the scrubteam

2002-09-29T17:18:00.000-04:00

I'd given up on this blog because I don't have the time to figure out how to do it right, but the next post had to be done because nobody else is talking about it.

2002-07-12T23:48:00.000-04:00

HIV Muppet. The Muppets rule my home because my daughter is not quite two. Its hard to say whether she likes Elmo or Zoe better, but hardly five minutes goes by without a reference to one of them. So the news that South Africa's version of Sesame Street, "Taklani Sesame", is adding an HIV positive muppet to the cast caught my attention. I'll tell you straight out, if they did this in the US, I wouldn't like it. There are some ugly sides of life I'd rather not have to explain to a 2 year old. But in South Africa, somewhere between 10-30% of the country has AIDS, depending on which figures you believe. Since about 1/3 of HIV positive women pass the virus to their children through the placenta, and others do so through breast milk, there are a lot of little children in South Africa with this disease. Despite, or because of, the widespread infection, people with HIV/AIDS are shunned in S.Africa like AIDS patients were in the US in the 80s. So Sesame Street is tackling this issue by adding a character who is HIV positive. According to the Taklani Sesame staff, "Children won't be told how the character became HIV positive. Nor will the common ways that the virus is transmitted — through sexual contact or drug abuse — be discussed." Pretty sensible, wouldn't you think: a society being destroyed by AIDS is trying to educate its children to accept other infected kids, not to shun them. But this is something to "chortle" at by the likes of Tim Blair. Making fun of dying children is pretty funny, isn't it.

2002-07-11T00:29:00.000-04:00

A lot of people took note that Larry Klayman sued Cheney and Halliburton today. Unfortunately, its not very likely that Big Dick will have to sit for a deposition on this one. This is actually one of several securities fraud suit filed against Halliburton regarding its accounting while Cheney was in charge. The first one came last month, the huge stockholder plaintiffs firm, Milberg Weiss, who is also lead counsel in the Enron case, filed suit against the company, but they chickened out and didn't name Cheney as a defendant. Two other plaintiffs class action firms filed suit today. They also lacked the guts to sue Cheney. Now the fight is on to see who gets the case. Klayman is a long shot because the other firms are experts at winning these fights. In any event, nobody will get to take Cheney's deposition unless they first meet the very high threshold for pleading securities fraud that was put in place over Clinton's veto in 1995. From what I've read so far, they have no chance of doing that unless some new bombshell is dropped as a result of the SEC investigation, or some former Halliburton employee really hates Cheney and spills the goods on him

2002-07-10T23:31:00.000-04:00

A TIE?!! What happened to baseball's all star game, and when did it happen? Other sports -- football, basketball, hockey -- have never had a real all star game. In baseball, though, it was a game that the players went all out to win. It used to be the biggest game of the year except for the world series. Ted Williams said many times that the greatest highlight of his career was his game winning, ninth inning home run in the 1941 all star game. All the tributes to Williams this week focused on how he choose to play the final game of the 1941 season when he was hitting exactly .400, but he thought that his home run in the all star game that year was as big of a, or a bigger, thrill. Now players won't even bother finishing the game because a pitcher might have to "risk" pitching three innings. Up until the 90s, any pitcher would have seen a chance for a W in the all star game as a career highlight. Now its just a nuisance. Compare this with the 1970 all star game, when, in the 12th inning (one more than last night), Pete Rose broke a tie by barrelling into Ray Fosse, truly risking 2 careers. Fosse ended up with a broken shoulder, and Rose was a hero. The winning pitcher, Claude Osteen, "risked it all" by throwing 3 innings. I was 2 at the time, so I didn't watch the game, but I've seen the replay of Rose taking out Fosse about a jillion times or so. As an AL fan, I really hate watching that play. I remember the 83 all star game very well. The Giants Atlee Hammacker got rocked and Fred Lynn hit a grand slam. That was the first AL win that I had ever seen (they had lost 11 straight) and it was as exciting as any baseball game I've ever watched. When did this become an "expedition" game. I can't pinpoint the exact date, but as the salaries went up, the desire to win the all star game went down. I use to think the loud complaint that "today's players" are ruining the game was a sloppy, kneejerk attack, but year by year it starts to resonate with me.

