More than three years ago the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s GreenCityBlueLake published Is there a safe alternative to Roundup? with this lede:

Update 3/23/15 — Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has been classified as a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Details here.

Roundup® is touted as a safe, environmentally friendly and easy to use herbicide. It’s also denounced as a toxic, hazardous chemical. Which is right? Are there any alternatives to using Roundup?

Roundup® is a broad-spectrum herbicide, meaning that it has negative effects on nearly every plant with which it comes in contact. It is used for spot treatment of gardens, lawns, paved areas, and some agricultural crops. Although it is toxic, the active chemical, glyphosate, binds with soil. This means that glyphosate that comes in contact with the ground will not run off into water systems and becomes inactive. The substance also appears to be mostly nontoxic for mammals, including people, who eat food which was near plants treated with Roundup.

However, when glyphosate reaches rivers and streams, it is very toxic to aquatic life. Glyphoste can travel to waterways if it falls on asphalt or blows away on the wind. In addition, glyphosate is not the only chemical in Roundup®, simply the only one considered “active” by the EPA. The EPA only requires herbicide manufacturers to provide proof that the “active” ingredients are safe for the environment, not “inactive” or “other” ingredients. Herbicide manufacturers are not even required to list non-“active” ingredients on their packaging.

Polyethoxylated amine (also referred to as POEA or polyethoxylated tallowamine) is a surfactant, a chemical used to transport glyphosate from the leaves of a plant to the roots in Roundup®. POEA has been shown to be significantly more toxic to aquatic life—including algae, frogs, shrimp, and fish—than glyphosate. POEA is not trapped by soil like glyphosate and stays in the environment longer before degrading, creating an environmental hazard. In addition, recent studies indicate that the POEA in Roundup® may be toxic to human embryos.

The short answer to the question is, thankfully, yes, there are alternatives, and you’ll find three listed in the above article.

Full disclosure, I was one of the people duped by Monsanto’s hype. My bad.

So, why has it taken us three years to get to this headline: Monsanto ‘bullied scientists’ and hid weedkiller cancer risk, lawyer tells court in today’s Guardian?

I began hearing about the growing evidence of cancer risks associated with Round Up earlier this spring. While the horrible damage to individuals cannot be diminished, I confess that my first reaction was: Oh fuck! This could collapse American (and world?) agriculture. This could trash the world’s food basket.

Why? Because industrial farming depends upon Round Up. So much so that the company invested millions (billions?) in developing a genetically-modified strain of corn that was Round Up resistant. Take away Round UP and those corporate farms dependent upon the chemical are royally fucked. Could Round Up be too big to fail?

Sam Levin, reporting for The Guardian, writes:

Monsanto has long worked to “bully scientists” and suppress evidence of the cancer risks of its popular weedkiller, a lawyer argued on Monday in a landmark lawsuit against the global chemical corporation.

“Monsanto has specifically gone out of its way to bully … and to fight independent researchers,” said the attorney Brent Wisner, who presented internal Monsanto emails that he said showed how the agrochemical company rejected critical research and expert warnings over the years while pursuing and helping to write favorable analyses of their products. “They fought science.”

Wisner, who spoke inside a crowded San Francisco courtroom, is representing DeWayne Johnson, known also as Lee, a California man whose cancer has spread through his body. The father of three and former school groundskeeper, who doctors say may have just months to live, is the first person to take Monsanto to trial over allegations that the chemical sold under the Roundup brand is linked to cancer. Thousands have made similar legal claims across the US.

I dropped a note to Levin this morning, along with copies to editors at The Guardian, who ought to be interested in the Too Big To Fail angle. We’ll see how that plays out.

I think the time has come to boycott Nestlé, again.

This morning I had a skidmark moment (similar to these) while listening to David Greene interview Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action. At the very end Greene totally misses this statement from Rundall:

…it’s all about trading and trading goods that really are misleadingly marketed. So they’re marketed almost as if they are infant formula for babies, [emphasis mine, JH] which is important and is something good. These are look-alike products that are not correct for babies, and they’re fueling the obesity epidemic (ph) and undermining breastfeeding.

