still with us; he's in his 90s. Anyway, his son, also Jose Delgado, and also a neuroscientist, was interviewed recently and he said, "The human brain is complex beyond anybody's imagining, let alone comprehension." He said, "We are not a few miles down a long road; we are a few inches down the long road." Then he said, "All the rest is literature."

Many of today's leading theorists, such as E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Dan Dennett, probably know about as much on the human brain as a second-year graduate student in neuropsychology. That isn't their field. Wilson is a great zoologist and a brilliant writer. Dawkins, I'm afraid, is now just a PR man for evolution. He's kind of like John the Baptist — he goes around announcing the imminent arrival. Dennett, of course, is a philosopher and doesn't pretend to know anything about the brain. I think it has distorted the whole discussion.

MG: Well, let me roll the cameras back to the '80s and '90s, when neuroscience was taking off. There were new techniques available to understand the chemical, physiological, and anatomical processes in the brain. Imaging was starting up and the inrush of data was enormous and exciting. So there was a hunger for the big picture: What does it mean? How do we put it together into a story? Ultimately, everything's got to have a narrative in science, as in life. And there was a need for people who didn't spend their time looking down a microscope to tell a story of what this could mean. I would say that some of the people who've made attempts at that did a very good job. But I will hold out for the fact that if you haven't slaved away looking at the nervous system with the tools of neuroscience — if you're only talking about it — you don't quite have the same respect for it. Because it is an extraordinarily complex machine. If Jose Delgado says we're 2 inches down the road to this long journey, I would say it's more like 2 microns.

TW: Right.

MG: It's a very daunting task. When I was at Dartmouth College in the late '50s studying biology, they were just beginning to tell us about DNA. It was a dream. Linus Pauling said, "Someday there's going to be molecular medicine." And the response was: "What are you talking about?"
In the past 55 years, there's been this explosion of work and incredible, intricate knowledge about how genes work. My youngest daughter is now a graduate student in genetics, I'm happy to report. So this past Christmas, I said, "I'm going to buy a genetics textbook and read the sucker, and I'm going to be able to converse with my daughter." I got to page two, and I said, "I'm going to talk to her about other things."

TW: Ha ha.

MG: It's far too complicated. But it's at a point where there's an explosion of information all over the world. And you feel it — the next new idea is waiting to happen.

TW: I think all this excitement has spawned a replacement for Freudian psychologists. They've been replaced by the evolutionary psychologists, whose main interest seems to be to retrofit the theory of evolution on whatever ended up happening. I read an example in your new book of a woman who's come up with an elaborate theory that music has a survival benefit in the evolutionary sense because it increases the social cohesiveness of populations. I would love for her to read a piece that appeared recently in the New Yorker about a tribe, the Pirahã in the Maici River, a little tributary of the Amazon. This tribe, it turns out, has a language with eight consonants and three vowels. I think they have a sum total of 52 words or something like that. As a result, they have little art, they have no music, no dance, and no religion. They're usually cited because they seem to be a terrible exception to Noam Chomsky's rule that all people are born with a structure that enables them to put words in a grammatical form. Not the Pirahã! And they're not stupid or retarded in any sense. They just had never increased their language abilities — and they don't want to.

MG: Yeah. Well, exceptions are historic. Look, the good evolutionary psychologists are good. They're telling us not to fall into the trap of thinking that everything's fixable via simple learning mechanisms or social engineering. They're saying, "Look, there are basic aspects to human nature that are common to all members of our species and have been there a long time." What's exciting is that we've developed this cognitive mechanism to free us from the things that determine so much of our behavior. And by doing so, we've sort of cut the rope from the rest of the animal kingdom. We can do things and we can cultivate certain behavior, even though there are obviously a lot of tendencies that are part of our biology. For example, here's an idea that comes from evolutionary psychology, an observation that I think is rather shrewd: Why are members of our species drawn to the fictional experience? Here you are, someone who's spent your life with fiction —

TW: — I was at one time a journalist. We don't deal with fiction. Not intentionally.

MG: Ha ha — right. But it's a fascinating thing to think of the role that fiction and make-believe play. Do you feel, when you create a body of fiction, that you're opening up possibilities for people to think about problems in a different way? To confront things they don't yet know about?

TW: Well, I do take issue with the idea that all stories have a bearing on evolutionary benefits or survival benefits. In my opinion all stories have to do with status. When people say, "I just want some good escape literature," what they're looking for are dramatizations of people facing status problems. Harry Potter is like every child who feels overwhelmed by this adult world around him, and he overcomes it in ways that don't interest me in particular — he can pull things out of the air. But, like Anna Karenina, it's a story about status problems. Tolstoy and Flaubert would be paupers today, writing these novels, which are all based on the idea that a woman must remain chaste. They'd be laughed out of town. The story of Anna Kerenina and Vronsky would be a Page Six item and then that would be the end of it. But if we successfully put ourselves in the mindset of the 19th century, we can really enjoy the status problems that they have.

MG: Do you think all art is about status?