2002-07-10T08:08:00.000-04:00

Coulter v. Moore I took a look at the NYTimes bestseller list. That lucid thinker, Ann Coulter, has the #1 bestseller for non-fiction books. I don't know what that really says, because you only need several thousand lunatics to make a non-fiction bestseller, but it is not really surprising given the amazing publicity she has gotten for this book. She's been on crossfire, the Today Show and a host of other cable talk shows. This is interesting to me only because if you look at the number 3 bestseller, its Michael Moore's screed, Stupid White Men. I haven't read it, and I probably won't, but a lot of people have. It was a number 1 bestseller for several weeks and its still on the list, just below Ann and John McEnroe's tell all, which has been plugged by every media outlet around, including Barbara Walters on 20/20 interviewing his ex-wife. Moore's book, by contrast, has sold only by word of mouth. He's not been invited to any talk shows other than Politically Incorrect. While Moore gets annoying the way he whines about this on his website, he's got a point. It is pretty strange, isn't it, that a number 1 selling political book gets no play on cable tv. Media bias, anyone? Why doesn't a bestselling author merit a Crossfire show, or at least a tv interview where some over-testosteroned conservative is brought in as a counter guest to try to tear him apart. How about Ann vs. Michael. I think the answer is that the media does not want to hear from the Nader left. I shouldn't care, I've got no love for the Nader left, but their whining about access is started to score points. If Ann Coulter is worthy of tv time, how can Moore not be? Sure, you say, Ann looks better, but let's be clear, she's not that hot. She'd never make the cast of any WB show, not even as a mother (isn't that mother from the Gilmour Girls a cutie) For TV, she's pretty close to "plain." Take away her dye job, and she can play the overlooked girl in a TV movie. Moore's about as ugly as it gets, but h'e quite funny. Roger & Me was a great film, and his TVNation show cracked me up frequently. It even made my wife laugh, and I'd describe her as apolitical. So what's going on here?

2002-07-08T23:20:00.000-04:00

Bush's corporate governance speech. Of course, he won't say anything worthwhile, and he certaintly won't do anything worthwhile. It's just not consistent with his ideology to even believe that a problem exists. Based on what I've read, there are very few journalists who understand this issue either. The New Republic has had a few insightful articles though. Gregg Easterbrook almost nails it with this essay linking the scandals to CEO pay, but he's only half right. Easterbrook notes that CEO's have gotten rich off of pay-for-performance, but the performance has been an illusion. Its really too strong of a statement, because even in this environment, most companies numbers are legit (I hope!). But ridiculous CEO pay and the accounting scandals are linked because they flow from the same source. It's a failure of the corporation as an institution. Corporations are supposed to be run by the board of directors, but those boards have not shown a willingness to actually get involved when it comes to accounting problems or CEO pay. Unfortunately, in light of the new scandals, they may wake up to the accounting issues, but still remain spineless regarding CEO pay because there is no public pressure there. The "pay-for-performance" charade of CEO compensation has not been exposed by WorldCom and Enron, but by the fact that CEO pay continues to skyrocket despite two lousy years of stock performance. Corporate boards just can't say no, and CEOs set their own compensation. How much are you worth? $10 million, $20 million, $150 million? If you are setting your own compensation, why not aim high? Another overlooked issue is board compensation. In an I-stratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine fashion, CEO pay and board compensation have gone up in tandem. Fifteen years ago, directors received token fees for serving on a board. They used to get about $10,000 plus a a fee of between $1000 and $5000 for each meeting attended. It is a small time commitment -- attending five to ten meetings per year, so that was a fair deal for a part, part, part time job that looks good on the resume. But just as CEO's were asking boards to triple CEO compensation, the CEOs were recommending similar dramatic increases in directors fees. It is now not unusual for directors to receive $350,000 annually for a "job" that requires them to attend a few meetings per year. These fees are not surprising. With the CEO taking tens of millions from the stockholders, the directors must consider a few hundred thousand dollars to be a pittance. So how do you fix this? It's really hard to do it without very heavy handed legislation. I think the best way to get results is shame. Now that a member of an audit committee who fails to do his job can expect to be pillored in the press instead of elected president (a la GWB), those directors have become keen about doing their jobs. A similar jolt has to be sent to directors who serve on compensation committees.