I have no idea what these look-alike products might be and I can’t find an answer online.

Anyone have a clue?

[Update on 10 July at 1641—reader Mary Jo provides the answer in her comment. Thank you very much.]

[Update on 10 July @ 0454: Breastfeeding: it’s bad for business!]

Americans love socialism. They really do, but like Lou Costello, what you name something changes everything. It you think President Donald John Trump hates his predecessor, remember that conservatives have never stopped hating on our first socialist president since The American Liberty League.

Socialism rips money out of the bank accounts of the super rich and helps everyone else. As new political candidate Melissa Wheeler puts it:

We agree everyone’s entitled to adequate healthcare coverage, to clean air and water, to a living wage, to protection from consumer fraud and we agree on economic inequality, that our political system unfairly favors corporations and the wealthy who don’t pay their fair share!

Then the S-words pops up. What the feck is going on here? Mehdi Hasan, writing in Why Is Nancy Pelosi So Afraid of Socialism? for The Intercept, explores the question. He ledes:

Is democratic socialism now in the “ascendant” in the Democratic Party? That was the question posed by a reporter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last week, in the wake of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shock primary victory in New York’s 14th Congressional District.

And Pelosi’s response? “No.”

Elaborating a bit, she qualified that “it’s ascendant in that district perhaps. But I don’t accept any characterization of our party presented by the Republicans. So let me reject that right now.”

Who is she kidding? Ocasio-Cortez, a “Democratic giant slayer” (New York Times) who “rocked the political world” (CBS News), is now a household name. From the pages of Vogue to the studios of ABC’s “The View” and CBS’s “Late Show,” the Democrats’ newest star has been eloquently explaining — and detoxifying — democratic socialism to millions of apolitical Americans. “No person should be too poor to live,” she told Stephen Colbert, to cheers and applause, when asked to define her ideology.

Then there’s Bernie Sanders. Who’d have imagined that a self-proclaimed democratic socialist from the state of Vermont, who was pilloried for going on “honeymoon” to the Soviet Union, would become the most popular politician in the United States?

Not Pelosi, that’s for sure. Democratic leaders of her generation are accustomed to seeing political messaging from a defensive posture only. So it wasn’t surprising that Pelosi would reject democratic socialism as a “characterization of our party presented by the Republicans,” when the characterization is being presented, in reality, by Democrats themselves.

Hasan naturally goes for the roots of mainstream socialism in America: the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

…the modern, liberal, progressive America that is so cherished by Obama, Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party elites might not exist today—were it not for socialists!

Take the New Deal. “FDR’s borrowing of ideas about Social Security, unemployment compensation, jobs programs and agricultural assistance from the Socialists was sufficient to pull voters who had rejected the Democrats in 1932 into the New Deal Coalition that would sweep the congressional elections of 1934 and reelect the president with … the largest Electoral College win in the history of two-party politics,” writes John Nichols in his book “The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism.” Elsewhere, Nichols cites a 1954 New York Times profile of Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, which described him as having made “a great contribution in pioneering ideas that have now won the support of both major parties,” including “Social Security, public housing, public power developments, legal protection for collective bargaining and other attributes of the welfare state.”

How about the war on poverty?

In 1962, socialist intellectual Michael Harrington — who would later go on to found the Democratic Socialists of America — published “The Other America: Poverty in the United States” and it became an instant classic. “Among the book’s readers, reputedly, was John F. Kennedy, who in the fall of 1963 began thinking about proposing anti­poverty legislation,” wrote Harrington’s biographer Maurice Isserman. “After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson took up the issue, calling in his 1964 State of the Union address for an ‘unconditional war on poverty.’ Sargent Shriver headed the task force charged with drawing up the legislation, and invited Harrington to Washington as a consultant.”

Then there is the civil rights struggle.

