Can’t call it ‘bribe’

Posted on March 10, 2010 by hro50ta1

Any federal law that would impose a national 36 percent A.P.R. limit on our services, if enacted, would likely eliminate our ability to continue our current operations.

— Advance America, largest payday lender in the U.S.

By Joel Thurtell

Can’t call it “bribery.”

U.S. Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, did not take “bribes” from the payday lending industry in return for watering down legislation to regulate the loan sharks.

The sharks like to charge — annualized — 400 percent interest on short-term loans. Congress might cap that figure at a still usurious 36 percent, but the sharks are trying to block that.

And it’s true that the sharks paid Corker and other congress people money, real money.

But you can’t call it “bribery.”

What is a “bribe”?

According to answer.com, a “bribe” is a noun: “1. Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person’s views or conduct. 2. Something serving to influence or persuade.”

Now, it is true, according to the March 10, 2010 New York Times, that Bob Corker took $31,000 in U.S. currency, or maybe a check, but certainly it was forked over in some form readily negotiable at a bank, from his old pal, W. Allan Jones, and his relatives and buddies. Jones is founder of Check Into Cash, the nation’s third-largest payday sharking institution which has 1,100 loan shark storefronts in 31 states.

Jones has also given money to senators Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama. Dodd is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and Shelby is the leading Republican on that committee now writing a bill that might regulate payday loan sharks.

Jones and other payday sharks in 1999 formed a lobbying organization called Community Financial Services Association to oppose regulation of sharks. CFSA gave $1,000 to Corker this year.

But the thousand bucks from the lobbying organization was not a “bribe”, either.

Wait a minute, you say: Corker took $32,000 from people connected to loan sharking and then he persuaded Dodd, in charge of writing a bill to regulate sharks and who also took money from the sharks, to water the legislation down. They pulled its teeth — left the regulation on paper, but erased enforcement.

Isn’t that the textbook definition of a “bribe”?

Didn’t the loan shark industry use money to influence these people we elected to positions of public trust?

As they might say in Tennessee, “negatory, good buddy.”

Why not?

Because the good senator says not.

“Categorically, absolutely not,” Corker told the Times.

But the Times didn’t actually use the word “bribe,” either.

Look at how politely the Times phrased the question: 

Asked whether the industry’s campaign contributions to him had shaped his thinking about the issue, he replied, “Categorically, absolutely not.”

While the Times didn’t actually utter the word “bribe,” they used its definition to word their question.

Cute. The Times got Corker to deny taking a “bribe” without either of them using the word.

Everybody is just so polite.

Amazingly, the leading loan shark company, Advance America, seems to think it would be a loss if this pernicious, parasitic industry were banned from charging 400 percent interest:

Any federal law that would impose a national 36 percent A.P.R. limit on our services, if enacted, would likely eliminate our ability to continue our current operations.

If these greedy leeches can’t make it on 36 percent, they deserve to shrivel up and die.

In another time, when people were honest at least about their actions, Senator Corker might have simply answered in the words of George Washington Plunkitt of New York’s immensely corrupt but totally frank Tammany Hall Democratic political machine: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”

The good senator seen his opportunities, and while tacitly acknowledging that he took the money, he denies it had any influence on him.

Therefore, it could not have been a “bribe.”

Categorically, absolutely not.

Now you understand why we can’t call it a “bribe.”

Ain’t that a corker?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Bad government, banks | 1 Comment

A dog’s duty

Posted on March 9, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

As a whole, Sophie, the Duties of a dog are divided into three parts.

Personal Comfort.

Security.

Sleep.

Personal Comfort and Sleep are the same?

No, no, Sophie.

Sleep and Personal Comfort are not the same thing.

Let me tell you how Sleep works at our place.

Work is the operative term, Sophie.

That is because of the second of a dog’s duties: Security.

When I Sleep, it is with the Everlasting Knowledge that I am On Call and may need to Respond Instantly to an Emergency.

“Emergency” means many things.

Bush-tails.

Spike-tails.

Stripe tails.

There are those creatures with the monstrous egos and almond-shaped pupils, the ones that would as soon scratch your snout as purr at you and who require extirpation more urgently than spike-tails or brush-butts or stink tushes.

And most frightening and fur-raising of all are the two-leggers, the Bad Ones that might bust into this warm and snug kennel of the two-leggers.

The dog that can’t give the Alarm to any all of these Dangers Instantly and be prepared to Fend Them Off is not a dog, Sophie.

True Sleep, a restful sleep like what the two-leggers do, is not for us, ever, Sophie. We must constantly be On Guard to warn the two-leggers who so often are Off Guard that it disgusts me.

It is because of the two-leggers’ Negligence and Willingness to Fall off into Profound and Clueless Slumber that our lives are so much more difficult, because we are Required to Perform our Primary Duty of Providing Security to the Household.