2002-07-06T01:44:00.000-04:00

TED I'm a Yankees fan, and my Dad wasn't even born when Ted Williams hit .406, but at age 16 I could have recited a couple of hundred statistics about Ted Williams. It makes me feel like I actually saw him play.

2002-07-06T01:22:00.000-04:00

MIDDLE AGED HYPOCRITES I was at a fourth of july party bbq yesterday at my aunt's home. Several of her friends were there -- mostly late forties with teenage to preteen children. They were putting away the case of beer I had brought along at a pretty good clip, and the conversation found its way to teenage and college drinking. After regaling me with stories of their beer drinking college days, they proceeded to tell me how different it is now. How kids are drinking so much more, and they're all alcoholics and must be stopped, etc. One guy had been lectured to by some "expert" who told him that "50% of the alcohol sold is consumed by people of college age" which is not remotely close to being true. Now, my child's just 2, so I've got a few years before I'm in danger of becoming a hypocrite, but I had to bite my tongue not to go after these guys. I've gone back to my old college, and it ain't what it used to be in terms of kids drinking. Sure the hard core is still there, but with all of those coffee shops replacing the bars, don't you think there is a little less drinking going on? And if things really are so much worse now, as these guys were saying, then doesn't that mean that the quasi-prohibition of the last 20 years has worked about as well as the full court prohibition did in the 20s?

2002-07-03T00:17:00.000-04:00

I heard a radio show on NPR while driving home that covered the topic of statistical studies of geneology. It's an issue I first read about in this article in the Atlantic a few months ago. Read the article, Your Royal Highness. It explains how everyone of western descent has a royal ancestor. Going backwards, generations increase exponentially. At the time of the Mayflower, you had about 65,000 ancestors, so who knows, maybe one of those people was on board. In the middle ages, we're talking millions of ancestors. They were kings, slaves, scoundrels, heroes -- you name it, its your lineage. It really points out the silliness of the concept of royalty, doesn't it?

2002-07-01T23:05:00.000-04:00

So how do I square that last post with the fact that I generally support unions in the US. Hard to say. I think the answer is that I support any workers right to organize, anywhere. But when you start talking about awful working conditions in the Third World, when in actuality these jobs are a huge improvement for the people taking them, then there's just a logical disconnect to your argument, not mine.

2002-07-01T23:01:00.000-04:00

With the G-8 leaders meeting recently in Canada, the "Seattle Kids" made the news again. They were less able to destroy property because the meetings were held deep in the Canadian Rockies, but they nevertheless engaged in a lot of stupid stunts, like protesting the Gap for supposedly oppressing people by giving them jobs. It generally annoys me that people who have no clue about the "sweatshops" are the ones who are the most outspoken about them. My wife owns a small business that makes toys and gift items that are manufactured in China. She personally visits all of the factories that she uses and meets the owners and the workers. Here's the people she meets: The owners: even in communist china, there are many factories that are owned not by the government or multi-national corporations, but by chinese entrepreneurs. They contract work out to foreigners looking for low wage manufacturing. Surprisingly, Tawainese own a lot of factories in China. The workers: young people, often girls, who have come from farm communities to make what is to them an enormous amount of cash. They generally work 80 to 90 hours a week, with time off only for a couple of weeks during the chinese new year. The factories are clean and bright, and dorms are provided for the workers. There's generally no plumbing for anyone (even the visiting americans), but that's life in most of China. The workers don't plan on working 80 hours a week for life. They usually come for 1 to 4 years, save their money, and go back home to their families. It really isn't much different than young people in America working 80 hours a week as doctor-interns, lawyers in big law firms or even as unpaid grad students. It's something you choose to do to get ahead -- the financial payoffs are different, but in relative terms they are similar. At night the dorms crackle like a college campus with young people talking, flirting, etc. Anyone who doesn't like it can just goes back home, and a lot do. Very few choose to make a life out of it. Its certainly not something I'm ashamed to make money based upon. Globalization has been a really cool experience for my wife. She's gotten to understand China in a way that you just couldn't as a tourist, and we now have some good friends on the other side of the world.