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, was organized by proud democratic socialists Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph. King himself would later remark that “something is wrong … with capitalism” and “there must be a better distribution of wealth.” “Maybe,” he suggested, “America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

Go beyond politics, too.

“It’s kind of ironic,” Nate Silver once remarked, “American sports are socialist.” Consider the NFL, which operates a strict salary cap for players, while also ensuring that each NFL team receives an equal share of the league’s revenue from TV deals. To quote Art Modell, the late owner of the Cleveland Browns, the league is run by “a bunch of fat-cat Republicans who vote socialist on football.”

To recap: The most popular politician in the United States today is a socialist; the most admired American of the 20th century had a soft spot for socialism; and the most popular sport in the country is basically a “government-sanctioned socialist utopia.” So much for socialism, then, being somehow un-American or some sort of foreign import.

Hasan never goes here, but perhaps, just perhaps, Pelosi—and the rest of the Democratic Party—doesn’t like Socialism because because her current net worth is just under $30 million?

Hmmm, could be.

*With apologies to Wavy Gravy…

There is something comforting to know that we’re not alone in the sinking ship.

So, several years ago I began reading the Paris Review’s The Art of Fiction interviews, but stopped for a variety of reasons and when I got back to them I discovered that they were behind a pay wall. Acquiescing to my mantra of so many books, so little time I moved on because there was far more reading available for free than I could read in a thousand lifetimes.

A few weeks ago I buckled under and paid for a subscription to The New Yorker and yesterday, perhaps, prompted by that decision, I subscribed to The Paris Review. While my first copy won’t be here for a few weeks, I did get instant access to the archives and I went back to the Art of Fiction series. Yesterday I read No. 13, the interview with Dorothy Parker from 1956.

This morning I’m reading the most recent interview, No. 239 from this year’s spring issue. This interview is of Charles Johnson by Cary Goldstein. I have some reading history with Johnson, and while I expect more will come to my attention, this exchange struck me first:

CARY GOLDSTEIN—Late in the novel, you take a kind of authorial pause to talk about something called the “first-person universal.” What is that?

JOHNSON—Oxherding Tale has two essay-ish chapters. The first one is on the nature of the slave narrative as a literary form, its conventions. The other one is called “The Manumission of First-Person Viewpoint,” and in it I’m looking at the first-person narrator of the slave narrative and trying to ask questions about the “I.” And it takes a kind of Buddhist turn. What is this “I”? Either the self is nothing or it’s everything. That’s where I introduce the term “first-person universal.” In other words, it’s meant to take us away from a Cartesian view of subjectivity.

Partly because I had a conversation with one of my students this past week about defining point-of-view, but also because my current novel project is written in a traditional first-person limited point-of-view. I was sufficiently intrigued by Johnson’s concept to order Oxherding Tale so that I could, at a minimum, read the aforementioned chapter. I expect I’ll read more.

Also, Terry Gross, in Boots Riley Mines His Experiences As A Telemarketer In ‘Sorry To Bother You’ for Fresh Air, talked with Riley and set up the interview this way:

My guest Boots Riley wrote and directed the new movie “Sorry To Bother You.” It’s a social political satire starring Lakeith Stanfield, one of the stars of “Get Out” and the TV series “Atlanta.”

This is Boots Riley’s first film, but he’s had a long career as a rapper with his group The Coup, a self-described revolutionary music collective. Their music is on the soundtrack of the film. Riley grew up the son of political activists who moved from Chicago to Oakland when he was 6. His grandmother ran the Oakland Ensemble Theater. “Sorry To Bother You” is set in Oakland. It takes aim at corporations that underpay or otherwise exploit workers. It’s also a story about race, relationships and conscience.

When the movie begins, Lakeith Stanfield’s character is broke and living in his uncle’s garage. He talks his way into a telemarketing job, but everyone he cold-calls hangs up on him. An older, more experienced telemarketer played by Danny Glover offers some advice. Use your white voice.