It should come as no surprise, then, that we seek Personal Comfort wherever we can find it.

In my case, I have staked out portions of every Bed, Couch, Easy Chair, not to mention Rug, Carpet and hapharzardly-flung Sweaters and Pillows and laid claim to all of them as places of repose.

Woe unto the two-legger who dares to challenge my primacy in those places, Sophie.

One of the most preposterous myths prevalent among the two-leggers is the Legend of Home Ownership.

According to this Whopper, the owner of a two-legger domicile is whoever writes the mortgage checks.

In truth, the real Home Owner is that dog who Stands Guard Faithfully no matter the hour, ready to bare teeth, unleash a growl and bark to kingdom come and even mount an Attack Against Hopeless Odds.

That is the dog whose favor needs to be curried with the finest leftovers, not to mention head-pats, belly rubs and rhapsodies of praise.

No, Sophie, it does not occur often enough.

Nothing is fair in this world of the two-leggers, Sophie, but you and I at least know the truth.

Let them believe what they will.

If it makes the two-leggers happy, and they keep writing those mortgage checks, and getting us Dewormed, what do we care if they think they own the place?

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment

Eighteen stories deep

Posted on March 6, 2010 by hro50ta1

A Short Story

By Joel Thurtell

The Old Man sat slouched in a tall-backed leather chair. He looked across his glass-topped desk at an array of toys that usually took his mind off anything that might trouble an octogenarian trucking magnate who happens to be a billionaire. There was a model of a truck with a long trailer. There was a little plastic diesel locomotive. His favorite was a blue-and-white striped railroad engineer’s hat that he sometimes would put on his head and pretend he was driving a big diesel from one end of his property to another, a distance of a couple hundred yards.

But The Old Man’s favorite toy was a big model of the bridge that connects Detroit in the United States with Windsor in Canada. The Old Man owns that bridge. The model was big enough that when he felt like it, he could run little toy trucks and cars across it, pretending they were making their way from Detroit to Windsor, or from Windsor to Detroit. And, of course, the vehicles had to pay his tolls, and so when he played this game, he was sure to pass real U.S. dollar bills or Canadian loonies to imaginary toll-takers.

Beside the model of the real Ambassador Bridge, he’d had his engineers build a second “twin” bridge. It was a lot more fun to push cars across the new bridge, because it was bigger and took more vehicles and so he could pass more dollar bills and loonies to his pretend toll-takers. Now, though, there was no joy in playing with the new model.

For this was the day when the United States government’s Coast Guard had wrapped The Old Man’s request for that new twinned bridge in brown paper and shipped it back to him with a nasty note saying he ought to buy the land for his second bridge before he tries to build it.

The Old Man was not happy with the Coast Guard. Since when do petty bureaucrats tell a billionaire what he can or cannot do? The Old Man was really out of sorts. He felt so angry about what had happened that he was about to kick his toys over. Who were those bureaucrats to tell him what to do?

The door to The Old Man’s executive office opened and his favorite Puppy Dog cavorted in, carrying a steaming hot cup of coffee and wearing a great big smile.

“What’s to be happy about?” said The Old Man.

“Plenty,” said the Puppy Dog.

“Let’s hear it,” said The Old Man.

“Okay, let’s go over the bad stuff first,” said Puppy Dog. “The feds have nixed your twin bridge. That is bad news, I grant you, Boss. But while everybody is looking at the bridge, I’ve been working on another one of our scams. Okay, right now, we can’t build a bridge to monopolize and control a quarter of the freight that runs between Canada and the United States. We thought we could build our bridge and nobody would figure out we didn’t own the land for it. For years, the newspapers let us have a free ride. The government was pretty much in our pocket. Then the truth dribbled out that we were squatting on public property for our bridge. Nobody cared, once upon a time. Now it’s a big deal. We fought and lost in court. We can keep on fighting, but now is a good time, while everyone is looking at the bridge, for us to pull out another little magician’s trick. Know what I mean?”

The Old Man looked puzzled. He sipped his coffee.

“Hint: 18 stories tall,” said Puppy Dog.

“Aha!” said The Old Man. “My train station! Yes! Good thinking! What about it?”

“Well, Boss, you know how locally, the Detroit Free Press has been very loyal to us through all our troubles with the governments of Canada, the United States, Michigan, Oakland County and now even the City of Detroit. The Free Press has been willing to pretend all sorts of things didn’t happen. No “shotgun totin’ goons” made it into their pages, bless their little ink-stained hearts. They have been willing to act like all sorts of shenanigans by us just plain didn’t happen, and we are eternally grateful to them for the role they have played in benighting the public. But let’s face it, Boss, the Free Press is strictly small potatoes. They are a newspaper in deep trouble with a voice that is getting softer all the time. What if I told you that another newspaper is feeding from my hand? What if I told you I’m spooning to a newspaper with far more reach, far more clout, far more authority, far more stature than the Free Press ever dreamed of?”