2002-07-01T21:53:00.000-04:00

Truly horrible news today. The US military accidentally bombed a wedding party, killing dozens of innocents, including children. In terms of effect (as opposed to intention) this is worse than the Seder Massacre in Israel. We can't go on with business as usual after this. The afghans will perceive us as no different than the russians unless we convince them that we care about there lives, and at this point we don't. Accidental bombings of civilians were a lot more acceptable when a hostile army held that territory. In my view, to have treated the Taliban/Al Qeada army any differently than we would have treated a hostile european force made no sense. They declared war on us, and it was ridiculous to insist that we respond by fighting with one hand tied behind our back. But now its very different. We beat the enemy army and we now control the territory. Our hunt for Al Qeada is now a police action, whether its conduced in the US, in Pakistan, or in Afghanistan. Imagine if the NJ police, in seeking to investigate a suspected al qeada cell, blew up a wedding reception in Jersey City. That's what's happened last night in Afghanistan. The defenders of this conduct are sounding a lot like a skit from Monty Python's Holy Grail. After Lancelot charges into a wedding, and based on a mistaken assumption, slaughters several guests, the host tells the gathering, "Let's not argue and bicker about who killed who."

2002-06-30T00:51:00.000-04:00

One last post on these accounting scandals. Bush's SEC Chairman, Harvey Pitt, is an easy target because he represented Arthur Andersen (and others) in his private practice. But his response to those critics ---- now I represent the government -- rings true to me. Let's give this guy a chance. He's a smart, tough lawyer, and his preconceptions about the job have been destroyed by recent events. I think recent events could change his entire worldview on these issues and he could do some great things. Give the guy a chance. Sure he works for W., but do you really think that W. even knows what the SEC does? Pitt's the man on this one.

2002-06-30T00:08:00.000-04:00

If there is any out there reading this, be aware that I'm a clueless idiot when it comes to HTML and any other information necessary to put this site together. For example, I killed the only link I had through some stupidity. It was to Atrios, whose blog I really enjoy. He posts often, and makes for an amusing read. He sent a few people this way, so I thank him for that! And I'll get that link back up at some point to when I figure this out. I also don't seem to have the ability to separate paragraphs down, so sorry about those imposingly long posts.