Riley describes the film as: an absurdist, dark comedy with magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing, and attributes his own success as a telemarketer to his: Willingness to use my creativity for evil.

Gross tells Riley, Keep going…

So, for instance—I mean, the last time I did telemarketing, it was actually telefundraising, which is ostensibly better than regular telemarketing. So we were calling from the Bay Area to Orange County on behalf of LA Mission, for instance, which is a homeless shelter. But as we know Orange County is very conservative, Republican, racist—all of those things. And my job was to get money for the LA Mission. So my pitch was something like, hello, we’re calling to ask you how you’re doing. And they’d be like, fine, what are you calling about? OK. So no break-ins today. No – nothing wrong with your car or anything like that. They’d be like, no, why are you asking? Well, there’s been a series of break-ins, and, you know, people are worried. And we understand the police can’t do anything about it. So we’ve come up with a solution. And they’re all ears because I’ve just scared them. And I say, so what we want to do is we want to move all the homeless people from your area to downtown Los Angeles to the Los Angeles Mission. And they’re—you know, we’re going to teach them how to take baths and interview for jobs and give them God. And they’d always give money. So—and it was terrible. You feel bad. You could make yourself feel good about raising money for a homeless shelter. But you’re saying all this messed up stuff.

Wow. Dr. Evil, or President Trump, was never that good at using their creativity for evil.

Last Sunday, in A REPORTING LEGEND CHATS WITH INTERCEPTED…, I wrote about Seymour Hersh’s interview with Jeremy Scahill for the podcast Intercepted. All week I’ve been puzzling out what Hersh meant when he told Scahill:

The fact of the matter is, if Russia wanted to do, cause lot of difficulty to the American election they could have. Instead, they went and talked privately to us. So when the government says Russia intercepted stuff that was very important to us, I’m being very fuzzy about it, it wasn’t about the election. They told us that there were certain people in America doing things that were very deleterious to the War on Terrorism for personal and financial gain, [Emphasis mine, JH] and they could have blown it publicly but they went internally to us.

This comes in the middle of a much longer response to Scahill’s question:

I’m wondering, a year ago, a year and a half ago when we spoke, you were very critical of the way that the broader news media was reporting on the so-called Trump-Russia affair. Has your assessment changed at all and is that a legit story?

Hersh’s response—I’d block this out as extending from Scahill’s question to the line, You know, Jesus, Jeremy. Now I’m being coy—I don’t want to be coy.—turns the whole Mueller investigation on its head. This is an angle on the story that I have heard or read nowhere else.

How can that be?

One of the hardest prejudices to work one’s way past—and at the root of the hard problem—is the misconception that somehow our reality, our individual understanding of what we perceive to be real, is universal. This problem extends beyond individuals to include families, tribes, societies, nations and ultimately humanity as a whole.

Paradoxically we all want to feel special by being unique in the universe. We need to get over that. Take the centuries during which we labored under the myth that the Earth was at the center of the universe. Not only is the Earth not the center of our solar system, our mostly harmless star system is so far out in the galactic boonies—and don’t get me started about how unimportant our galaxy is—that the idea that other creatures would want to visit us is just silly.

The last bastion to yet fall is the idea that what makes Homo Sapiens Sapience—just labeling ourselves thinking was a mistake—special is our consciousness.

Tom Bartlett, writing in Out of their minds: wild ideas at the ‘Coachella of consciousness’ a Guardian long-read, explores the current thought:

He was nursing a Stella Artois and appeared as if he would rather be talking to anyone but me. This is what he said: “The scientists who pooh-pooh the mystical stuff can’t explain the hard problem.”

That is true. Though it is also true that the scientists who embrace the mystical stuff can’t explain the hard problem of consciousness either. No one can explain it. Why does it feel like something to be you? What is it that makes us more than just information processors with feet? Why are the lights on, and who, precisely, is at home? Nobody knows.