“Puppy Dog! We’re buying the Metro Times?”

“No, Boss. Think global here. Real scope.”

“Crain’s? They’re in Chicago, I hear.”

“No, Boss, I’m talking The New York Times. I’ve got a reporter on the line who obviously doesn’t know beans about recent Detroit history. She’s gonna write something called a “Detroit Journal.” It’s a column. And it’s beautiful, because she won’t have time or space to get into real issues. You know, like all the smoke we blew at everybody trying to get our twin span off the ground, all the lawsuits against practically everyone who blinked. The sorts of things a billionaire trucking magnate with no civic conscience can do when he can hire legions of lawyers to keep everyone tied up in court for a millenium or two and shotgun-totin’ goons to hassle anyone who blinks. Well, this Times reporter doesn’t know jack about all that. And if she did, it wouldn’t matter. Her format’s gonna tie her writing in knots. Her bosses won’t give her space to get into our misanthropic behavior.

The beginning of a smile began to play at the edges of The Old Man’s mouth. “You mean, Puppy Dog, we’re gonna get a Trial Balloon? Free of charge in The New York Times?”

“You got it, Boss! The Times is tossing us a lifeline. No sooner did we lose our shirts on the twin bridge than we get this free ad for our plan to sidetrack billions of federal stimulus money to rebuild your train station. Of course, there are plenty of people out there who think this is a dumb idea, but they won’t appear in the Times story. The pitch will come at the end of the story. It’ll be the kicker, and no writer worth her salt would qualify the kicker with a bunch of finger-pointing negativity. It would detract from the story’s flair, you know, style. The editors in New York will be very pleased to read this story over their cups of Starbucks. It’s a story with Hope, Boss. Hope that we can con the feds this time into paying us a few billion to take that 18-story white elephant off our hands.”

“And now for the REAL kicker, Boss — the grand prize in the Times’ Cracker Jack box. The reporter DOESN’T KNOW YOUR NAME! Believe it or not, she thinks the train station is owned by CenTra, Inc. and she’s gonna quote me, not you! You will be INVISIBLE, just the way you like it, and NO MENTION OF THE AMBASSADOR BRIDGE! Ain’t that cool?

Look at it this way, Boss — it’s like a real estate deal. Okay, we don’t own the land for our bridge, granted. But we do own the next best thing — the kicker in a New York Times story.”

“I get it,” said The Old Man. “And when everyone is looking at how we’re scamming on the train station, they’ll forget to watch what we’re doing at the bridge.”

“You got it, Boss! It’s bullshit — 18 stories deep!”

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bounce, Matty, bounce!

Posted on March 6, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Rubber.

That’s what Matty’s bridge application was made of.

And the Coast Guard bounced his request to build a new bridge alongside his decrepit Ambassador span right back to the Grosse Pointe trucking tycoon.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the Coast Guard told the billionaire he didn’t stand a chance of getting permission to build his bridge “as long as he remains in conflict with the City of Detroit over rights to land near the bridge site.”

“Moroun has feuded for years with the city and other parties over rights to property near the bridge site,” according to the Free Press.

That’s the paper’s laconic and coy way of summarizing the reporting it failed to do — and still won’t do — on the fight between Manuel “Matty” Moroun and the city over whether he could build his bridge on land he didn’t own.

The Free Press has constructed its own bridge over reality, a pile of facts that, for some reason, it just can’t bear to print. The Ambassador, for some reason, is a bridge too far for the good ol’ Freep.

Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic lawmaker from Southwest Detroit who has stood up to Matty, had this to say about the Coast Guard’s trashing of Matty’s bridge app:

“This is an unbelievable victory for the residents of Southwest Detroit. The Ambassador Bridge Company stole Riverside Park and a city street from our community, cut corners and disrespecting our right to breathe, and put our natural resources, families and neighborhoods at risk – all in the hopes of increasing their profits at Southwest Detroit’s expense by building a second bridge. I have always said that a massive project like this needs to follow all federal, state and local processes. What doesn’t work is trying to walk all over the little people and assuming you’ll get your way if you throw enough money around. I’m so proud of our residents for standing up to a powerful, billion-dollar mega-corporation, sticking with our fight and working together to keep our kids, families and neighborhoods safe.”

As readers of JOTR, Metro Times, The Windsor Star,  Crain’s, Forbes, The Detroit News and other media are well aware, Matty has been squatting on city property for years, hoping nobody would say anything till he’d completed his new bridge. Then it would be too late. Hah-hah, would have been Matty’s response as he ka-chinged up more billions in truck and car fares with his Detroit bridge monopoly.

In the past half-year, two judges have ordered Matty to get off two different pieces of city land that he tried to seize.

Turns out billionaires have to behave somewhat like the rest of us.

You squat on somebody else’s land, you get the boot.