2002-06-29T10:34:00.000-04:00

One topic of conversation that made the rounds in the "blogs" was what to make of the fact that 57% of new studends at colleges are female. This was an interesting political rorschach test -- everyone dressing up a single point of data with their political views. The interesting thing to me is why anyone would believe that in the absence of discrimination, men and women would choose to go to school in equal measures. There are a lot of reasons why they wouldn't. From my personal experience, the average 18 year old girl is a lot more into school than the average 18 year old boy. Males also have a lot of respectable career paths that don't require a college degree available to them. They can go into the military, work in construction, became a police officer, a prison guard or firefighter. Sure these fields are now at least technically open to women, but there aren't a lot of women who choose to do these jobs. For example, not one of the NYC firefighers murdered on September 11 was female. Traditionally female jobs, like teaching and nursing, now require at least a college degree, and often a masters degree. Even the secretaries where I work are mostly taking classes part time, because a promotion to an office manager or similar position requires a degree. It can't be doubted that there are certain fields that appeal to women over men, and if you need a degree to get that job, you'll find more women in school. For example, vet schools used to be almost entirely male. In the mid 80s, they were 50% male. Today, they are more than 70% female. Another factor that must be driving up the percentage of women in school are the older women returning to school. There are a lot of older women I know --- in their 50s and 60s -- who have gone back to school to get degrees. These were women who missed out on going to school 30 or 40 years ago because they bought into the old stereotypes about women. Now their kids are raised and they have some time, so they're getting that degree that they regret not having. There numbers are large enough that it might skew the data. On the other side of this is the fact that colleges have become "feminized" and are no longer places that welcome males. I've never heard a prospective male college student express that concern. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of college students just ignore the campus politics that so capture the attention of the nut case ideologues. The only trend that's hard to ignore is that fraternities have taken a beating in the last ten years, but that wasn't the result of the feminists who hate frats. It was the risk management laywers from universities and national fraternities that killed fraternites. In response to multi-million dollar hazing lawsuits, they not only banned hazing, but they banned pledging. In response to lawsuits, the national fraternities banned alcohol in the frats altogether. What fun is there in joining a fraternity if you can't drink beer and you can't haze the pledges? Not much apparently, because frats are a lot less popular now. But that had nothing to do with feminists, it was Ronald Reagan and Elizabeth Dole's successful effort to raise the drinking age to 21 nationally that forced the schools and the national fraternities to crack down on traditional fraternity behavior. So joining a frat is now pretty boring. But I doubt anyone is skipping college because you can't drink beer and raise hell anymore. From what I've seen around college campuses, that's going on as ever, but the participants meet in smaller groups and don't wear letters on their chests.

2002-06-27T22:29:00.000-04:00

The very first thing I want to rant about is Tyco. Enron and WorldCom are dominating the news of illegal corporate behavior, but a story I read about Tyco has stuck with me. Now I'm going to say some unkind things about Tyco's execs, and since I'm a left leaning type, some visitors to this site (if they ever come) may not believe me. Don't take my word for it (on anything) But you don't need to trust me on this one. Just take a look at Tyco's own website. Here's the story about the "independent" director who took $20 million out of the till. And here's the story about the company lawyer who took $35 million. These two looted $55,000,000 from this company, and it's not discussed anywhere in the news! Whether Martha Stewart got $5,000 in wrongful gains is more interesting to the talking heads. But here is the real kicker about the dirty dealings at Tyco. If NY State had not gone after Dennis Kozlowski for his tax fraud, this looting would have just continued as business as usual. The board is now doing the right thing and suing the bad guys (thanks to Al Gore's lawyer, David Boies), but if they had refused to do so, the shareholders of Tyco had no recourse. As a disgrunted shareholder of Tyco, I could not go to court to try to force those directors to return the millions of dollars that they were stealing from the company. The reason why is because Tyco reincorporated in Bermuda in order to escape taxes. That tax scam had a nice side benefit for the directors and officers. Unlike Delaware or the other U.S. states in which american companies are usually domiciled, Bermuda does not allow shareholders to sue the directors or officers for damaging the company. The shareholders have no rights in Bermuda because under Bermuda law directors do not owe any duties to the shareholders. So there was nothing to stop these guys from scratching each others' backs with $20 million here, $35 million there, and another $150 million there. And guess what happened? But what really bothers me is this guy Frank E. Walsh, Jr., who thought it was a fair deal for the company to give him $20 million for making an introduction of one of the people on his rolodex to Tyco. Whenever gross corporate abuse like this is criticized, the knee jerk republican reaction is -- "class warfare" -- your just envious of the rich. I'm no more envious of this guy than I am of a bankrobber who makes off with a big score. These people are so used to throwing other people's money (my money in fact) to each other that they think a $20 million "finders fee" for making an introduction is a fair trade. This guy already owes a duty to this company because he agreed to serve on its board. He already gets paid for that service, and he's supposed to be loyal to the company. So a finder's fee seems pretty dubious to me, but $20 million! For introducing your country club buddy? The sense of entitlement is so shocking to me.

2002-06-27T21:23:00.000-04:00

The scrub team begins.