Well, some people think they know. There is something about the topic of consciousness that, unlike other scientific fields of inquiry, inspires an unearned feeling of expertise. If you don’t know much about, say, the life cycle of a protozoan, you probably would not pretend you did at parties. But because you are conscious, you might feel as if you can say something significant about the profoundly complex phenomenon of consciousness. You might even wish to write down what you feel, laminate it and thumbtack it to a free-standing bulletin board for all to see.

Consciousness is, for now at least, an undiscovered country where there be dragons; possible machine dragoons. Bartlett continues:

That is not to say there is not serious, fascinating consciousness research going on – there is plenty, and some of that research was presented in Tucson. Nor would it be right to imply that consciousness is a trivial topic. In fact, it might be the single most important topic around–the topic lurking behind all other topics. Minus consciousness, nothing really matters, does it? The permanent loss of consciousness is what often accounts for our dread of death. Who is and who isn’t conscious is crucial in a number of weighty moral and medical dilemmas, like figuring out when to pull the plug on someone in a coma.

It also matters because, as our computers become evermore sophisticated, some artificial-intelligence researchers worry that those computers will acquire consciousness. When they do, they might decide to become our best friends. Or they might, in their algorithmic wisdom, decide to delete their troublesome flesh-and-blood creators. With that in mind, it is probably a wise idea to get a firm scientific grasp on consciousness before we carelessly bestow it on our future machine overlords. And that is the sort of issue the Tucson gathering is about. At least in theory.

How are we doing on the whole making-theory practical thing? Bartlett talked with David Chalmers, a sort of thinker zero on the subject:

For Chalmers, the easy part of consciousness entails mapping exactly what the brain is doing, whether it is oscillations in the cerebral cortex or re-entrant loops in the thalamocortical system. The neurochemical nitty-gritty, in other words. He is not saying it is easy like diagramming a sentence; in fact, it is likely to take several more generations, at minimum, before the dots get connected. [Emphasis mine, but Clarke’s 1st law surely applies.]

Perhaps, and I think this may be definitively true, René Descartes had the final word back in nearly 400 years ago when he wrote: Cogito, ergo sum. Everything after that is just jerking off.

I’m pro-organized labor. Unions delivered the 40-work week, a living wage, vacation time, over-time and, most importantly, dignity to labor where little or none existed before. They also were instrumental in creating, in the post WW II-era our now-shrinking middle class. If you’ve never even been asked to join a union, stop and think where you’d be without them.

There has been much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v AFSCME, but I don’t think the terrain is as bleak as the wailers portend.

The battle circles around the concept of Right To Work laws. These laws are to labor as Right To Life is to women. Ever regressive Nevada—except when it comes to gambling and prostitution—has had a Right To Work law on the books since 1952, yet public-sector unions have done, and continue to do, well in the state whose motto is All For Our Country.
Ruben Garcia, writing in Nevada’s unions show how organized labor can flourish even after an adverse Supreme Court ruling for The Conversation, explains how unions in the other 49 states can fight back.

American labor unions have long been bracing for a “post-Janus” future in which collecting dues would be harder than ever.

The Janus case has been moving through the courts for two years and addresses the question of whether a public employee can be forced to pay dues to a union that represents him or her.

On June 27, the Supreme Court said no, which means the much-feared poorer future is now upon organized labor. While some pundits argue that this may “cripple” certain unions across the country, my research in Nevada suggests it doesn’t have to be that way.

Nevada unions have been operating under this very constraint for 65 years and yet have managed to thrive. As such, I believe they offer three important lessons for labor unions in other states as they grapple with an indisputably bleak legal environment.

The three lessons, briefly are:

Shoe-leather organizing—Most unions around the country are familiar with the kind of shoe-leather organizing that the Culinary has utilized over its lifetime, such as house visits, worker-to-worker contact and, increasingly, social media strategies. This has led to a nearly 90 percent unionization rate on the famous Las Vegas Strip.

Political engagement—The political engagement of the union has enhanced its importance among the state’s politicians because it supports their candidacies through get-out-the vote campaigns, election monitoring and social media outreach.