Several years ago, Matty seized part of Riverside Park next door to his aging Ambassador Bridge. He needs the park land for the “twinned” new bridge he wants to build. The footprint of his bridge, which he started to build without permits, required him to own part of the city park. A whole truckload of reporting has been done about this, sans input from the Freep.

A judge told Matty last September to get off the seized park land. Matty’s appealing that one.

In another case, Matty built a gas station and duty-free store on another parcel of city property. Another judge told him to raze the buildings and vacate the land. Of course, Matty’s contesting that ruling, too.

Odd how the details of these cases don’t show up in Michigan’s biggest newspaper.

Moroun has feuded for years with the city and other parties over rights to property near the bridge site. 

For the Free Press, Matty is a story too far.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | 2 Comments

CANADA ROCKS!

Posted on March 1, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I was sitting in the living room of Zoe and Burnley McDougall’s house on Vim Island in McGregor Bay on Sunday, February 21, 2010, the day the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Canadians in the quarter finals.

The living room is actually the dining room, the kitchen, the family room — the place where Zoe and Burn and their guests congregate in the winter, because the other half of the house is closed off to better heat the part that is centralized around a big, black, old-fashioned kitchen wood burning stove. In the winter months in this isolated house — a nine mile run by snowmobile or ATV to the post office and parking lot — you could say the stove is the focal point of all things social in this cottage during the winter months. Their house — the heated portion — consists of this kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom.

I’ll be writing more about my short mid-winter visit with the McDougalls, but today I’m reflecting on the telephone conversation Zoe had with her dad, Jock Fleming, 89, just before that first Canada-U.S. hockey game. Incidentally, this was neither a cell phone link nor a landline hookup. The McDougalls’ house is far enough away from landline connections that they need a radiotelephone.

Maybe the radiophone amplified Jock’s voice, because I could clearly make out his words as they talked about the then-upcoming quarter-final game.

Zoe: “We’ve got an American hear watching with us.”

Jock: “Tell him we’re gonna kick his ass!”

I’m not a hockey fan, and I don’t go in for nationalistic rah-rah. In theory, at least, I didn’t give a rip who won the game. But as I watched, I got tuned into the excitement and was quietly rooting for the Americans. It happened that I was wearing a t-shirt with a small American flag on the front which just happened to be in my luggage, honest, because I wasn’t even thinking of the game when I packed.

Needless to say, I was not believed.

I was very quiet, did no shouting, made no biting comments about the opposing team and was very gracious when the U.S. team won.

Zoe and Burn were very gracious in defeat.

But one week later, the U.S. and Canada came together again for the final Olympic game, winner of which gets the gold medal.

Her dad, it turned out, was right after all.

They did kick our ass.

Under the head, WE ROCK. Zoe wrote this e-mail to her American friends:

I’d like to thank my producer, my director–oops, wait a minute, it was the

men’s hockey team, not ME that won the gold medal

 To all my darling US friends and relatives, thank you for putting up with

this arrogant Canadian wench for the past 24 hours

Frankly I think the American men skated faster and better and I truly think

that we just got lucky that Sidney Crosby came out of his retirement to get

that last goal in overtime

Congrads to the US team on their hard earned and well deserved Silver

medal–you rock!!!!!!!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Bay, People | 1 Comment

A lick is still a lick

Posted on February 23, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

I like to play with their heads, Sophie, to the extent that two-leggers can be said to have heads.

Hah!

Overstatement?

I don’t think so.

I’m not saying two-leggers lack intelligence, exactly. On occasion, they can display a certain kind of smarts. It’s just that sometimes, in the heat of things, they seem to lose their common sense.

I didn’t come to the chain-link to air all my grievances against two-leggers, of which I have many. But as long as we’ve broached it, I have to say that my own two-leggers can be terribly frustrating in the brains department.

Sometimes, they just lose all training.

Believe me, Sophie, I have invested tons of time in teaching those two. I have them just about weaned from dumping their dishes directly into the plate-slosher. They understand that part of my franchise involves lapping two-legger dregs.

It took lot of whining and fake-growling to get this far, though.

The key, I’ve found, is letting two-leggers think they’ve trained the dog.

Very simple. They have it in their hairy heads that dogs should not be fed straight from the table.

Ridiculous, of course.

From a pragmatic point of view, I would have to agree. When two-legged walkers are around, at least.

A dog can get herself in a heap of trouble, as I well know, being discovered four-square on the dining room table licking the last flecks of yellow off the butter dish.

My two-leggers get all trembly and white-faced when they catch me, so to speak, in flagrante delicious.

Believe me, the butter part of pallor is discretion, Sophie, and in that butter part I have often saved my hide.

There is a myth current among two-leggers that dogs should not be fed from the table. Very well, we work around that fable. We train them to put their unwashed plates with potato flecks and beef oil and key lime pie on the floor some distance from the dining room table. We do this by making all kinds of noise by the table till they hit on the idea, which they consider original, of “training” us to lick plates in the kitchen.

