Integrated Man

Law and Justice . . . and the Looting of America

"You go to court for law; not justice.  Law and justice are not the same thing. Never confuse them."

Those words were spoken back in 1963, not by a supreme court justice, not by a lawyer, but by a street cop I knew. He was my father.  The statement was made as a throw-away remark reflecting on a day in which he appeared in court as the arresting officer on a case in which he believed Dame Justice had suffered not a miscarriage, but an abortion. In his observation, it was regrettable, though not uncommon.

How do you recycle a culture?

How do you recycle a culture?

We know how to recycle bottles and cardboard and other forms of waste.  But in what bin do you put an entire culture, or the larger part of it?

Let's start with Black Friday.

It's All Illusion

Image is everything.  Or at least 99%, or so it seems.

It obviously worked for Madoff, but the sad truth seems to be that Madoff was just a petty thief compared to our more accomplished operators.

In 2008, September 18, my blog  explored the conditions that have eroded our trust in everything, just as the true dimensions of our financial crisis were beginning to manifest.  We are now three years down the road from those momentous events. And the echos persist.

Reflecting on Jobs... Steve Jobs

This tribute is somewhat unlikely coming from me, but well earned by its recipient, though not for the reasons most obviously stated in the news.

First, I mourn Steve Jobs passing as a human being, apart from his accomplishments, his impacts, the externalities of his existence. He is large and unique in my awareness because of all those trappings, but they should not be primary measure of his meaning and value.  Ultimately, he was a human like all of us, born into this life with certain innate abilities and shaped by acquired values that gave those abilities direction and drive.  He was most importantly the embodiment of the potential that all of us possess in varying degrees, but rarely exercise to potential.

Desperately Seeking Hillary

They yearn for Hillary.

" What would Hillary have done ? "

" If only Hillary had won,...."

" Hillary would have..."

Who are 'they'?  Democrats, of course.  And, interestingly, some Republicans.

But she didn't win.  Get over it, and tip-toe back into reality.

And, to help you with that painful exercise, let's take " If only Hillary "  out for a test drive and see where we wind up.

Warren Buffett's Last Mission

Dear Mr. Buffett

You don't know me from Adam. I'm utterly inconsequential in the scheme of things.  So I hope you'll forgive my audacity in proposing one last mission in the public interest before you depart this existence. 

I am emboldened by your prior efforts to encourage your peer group to pledge their wealth to the public good, and more recently to call attention to yourself as a justification for the nation to call upon the rich to carry their fair share of the tax burden.   But there is one more mission in which your unique position and skills at unadorned truth-telling might yet have critical impact.   Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to inspire the business and investment titans of the US economy to get off their fear or apathy and earn their money by taking risks on the US economic revival.  Only you can do this.  No one else in the business community has your stature and ethical capital; and beyond the business community the President and Chairman of the Fed are a distant second and third.

Libya, The War Powers Act, and the Rule of Law

One of America's glaring hypocrisies is to lecture the world on the 'Rule of Law' as we contrive infinite stratagems to bypass, bend, fold or mutilate it, if we do not just outright ignore it.  Libya and the War Powers Act is an excellent case in point.  The only humor in this is that the Administration's contention that the US is not engaged in hostilities is more absurd than Anthony Weiner's assertion that he could not positively affirm the identity of his personal 'real estate' in a photo that he took.

Intelligence

Intelligence has two distinct definitions. It can refer to the possession of information, or the possession of the capacity to use it effectively. The two do not necessarily cohabit; most certainly, not often enough.  Like the time we outsourced the liquidation of a monster in the caves of Tora Bora to locals of ambivalent motivations. 

Beware the Avatar!

The following interesting piece happened across my screen this morning, courtesy of Forbes.com newsletter: "Should Artificial Intelligences be Granted Civil Rights?"  

At first thought, this seemed the logical extension of the Supreme Court's illogical extension of campaign funding privileges to corporations.  The next stop will be voting rights. And then came a whole flood of equally preposterous possibilities that spawn in the toxic political/cultural/social environment that provides our off-cable reality shows.

Energy: The Vise Tightens

Australia floods sqeeze China's coal supply.

The Saudi peninsula errupts in Yemen, Bahrain and Oman, with speculation about intermediate term impacts among the Shia population in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, and the probable hand of Iran in it all.

Libya errupts as a side show to the rest of Northern Africa, but taking its production capacity off-line raises questions about Saudi capacity to step in and fill the breach, and further reminds us that oil is not totally fungible.

North Africa is not all that rumbles. Louisiana mini earthquakes, tentatively associated with fracking activity in the area, brings to the fore the broader issue of fracking which is losing some of its glow as the no-brainer replacement for OPEC oil in our energy future.

And then there is the rumble on the far side of the Pacific, which did far more than damage Japan's coast--it put nuclear energy, that other silver bullet in our energy future, in the penalty box with deep-sea oil drilling.