TW: Well, certainly not music. Dance, maybe yes, maybe no. But literature and movies, yes. To me the crucial point is something, which I don't think even Chomsky understands, about speech and language. Chomsky and many other people are wonderful at telling us how language works, and about differences in languages and the historical progression of languages across the face of the Earth. But I seem to be the one person who realizes the properties of speech. Speech is an artifact. It's not a natural progression of intelligence, in my opinion — we have to look only at the Pirahã for that. It's a code. You're inventing a code for all the objects in the world and then establishing relationships between those objects. And speech has fundamentally transformed human beings.

MG: By speech I assume you mean language and not the actual act of speaking?

TW: To me, it's the same, speech and talking.

MG: Okay, so what do you think language and speech are for? I mean, it's probably an adaptation. We're big animals, and that's one of the goodies that we got.

TW: I think speech is entirely different from other survival benefits. Only with speech can you ask the question, "Why?"

MG: Right.

TW: Animals cannot ask why. In one way or another, they can ask what, where, and when. But they cannot ask why. I've never seen an animal shrug. When you shrug, you're trying to say, "I don't know why." And they also can't ask how.

MG: Yeah.

TW: With language you can ask that question. I think it's at that point where religion starts.

MG: Right.

TW: Humans got language and they were suddenly able to say, "Hey, why is all this here? Who put it here?" And my assumption is that they said, "There must be somebody like us but much bigger, much more powerful, that could make all these trees, the streams. God must be really something, and you'd better not get on the wrong side of him." I think that's the way it started.

STORYTIME, ALL THE TIME

MG: As you may know, I came across this phenomenon that I call the Interpreter. It's something that's in the left hemisphere of the human; it tries to put a story together as to why something occurred. So, we found this in patients who've had their brains divided. What we could do is sort of tiptoe into their nonspeaking right hemisphere and get them to do something like walk out of the room or lift their hand up. Then we would ask the left hemisphere, "Why did you do that?" And they would cook up a story to make sense out of what their disconnected right hemisphere just did. The left brain didn't know that we'd pulled a trick on them, so they concoct an explanation for why they walked out of the room. And it's because this left hemisphere can ask, "Why? What's that all about?" But one of the things we've never been able to unpack is whether this Interpreter is completely overlapping with the language system and is therefore a sort of press agent for its own mechanism. What we do know is that there are separate systems for different types of cognition. And the Interpreter seems to be located in the parts of the brain where language is located. So many people do think that interpretive capacity comes with language; that this is the deal with language — it comes along for the ride. Others believe that there are actually all kinds of different cognitive mechanisms happening, and language reports them out. So the function of language is to talk about it, talk about what you know and communicate, "Hey! Look here, I know how to cook a fish. Here, let me show you how."

TW: I've always been interested in your theory of the Interpreter. When I was in graduate school, I was introduced to this concept of social status in the work of Max Weber, the German sociologist. And the more I thought about it, the more I could see that status was not simply something that was appearances and houses and automobiles, or even ranks in a corporation or that sort of thing. It invaded every single part of life. I remember when I was in graduate school, there was a setup wherein a common bathroom was shared by two rooms. And there was a student from India — a brilliant scientist — who had apparently come from way out in the countryside, with no natural social standing and not many amenities. Now, you'd think the things you do in absolute private would not be driven by status concerns. But he heard three of his American friends joking about the fact that when they went into the bathroom, they found footprints on the toilet seat. Well, this fellow had never seen a porcelain toilet before. He was crushed. He felt absolutely humiliated, and here was something that goes on in private.

Anyway, this was something before I'd ever heard of neuroscience, and I said, "There must be something in the brain that registers this, your status in every kind of situation." And I kept looking for it. Freud had been such a powerful figure that everyone seemed to think, "Freud's got the bottom line, why should we go through all these complicated neurons and everything to see how he got there. He's got it." I hoped to find the answer in Delgado's book, but it wasn't really there. It wasn't until I ran across your concept of the Interpreter that I thought, "Hey, maybe we've got it."

MG: Well, the key concept in understanding status has to do with the idea of social comparison. The Interpreter fires up and almost reflexively starts to compare the new person with one's self and others. Multiple factors seep into this narrative being built by the Interpreter and the importance of status is one of the products of that process.

Still, I think the essential question that neuroscience has to answer is why, when I interact with someone, I don't think it's my brain talking to their brain. I'm talking to Tom Wolfe, and you're listening to Mike Gazzaniga, right? We instantly convert to that: I give you an essence right off the bat. I put you at the level of a person with mental states and all the rest of it. That mechanism, it makes us all dualists in a way. Absolute dualists. That mechanism is the deep mystery of neuroscience, and no one has touched it yet. No one knows how that works. That's the goal.

For my part, what I've come to realize is that the neuroscience of the next 20 years will be studying social processes of humans. In order to get to the biology of anything, you need technology that allows you to study the human mind. It's only really in the past 10 or 15 years that we've had the new methods of imaging. And they keep getting better and better and better. The ability to think about other people is probably the impetus behind all these marvelous things the human brain can do.

TW: Every time we go into a room with other people, it's as if we have a teleprompter in front of us and it's telling us the history of ourselves versus these people. We can't even think of thinking without this huge library of good information and bad information.