They believe they have solved a problem, and if that makes them happy, fine with me.

What difference does it make where I find a plate, so long as I get to slurp it?

A lick is still a lick, Sophie, as lime goes by.

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment

Henry the 8th and all that

Posted on February 16, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

What this country needs is more historians.

Or at least, people who THINK like historians.

Thinking like a historian involves two different kinds of mental concentration.

First, a historian understands that, according to the laws of physics, an event, call it Event A, can influence a second event, call it Event B, only if Event A comes BEFORE Event B.

Second, a historian has to understand that in the past, and this goes even for the very recent past, people did not think or react to ideas and events as we would today; therefore, the historian needs to understand the culture and mentality of the time he or she is trying to explain.

Right now, I’m most interested in the logical problem historians–and journalists–encounter when they or others fail to understand that there is a sequence to causation, and that something can’t cause another thing to happen unless the causal action occurs before the supposed result.

Does this statement seem too elementary to warrant discussion?

Unfortunately, it’s a reality that some people miss entirely.

In my time as a newspaper reporter, I sometimes found myself talking to people who inverted event structure. They would place Event B ahead of Event A, thus inverting and thereby totally distorting the causal sequence.

In my forthcoming book, SHOESTRING REPORTER, a manual for would-be journalists, I explain a situation that happened to me shortly before I retired as a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. In a community south of Detroit and on the Detroit River, some citizens were blaming the influx of American lotus plants in their canals and bays on the act of one man who, they contended, had purposefully planted the lotuses in their watery back yards. There was a lot of factual confusion and misstatement by the anti-lotus faction. The intentional planting, while it occurred, was done in a different place, and it failed to produce a successful plantation of lotuses.

More interestingly, though, was the lotus critics’ inversion of the time line. The lotuses they so despised actually appeared before the attempted planting in a different place.

Thus, even if the geography had coincided, the timing was wrong.

Cause cannot follow effect.

My point in the book is that as reporters, we have to deal with this kind of inversion. We have to recognize it when it is presented so that we are not duped by faulty logic.

Cause and effect. It is very simple. Causes always precede effects. Period. You cannot do something today that produces a result yesterday.

Learning to put causes before effects is very important for reporting any kind of story, be it government, business, even features. Often when people present some issue to a reporter, they don’t bother to sort out the chronology. Emotions may be in play, or maybe they are deliberately trying to mislead you. Maybe they are just plain intellectually lazy or not very bright. Also, unconscious biases can cause people to withhold or distort information. As a reporter, you may have to do their thinking for them. Establish an accurate chronology of events right during your interview. By pinning people down on precisely when events occurred, you are laying down rules of discourse that say implicitly: Don’t try to mislead me; don’t lie to yourself; clear up your thinking; I need a concise presentation, not a rambling polemic.

If you think such erroneous thinking comes only from people in the Midwest, I’d like to show you a January 25, 2010 article in The New York Times Book Review that, when it comes to the broad tapestry known as European history, seems clueless. In her review, “Anne Boleyn, Queen for a Day,” historical novelist Hilary Mantel discusses THE LADY IN THE TOWER, The Fall of Anne Boleyn, by Alison Weir (Illustrated. 434 pp. Ballantine Books. $28), a book about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. In her Times review, Mantel (author of the historical novel, WOLF HALL, Henry Holt, $27 and winner of the Booker Prize) remarks that “Henry had fought for years to extricate himself from his first marriage and create a world where he and Anne could be husband and wife; to achieve it, he had split Christian Europe apart.”

Here’s my understanding of the chronology of these events:

The pope refused to grant Henry a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, so Henry created his own divorce by separating the English church from Rome and then having his own “pope,” the archbishop of Canterbury, grant him the divorce from Catherine.

When did this happen?

In 1533.

Lots of times historians are pilloried for genuflecting to dates.

But dates are important.

Without knowing dates, and putting them in their proper order, you simply cannot begin to explain historical events.

So 1533 is very important. We don’t even need to know the exact month and day. The year will do nicely.

Because there’s another date that is all-important to understanding this period in human history.

That date is 1517.

Remember what the reviewer wrote:

Henry had fought for years to extricate himself from his first marriage and create a world where he and Anne could be husband and wife; to achieve it, he had split Christian Europe apart.

According to wikipedia, “The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences…were written by Martin Luther in 1517 and are widely regarded as the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation.”

If you read the Times’ claim that it was Henry VIII who “split Europe apart,” and don’t know much about history, you might attribute the Protestant revolution to an English king. But knowing that the pivotal act propelling this huge turnover in governments and religion occurred 16 years BEFORE Henry’s famous divorce helps to reveal the reviewer’s comment for a bald misstatement of history. Rather than being the instigator of the Protestant movement, it turns out, Henry was enabled by Luther’s and others’ earlier protests to take his bold action. The Reformation was well underway when Henry divorced Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn.