Delivering for the rank and file—Finally, the success of two depend on and contribute to the third lesson: The Culinary is able to deliver the kinds of extra services and benefits for its members that ensure they keep paying their dues.

In our age of Denaturalization Squads (seriously, they are a thing) Garcia’s points about the vital importance of women and immigrant labor cannot be understated. He writes:

The [Culinary Workers and Bartenders Unions in Las Vegas, which are separate entities but bargain as one.] stands out for the success of its efforts, which has included working hard to recruit immigrants and women. For example, it proudly calls itself Nevada’s largest immigrant organization, with members from 173 countries, more than half of them Latino.

In addition, about 55 percent of its members are women, which is higher than the national average of about 46 percent.

The sole commenter (as of Saturday morning) to Garcia makes some additional points that I think are also valid. The very best way that I know to make America great again is to make union labor strong again.

This is serendipitous because two days ago I read Brooke Jarvis’ The Obsessive Search for the Tasmanian Tiger.

An African American mother, protecting her children, shoots a carjacker in the face. I’ll be watching how much time will pass before the National Rifle Association picks this story up.

Note: I’ve edited out the phrase would-be in the head and body of the story below because there was nothing would-be about the carjacker. He drove the car away with the mother and two children inside. That makes him an actual carjacker.

Monique Judge, writing in Texas Mom Shoots Would-Be Carjacker After He Tries to Steal Vehicle With Her Children Inside for The Root, has the details:

A would-be carjacker in Dallas picked the right one on Wednesday when he jumped into a car with the 2- and 4-year-old sons of a black mother in the back seat. When the man refused to get out of her car, he caught a bullet to the face for his trouble.

Michelle Booker-Hicks told Fox 4 News she was on her way to a family function when she stopped at a gas station in the southern part of Dallas around 10 p.m. on Wednesday night. As she was paying for her gas, she saw a man jump into her vehicle.

“I proceeded to jump in my backseat and told the gentleman to stop, to get out the car. He would not get out of the car. He turned around and looked at me. I reached over the armrest to get my glove compartment and that’s when I fired at him once I got the gun from my glove compartment,” she said to the news station.

The man, identified by police as 36-year-old Ricky Wright, ran the vehicle off the road and crashed into a fence. He was arrested at the scene and taken to a local hospital for treatment. Neither Booker-Hicks nor her children were harmed in the incident.

An African-American woman packing a 9 mm in an open-carry state. Ollie’s head must have exploded.

One of the reasons I choose to post this particular word is because if I were to select a single word to characterize the administration of Donald John Trump, I would pick sophistry in a heartbeat.

Another, more proximate reason, is that two days ago, in reading a feature in The New Yorker, I came across this sentence:

Whether a sophist like Milo Yiannopoulos may speak at a public university like Berkeley is less a question of what the law is than of what the law should be.

According to Merriam-Webster:

The original Sophists were ancient Greek teachers of rhetoric and philosophy prominent in the 5th century B.C.E. In their heyday, these philosophers were considered adroit in their reasoning, but later philosophers (particularly Plato) described them as sham philosophers, out for money and willing to say anything to win an argument. [Emphasis mine, JH] Thus, sophist—which can be traced back, via the Greek sophist?s (“wise man” or “expert”) and sophizesthai (“to become wise”), to sophos, meaning “clever” or wise”—earned a negative connotation as “a captious or fallacious reasoner.”

Yeah, that Plato knew his field.

I hate daylight saving time. I mean I really, really hate daylight savings time.

Daylight saving time doesn’t save me shit!

The primary reason is that I’m a morning person and I get robbed of precious dawn light. Arizona gets along just fine without daylight savings time. Why can’t the rest of the nation?

Europeans are actually getting to vote on the topic. AJ Dellinger, writing in Vote Down Daylight Saving Time for Gizmodo, has the details:

The European Commission is giving citizens of the European Union the opportunity to cast their vote in a public poll that could lead to the elimination of the sleep-depriving practice of changing clocks twice a year for the sake of daylight saving time.