MG: That's why the great psycholinguist George Miller, whom we shared a dinner with once, called us the "informavores." That's how he wanted to cast us.

When you get up in the morning, you do not think about triangles and squares and these similes that psychologists have been using for the past 100 years.

You think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers. You're thinking about your spouse, about your kids, about your boss. Ninety-nine percent of your time is spent thinking about other people's thoughts about you, their intentions, and all this kind of stuff. So sorting all that out, how we navigate this complex social world, there's going to be a neuroscience to it, and I think it's going to be very powerful.

THE NEW IDENTITY CRISIS

MG: I'm involved in a new project called "Neuroscience and the Law," which I think you're familiar with. It brings up the idea that there are these causal forces that make us do the things we do, that by the time you're consciously aware of something, your brain's already done it. How else could it be? Because the brain is what's producing these mental events that we're sorting through. So these ideas — what I call the ooze of neuroscience — are going out everywhere, and people are willing to accept that: "My brain did it. Officer, it wasn't me." These defenses are popping up all over the judicial system. But if we adopt that, then it's hard to see why we have a retributive response to a wrongdoing. It would seem to me to be morally wrong to blame someone for something that was going to happen anyway because of forces beyond their control. So people get into this loop, and they get very concerned about the nature of our retributive response. This puts you right smack in the middle of the question: Are we free to do what we think we're doing?

TW: Oh, it's the hottest subject in academia. Philosophy students are flocking to neuroscience because they think the answers are all there, not in our silly, cherished way of thinking. It's called "materialism," to some. We are computers, and a computer is programmed a certain way, and there's nothing the computer can do to change its programming. I think materialism is too grand a word for it. It's mechanical. I mean, here's what happens. The scientist says, "We are machines." There's no ghost in the machine. There's no little tiny "me" in the conning tower surveying the universe and figuring out a place within it. It's a machine. Things get more and more complicated when it comes to humans, but it's still a machine. Obviously, this machine has no free choice. It's programmed to do certain things. It's as if you threw a rock in the air, and in midflight you gave that rock consciousness. That rock would come up with 12 airtight, logical reasons why it's going in that direction. This has caught on like wildfire. The flaw in that is that speech, language, creates so many variables. Speech reacts. It's the only artifact I can think of that reacts.

MG: Well, I think using the term "free will" is just a bad way to capture the problem. Because here's the question: Free from what? What are you trying to be free from?

TW: It's a very simple definition: You make your own decisions.

MG: Yeah. But who is "you"? "You" is this person with this brain that has been interacting with this environment since you were born, learning about the good and the bad, the things that work and don't work. You've been making decisions all the way along, and now you have a new one and you want to be free to make it. So psychologically, the Interpreter is telling you you're making this decision. But the trick is understanding that your brain is basing the decision on past experience, on all the stuff it has learned. You want a reliable machine to make the actual act occur. You want to be responding rationally to any challenge that you get in the world, because you want that experience to be evaluated. That's all going on in your brain second by second, moment to moment. And as a result, you make a decision about it. And phenomenologically, when the decision finally comes out, you say, "Oh, that's me!"

TW: Speech has introduced so many variables into your machine that it becomes pointless to argue whether this is free or not free will. Obviously, it's not free in the sense that if you don't have this body, you can't do anything. But it is free in the sense that because of your experiences and because of the reactions of speech constantly feeding you new material, your brain is going to operate differently from anybody else's, and that is the free will — whether you call it mechanical or not. Everybody becomes such an individual, it becomes pointless to say, "You didn't make that decision." It's an absurd idea.

MG: Well, I think we're saying the same thing. There is a very clever little experiment that you would be amused by, run by my colleague Jonathan Schooler. He has a bunch of students read a paragraph or two from the Francis Crick book, Astonishing Hypothesis, which is very deterministic in tone and intent. And then he has another group of students reading an inspirational book about how we make our own decisions and determine our own path. He then lets each group play a videogame in which you're free to cheat. So guess who cheats? The people who have just read that it's all determined cheat their pants off.

I think people who try to find personal responsibility in the brain are wrongheaded. Think of it this way: If you're the only person in the world, you live alone on an island, there's no concept of personal responsibility. Who are you being personally responsible to? If somebody shows up on the island though —

TW: — Friday was his name.

MG: Yeah, exactly. Then you've got a social group. And the group starts to make rules; that's the only way they're going to function. Out of those rules comes responsibility. So responsibilities are to the relationships within the social groups, and when someone breaks a rule, they're breaking a social rule. So don't look for where in their brain something went wrong; look at the fact that they broke a rule, which they could have followed. I'm actually kind of hard-nosed about this. I think people should be held accountable for lots of stuff.

TW: No, I would certainly agree with that. In fact, my theory of status is that all of us live by a set of values that, if written in stone, would make not me but my group superior in some way. I think there are just so many kinds of status layers due solely to likeness. You can always find a group that seems to justify whatever you're doing.

MG: Our species seems brilliant at forming groups — indeed support groups — for almost anything. And no matter what the group is about, no matter what its character, it becomes advocatory.
-------------------------------------------------

Read more!