You could even argue that without Martin Luther, Henry would not have dared challenge the pope; he therefore would not have divorced Catherine; minus the all-important divorce, he could not have married Anne Boleyn, who therefore would not have engaged in various intrigues and affairs and quite possibly would not have lost her head to the sword of Henry’s imported executioner.

In the Times review, we see historical cause and effect inverted with an absurd result.

If it can happen in the Times, it can happen anywhere. Smart reporters need to beware of this fallacy.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Adventures in history, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Measuring ‘progress’ in poor countries

Posted on February 13, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I know I’m paying too much for things that only a few years ago I’d have considered luxuries, prestige purchases that drained my savings without contributing lasting good to our household.

Things like cell phones, and  even high-speed Internet connections.

Who’d have imagined in the 1980s that we’d come to think of these little but costly things as necessities of life?

The question took on new relevance for me a few days ago when a friend and former Togo Peace Corps volunteer told me about her return to the little West African country a couple years ago. She was a health educator in Togo in the early seventies, when I was in the Peace Corps working on school and well construction projects.

Forty or so years later, she made her return visit. Despite decades out of touch, she was recognized by one person in Togo and soon, lots of old friends and acquaintances were showing up to greet her.

How’d they get the word?

Not from talking drums.

Cell phones.

It baffles me. Here am I, pondering why I spend so much of my discretionary income on cell phones and Internet doo-dads. But in Togo, it’s hard to figure where that discretionary income comes from.

In Togo, according to the World Bank, “In 2001, per capita household consumption (in constant 1995 US dollars) was $299. Household consumption includes expenditures of individuals, households, and nongovernmental organizations on goods and services, excluding purchases of dwellings…It was estimated that in 1989 about 32% of the population had incomes below the poverty line.”

When I was in Togo in the early seventies, the per capita income was estimated at $300.

In terms of income, nothing has changed.

In the seventies, cash was so rare that civil servants went months without pay checks.

Barter was a mainstay of local markets.

If per capita consumption now is no different than it was in the seventies, how are people paying for cell phones?

Or are the cell phones part of some government giveaway?

I have another question: Is cell phone usage a good measure of progress in Togo and other poor countries?

In our time there, my wife was a health educator, and part of her job was trying to build latrines and then finding ways to persuade people to use them.

The Peace Corps goal was to convince people to do their duty in outhouses rather than ambling up to some secluded knoll to squat, often followed by a troop of pigs who promptly ate the humans’ leavings. We westerners knew that trichinosis, tape worm and other parasites were transmitted back and forth between swine and humans. We knew that germs from human waste caused all kinds of illnesses. But it wasn’t obvious to many Togolese. Trying to educate people about this critical cause-and-effect relationship frustrated many a health educator.

In theory, the schools we were building would be places where kids could learn why it’s important to wash hands after going to the bathroom, for instance, and why leaving piles in open fields was an invitation to disease. In practice, these were hard concepts to teach, because nobody could see the germs that were carried by Madame la Mouche, aka the fly, as well as by unwashed hands.

And oh, by the way, where was the water coming from if somebody did want to wash hands? We got our water from the same large-mouthed wells as our neighbors. But we filtered and boiled our water before drinking and cooking with it. Still, we used water straight from the well for washing our bodies. The really clean water seemed too precious, too hard-worked-for, to waste by pouring it over ourselves.

Most people had no electrical power. Villages were totally without electricity. Thus, electric pumps were out of the question. So many things that we take for granted as basics of life were simply impossible because there was no source of power.

Except in Lome, the capital, where I first encountered an open sewer, there were no municipal or any other kind of sewer systems. For that matter, while the market town and administrative center where we lived in northern Togo had a limited supply of public water, it consisted of pumps that occasionally sent water to hydrants where people could fill buckets if they were alert to the capricious schedule of the public water agency. Mostly, people relied on those big holes in the ground that we referred to as “wells” and that readily accepted errant dogs, goats and whatever might drop in and rot.

Our three-room adobe house with zinc roof had a detached combination privy and shower. A wall separated the two chambers. The privy was simply a hole in the ground, with no seat. You didn’t want a stool, because scorpions like to hang out in places like that. The shower was just a tiny room where you took a bucket of murky gray well water and half a squash, or calabash, which you dipped into the bucket to wet yourself and later rinse off soap.

So, what I want to know is, how are people paying for those cell phones from their $299-a-year?

My last visit to Togo was in 1990. I’ll be sending my questions to people who’ve been there more recently.

I’d like to know, for instance, if anyone has figured out how to purify the water villagers hoist up in buckets from the well I helped them dig back in 1973.

My biggest question, though, is not how many people use cell phones.