The poll, spotted by The Verge, launched Thursday and running until August 16. During that time, members of the 28 European countries that recognize daylight saving time will be able to vote if they want to change the practice of turning back the clocks come winter and setting them forward to add an hour of evening sunlight in the summer.

I’m betting that most Americans would vote against the practice simply because they don’t like the hassle of resetting all their clocks. Of course, this would mean reprogramming all the devices that are now automatically making the change, but that would be a small price to pay.

For a couple of decades I have kept a list of Books To Read Someday. The list is long, too long to ever finish. Ticktock, ticktock…

So, in the spirit of Trevor Noah’s Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That, I present Books I Just Didn’t Have Time To Read:

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of the Wire by Jonathan Abrams.

The Enneagram And Kabala: Reading Your Soul by Howard Addison.

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture by Ruth Benedict.

Native American women writers edited by Harold Bloom.

There are far too few Native American voices. There is a very small collection on my own shelf—mostly the works of two writers I’ve met and spoken with: Sherman Alexie and Russel Means—clearly the depth of my shelf is sorely lacking

When I started seriously smoking in the military, I could buy my Marlboros for $2 a carton, 20 cents a pack, a penny a cigarette. This week I saw a sign advertising a pack of Marlboros for the low price of $6. That’s an increase of 2,800 percent. Some of that increase is inflation and market forces, but most is tax.

The theory has always been that since smoking is bad, and society benefits if fewer people smoke, and the higher the price of cigarettes the fewer people smoke, what happens when the theory works, but the taxer is as addicted to the tax and the taxee was addicted to the sin?

Sam Allard, writing in Sin Tax Funds Will Be Gone Soon, Yet Stadiums Continue to Heedlessly Seek Major Upgrades for Scene, tells the tale:

A few days before Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley rejected more than 20,000 signatures seeking a referendum on the Q Deal in 2017, the executive director of the Gateway Economic Development Corporation, the nonprofit organization that owns and leases the Quicken Loans Arena and Progressive Field on behalf of taxpayers, announced that the Sin Tax well was nearly dry.

“Projects may not go forward unless [the teams] self-fund them,” Todd Greathouse said on May 17, noting that there was only about $1.5 million in funds on hand.

That was a problem, and a grim portent.

The Sin Tax was renewed in 2014 after an aggressive propaganda campaign waged by the Cleveland pro teams and their business allies—”Keep Cleveland Strong”—and now brings in between $13 million and $15 million each year from a tax on cigarettes and alcohol. But that revenue stream is nowhere near enough to pay for the extravagant projected capital projects, on top of required maintenance to HVAC and electrical systems, that the teams continue to itemize.

That’s bad, but not nearly as bad as the Sin Tax bubble fixing to burst. Allard continues:

The teams have been spending their Sin Tax allotments so quickly that funding for necessary maintenance will dry up long before the Sin Tax comes up for renewal once again. And given the county’s maxed-out credit card, not to mention the audacious repurposing of revenue streams (a portion of the hotel bed tax, a portion of the Q admissions tax) to finance the unrelated Q Deal, there simply won’t be many available options to fund stadium repairs down the road.

To pay for projects from 2015-2017, the County borrowed $60 million in bonds as an advance on future Sin Tax revenue. Now, about $7 million per year must be allocated to pay down principal and interest on those bonds.

Will Tarter has been attending the Gateway board meetings as a concerned private citizen. He told Scene that he is often the only member of the public in attendance. He compiled data for a report on the funding nightmare that awaits local taxpayers due to the teams’ imprudent spending.

Clearly resident and Citizen Journalist Tarter has picked up the ball dropped by local news public relations organizations. His five-page report would have been worth of publication in Point Of Viəw

Allard concludes:

What’s infuriating is that the public is indeed on the hook for capital projects over $500,000 at these facilities. But with more scrutiny and independent assessment—are the stadium seats really in bad shape, for example? Or are they just no longer ‘state of the art’? — the sin tax should be an ample pot.

The Q Deal, on the other hand, was not required in any lease. And its blind support from the vast majority of our local elected leaders was a scandal of recklessness and shortsightedness long before it became an abortion of democracy.

The understated county councilman Dale Miller mentioned his concern at a Q Deal hearing in 2017.

“I’m worried about putting aside funding for reserves [to cover Q Deal shortfalls],” he said, “if we can’t afford to pay for basic maintenance.”

Nowhere near worried enough, it’s turning out.

How did we get here? To understand the crooked primrose path you can follow the nearly 10-year long trail of crumbs left by Roldo Bartimole.

I subscribe to The New Yorker for two reasons: first, the excellence of the writing; and second, because I’m forced to think and not just agree. This week I was particularly drawn to one story in my 2 July copy: Andrew Marantz’s Fighting Words. The piece, subtitled When far-right provocateurs descend on campus, how should a university resond? (Note: the head and subhead in the online version are different. They read: How Social-Media Trolls Turned U.C. Berkeley Into a Free-Speech Circus and Public universities have no choice but to welcome far-right speakers seeking self-promotion. Should the First Amendment be reinterpreted for the digital age?) As a former magazine editor I get that space and typography play differently in print and online versions. That’s just the nature of the beast.

The story uses former Breitbart editor and a right-wing professional irritant named Milo Yiannopoulos’ visits to University of California’s Berkley campus as the framework for discussing the larger of Free Speech and the First Amendment to our Constitution.

I was reading happily along, nodding a bit in agreement when I came to this paragraph:

No one actually believes that all forms of expression are protected by the First Amendment. False advertising, child pornography, blackmail—all are speech, all are illegal. You’re not allowed to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, make a “true threat,” or incite imminent violence. These are all exceptions to the First Amendment that the Supreme Court has made—made up, really—over time. The boundaries can and do shift.

Writing no one actually believes is foolhardy. Of course someone actually believes whatever it is that you’re asserting that no one actually believes. What I think Marantz meant to write—and what his editor should have caught—in 2018 the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that not all forms of expression are protected by the First Amendment. Those are two different positions because, as Marantz notes, The boundaries can and do shift.

When I was a young journalism student at Ohio University during the first Reagan administration, I was fortunate enough to hear Lyle Denniston the rabid defender of free speech, speak. There was a moment in Denniston’s talk where he told us that we did have a First Amendment right to shout fire in a crowded theatre. The current law says differently, but law is fluid. I choose to think that Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was wrong in his unanimous opinion for Schenck v United States when he wrote: The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.

That even a unanimous, near-unanimous opinion can be wrong. Take the case, as is mentioned in Marantz’s piece, of Plessy, which was decided 7-1:

They discussed Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case upholding a Louisiana law that segregated railcars by race. “The petitioner argued that segregation ‘stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority,’ ” powell said. “But the Court rejected that and said, in effect, ‘If you feel stigmatized, it’s just in your mind.’ ” That changed in 1954, when the Court issued its unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education. “They finally found that segregation was, in fact, inherently harmful,” powell said. “And what was the harm? The Court was very explicit: it’s psychological harm.” He paused, arching an eyebrow slightly. “This means that there is precedent for weighing psychological injury as a real concern.”

I also found this bit fascinating because Marantz tosses the sticks-and-stones doctrine.

I asked john powell what he thought about the rhetorical tactic of conflating speech with bodily harm. “Consider the classic liberal justification for free speech,” he said. “ ‘Your right to throw punches ends at the tip of my nose.’ This is taken to mean that speech can never cause any kind of injury. But we have learned a lot about the brain that John Stuart Mill didn’t know. So these students are asking, ‘Given what we now know about stereotype threat and trauma and P.T.S.D., where is the tip of our nose, exactly?’ ”

Clearly, in 2018 our arms are much longer than they look.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Listening is also good… (See, I told you to read thoroughly. Even blogs can have easter eggs.)