I’d like to know where, in “modern” Togo, do people poop?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Bad government, Places | 1 Comment

‘A+’ for deceit

Posted on February 10, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Luke Warm

Professor of Mendacity

University of Munchausen

My purpose in lecturing you today is to explain how it’s possible for a journalistic essay to be judged inferior or even given a failing grade according to conventional standards, when the same work may well be a monument to achievement–mendacious achievement– when viewed from another direction.

I’m referring to the February 5, 2010 Detroit Free Press editorial on the subject of a new bridge connecting the United States and Canada at Detroit.

While this editorial was given a failing grade by another writer on this blog, I would differ in the extreme. As I say, it all depends on the purpose for which the essay is written. If one assumes erroneously as my JOTR colleague apparently did that the Free Press editorial was written to edify, inform, enlighten, instruct and in general be construed as a paragon of righteously-conceived journalism, then maybe it’s true that it fails to live up to those goals.

But there is another objective of journalism that often gets short shrift and is mostly not acknowledged by conventional practitioners of the craft–the goal of deceiving, duping, gulling and generally controlling the content and direction of public thought on a particular matter. The purpose of a newspaper may be to print the news, but it must also follow its mandate to raise hell by hedging, obfuscating and prevaricating when necessity demands.

Furthermore, many members of our University of Munchausen student body will be following careers in government, business, law or medicine where the skills of deception are most particularly in demand while simultaneously in short supply. When a wonderful example of the duplicitous art presents itself, as it has with this superb Free Press editorial, it is incumbent upon me as your professor to celebrate as well as explicate the event.

Thus, if we judge by the standards of the devious craft, the Free Press editorial wins plaudits, laurels and a grade of A+ from this professor, the judgment of a previous JOTR scrivener notwithstanding.

Indeed, it would seem appropriate at this time for me to compare and contrast the relative credibility levels of my work versus those of the aforementioned JOTR hack, who does not even have a Ph.D.

That’s right! Not one Ph.D. does this man have, whereas I have–count em!–five Ph.D.s, all conferred by my dear old alma mater the U of M. Yes, indeed, the University of Munchausen has bestowed doctorates on me in the disciplines of Mendacity, Duplicity, Casuistry, Sophistry, Baloney and Malarkey.

Five Ph.D.s! And my Nemesis doesn’t even have one.

Hey, wait a minuate–that’s six!

Who you gonna believe?

With six Ph.D.s, you gotta believe me, even if I’m full of shit!

But I digress.

Let us take a moment, then, to parse this magnificently-written Free Press opus, looking at its major achievements in the art of editorial sleight-of-hand.

But first, I’d like to take time to demolish the contention of my rival JOTR columnist, who characterized as stupid the timing of the Free Press editorial, published the same day that a judge ordered the Billionaire Hero of Free Enterprise, Manuel “Matty” Moroun, to tear down his duty-free store and gas station. My JOTR friend thinks the Free Press failed to acknowledge this major breaking news. He misses the point. The judge based his order on the notion, preposterous on the face of it, that Mr. Moroun was wrong to place buildings on land he didn’t own. I ask you, what was wrong with what Mr. Moroun did, other than that he got caught?

Every time I read the Free Press editorial, I marvel at the genius of the writer who proposed that readers believe there is “shame on both sides.” That is a declaration absolutely breathtaking in its audacity. Think of it: Mr. Moroun has besieged governments and private parties with myriad lawsuits intended as nuisances which, taken in the aggregate, will (he hopes) induce anyone who opposes Mr. Moroun to spend profligate amounts of money in court and eventually fade away, having seen their financial resources dwindle to the point of nothingness.

In other words, for anyone who has followed this situation religiously, the shame is all on Mr. Moroun’s side. No question. For the newspaper to suggest that shame should be shared is a brilliant stroke in the propaganda war, and should echo down the media hall of mirrors for generations, helping to distort and pervert any true interpretation of events.

Marvelous how a mere phrase can warp perceptions, forcing them to stray away from truth and towards the abyss of confusion that is the domain of mass malarkey.

Frankly, though, I thought the real master work in this newspaper fulmination was the suggestion that “it’s time for Moroun, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, officials from Canada and the Federal Highway Administration, and representatives of regional business to sit down and talk seriously about the future of the international border.”

Isn’t that a marvel? For faulty logic and sheer misconceived factual infrastructure, that has to be the prize-winner.

Baldfaced duplicity, I applaud you!

If you know anything about Mr. Moroun, you know that he doesn’t sit down with any of these people. Why, he won’t even allow government inspectors and police on his bridge. When asked if he would sell the Ambassador Bridge to Canada, he told the Canadians, “Sure–give me three billion smackers!”

Three billion for a bridge his own hireling engineering firm judged to be in “fair” condition with a deck in “poor” condition? Talk about highway robbery! But you see what I mean? The newspaper, pretending to be fair and balanced, has proposed a seemingly fair and balanced solution: That all these governments and businesses “sit down” and negotiate with a bandit. I admit, many who read the newspaper and know the facts will just laugh and say the Free Press once again is mowing Matty’s lawn.

But that misses the point. There are many people out there who, despite countless lies and prevarications from this publication, still give credit to whatever Michigan’s oldest newspaper propounds. Therein lies the wonder of mendacity. To deceive, distort, obfuscate while seeming to be balanced and fair–oh, how precious!

But the editorial doesn’t stop there. It compounds absurdity in the most audacious manner, by proposing “a government purchase of the Ambassador and contracting with Moroun to operate it and a second downriver crossing.”

Of course, this is a ridiculous stretcher: No responsible government or private business could possibly consider paying a grossly inflated $3 billion to Mr. Moroun for his Ambassador Bridge, then turn around and hire him to keep running it in fair to poor condition. To do such a thing would require a total disregard for the public good. To suggest that those same governments would build a second bridge at huge public cost, then turn over its operation to Mr. Moroun so he could run it too into the ground is absolutely ludicrous, although that suggestion was made in all seriousness, apparently, by the Detroit Free Press.

As I said, breathtaking! It is a statement that requires a total suspension of disbelief on the part of readers, and yet it is worded in such a bland and reasonable way that I suspect more than a few will be duped, gulled and hoodwinked into thinking this newspaper really is in the know.

You probably think by now I’ve exhausted my encomiums for this expert piece of newspaper truth-fracturing. Not so! The Free Press has yet another wonderful surprise for us in this comment: “The state has shown a lack of flexibility in working with an innovative and aggressive private partner.”

All I can say is WOW!! That takes the cake, really.

Of course, to believe this comment. we must bend our idea of what is meant by “innovative and aggressive.”

If it’s “innovative and aggressive” to sue everyone who stands in your way, steal property and build bridges, gas stations and duty-free stores on public land, then Mr. Moroun surely fits the Free Press definition. Once again, the newspaper has printed a declaration that will help to prevent a true understanding of the bridge magnate.

It is rare indeed to find such a perfect example of journalistic deceit.

Far from flunking, the Free Press deserves–and gets!–an A+.

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | 3 Comments

Lunch and glory

Posted on February 7, 2010 by hro50ta1

Patti by Pat Beck 2008By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

I caught a mouse once, Sophie. Just once.

It was a powerful lesson to me, too.

About pride, you know, hubris, chutzpah, all rolled into one package.

I knew there was something wrong.

This was in the kitchen, behind  that piece of furniture with drawers, doors and all kinds of pans and pots and lids.

Perfect place for a spindle-butt.

So he thought.

You know how you can hear their little feet swishing around, even though they’re trying to be quiet.

Making his little nest so his wifey-poo can have more spine-tails.

Such arrogance can not stand.

I cocked my head and lifted my ears and waited, silent as you often see me on the lawn stalking brush-butts.

My two-leggers were in the living room, chatting with another pair of twin-pegs. Making a lot of noise. I tried to shush them with a cautionary whine, but that was a waste, as usual.

So I had to creep closer. Stock still. Sure ’nuff, out comes a spine-tail, plain as day, totally blind to me.

Chutzpah!

I waited. Waited. He drew close enough to see me. 

I want them to see me first, Sophie, meet their Maker, or, so to speak, their Maker’s deputy.

Let them meet the Reaper is my motto.

A kind dog I am to man and woman and child, but put a rodent in front of me and ruthless is my name.

Just as he looked up, saw my furry head, I lashed out a forepaw. He was quick, gotta give him credit. Made it almost to the cupboard before I pinned him with a quick right. Then it was left-right-left-right and I had him nailed to the floor.

What a rush, Sophie!

I set off one loud yip to celebrate.

The spine-tail?

Dead as a doughnut, Sophie.

And here is where I went badly wrong.

Hubris.

I couldn’t help myself. I’d made such a ruckus that my two-leggers and the other two-leggers bolted into the kitchen.

I had my chance. I could have scarfed up that slime-tail then and there.

Had my cake and et it too.

But no, no, I had to DISPLAY him.

Wanted my laurels, don’t you know.

Oh yes, my two-leggers were full of praise for me. You’d think I’d put out a house fire.

There lay this little black lump with a spot of red in its mouth. And there sat I, proud as any hunter would be.

Oh sure, they kept telling me what a great dog I am, what a great hunter.

I basked in the praise–until I saw what the male two-legger had in mind.

He grabbed a paper towel, spread it over his hand, picked up the spine-tail and before I could yelp a reproof he marched into the cupboard where they poop and pee. Next thing, I hear water running out of their pee well and he’s back in the kitchen minus paper towel.

And minus my lunch.

So long meal time, flushed down a two-legger’s pee pipe.

Lesson learned, Sophie.

If you have to choose between glory and dinner, remember that a mouse in the mouth tastes better than all the praise in the world.

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment