Thursday, April 30, 2009

Who you gonna believe?

Obama or your lying ears?
(CNN) — The White House apologized Thursday "if anybody was unduly alarmed" by Vice President Joe Biden's comments that seemed to suggest Americans should avoid air travel or confined spaces of any kind.

"What the vice president meant to say was the same thing that many members have said in the last few days," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. "And that is, if you feel sick, are exhibiting flu-like symptoms….that you should take precautions, that you should limit your travel."
Of course, that's not what Biden said, nor is it what he meant to say. What he said was that in the case of his own family, he would recommend, "I would tell members of my family -- and I have -- I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said on NBC's "Today" show.. "It's not that it's going to Mexico. It's [that] you're in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That's me . . ." Silly Americans that we are, apparently there is some danger that we follow the advice Biden gives his own. That's bad for the travel industry. And we are in a recession, by gum. Get out there and SPEND!

I don't know if it's good advice. I'm personally not in the habit of taking advice from the Vice President anyway*. But I think it's pretty darned funny that the White House once again** is telling us that we need to believe them rather than our own lying eyes. I think it's even funnier the commenters defending him on various sites who can't figure out a way to avoid the conclusion that either a) Biden is a habitual bumbler, or b) the White House is flat-out lying about what he said.

I suggest that in this case they are both true. And it won't be the last time.

* especially this one.

** remember the bow that didn't happen?

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

You keep using that word

I do not think it means what you think it means:
"In the beginning God CREATED the Heavens AND the EARTH...". So, the earth was created and there WAS something there... there WAS life... to prove that, look in verse 28 of chapter 1... it says,"And God Blessed them,and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and REPLENISH the earth...".

Now, let's take the time to also look up "replenish"..well, actually, let's look up the ROOT word, which is "plenish"... Plenish means " to fill up". So, to RE-plenish means to RE-fill up. Why would God tell man to REFILL up the earth, when we ONLY see (with the human eye), that Adam and Eve was the FIRST life on the earth? Good question.
Good question, but not a difficult one. The mistake above forms much of the basis of the so-called "Gap Theory," invented in the early 19th Century*. It is instructive that it is based on the English rather than the Hebrew, but since I don't know Hebrew**, we shall just have to take it in the English.

The argument as presented is simple: "re-plenish" means "re-fill." God obviously told Noah to replenish the earth because it had just been denuded of all human life. Therefore, when he told Adam to do the same, the Earth must have been likewise denuded of human life. QED.

The only problem is, that's not what the word means, or at least not what it meant in 1611 when the KJV (upon which the above error is based) was translated. While it would appear at a glance that "re-" is a fine prefix to attach if you wish to "plenish" something again - and it is how we use it today - replenish itself is not based on that root (in all caps or not) word but upon the old French word "repleniss," which means simply, "to fill up," as a quick glance at the etymological dictionary would show:
1340, from O.Fr. repleniss-, extended prp. stem of replenir "to fill up," from re-, intensive prefix, + -plenir, from L. plenus "full"
"Re-" in this case, as was the case with "research," is an intensifying prefix rather than a repeating one. It means "to fill completely," as "research" means "to search completely." Adam, fill up the Earth. Noah, fill up the Earth. There need be no reference to whether the task was ever performed before. Unfortunately, like many English words its usage has changed out from under the KJV. Suffer the children, anyone?

It is not surprising then that most versions that were translated later than the 17th century simply say "fill the earth***." They are translating from the same Hebrew, which apparently does not carry the idea of filling again at all.

* the Gap Theory posits that there is a "gap" between Gen 1:1 and 1:2, during which time there was a worldwide cataclysm only hinted at in the scriptures. It's a rather clever ploy to get squillions of years for the Earth's age while still claiming a "literal" reading of early Genesis.

** Anyone here who does is welcome to fill in the holes in my knowledge.

*** Or they might say, "Llenad la tierra," I suppose.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

We need the same sort of regulations for banks

This is what it sounds like when pigs fly*:

Vials of innocuous swine flu virus have exploded on an intercity train, prompting police to stop passengers before they arrived in Lausanne.

A laboratory technician from a Geneva hospital had been transporting the vials on Monday evening from a veterinary institute in Zurich. The Federal Health Office had called for the development of a diagnostic test for the illness that has killed as many as 150 people worldwide...

Viruses and other infectious specimens are often transported by train or even post. Kaiser said this particular shipment had been packaged according to regulations.
Well, I'm sure the passengers on Switzerland's trains will agree that regulations will keep them from coming to any harm.

UPDATE: You just knew this was coming along. I still haven't figured out how to kill off Madagascar.

* There's gotta be a "swine flu" joke in there somewhere.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Sunday, April 26, 2009

A Missouri Boat Ride

Bernanke admits that all that big talk's worth doodly squat:
With conventional monetary policy having reached its limit, any further policy stimulus requires a different set of tools.
"Conventional monetary policy" is, of course, a euphemism for all that stuff they teach as economics at Princeton, namely that if you want the economy to do A, then you do X, and if you want it to do B, then you do Y. The economy is a big machine, an engine as it were*, and experts with their tools can make it run any way they wish. And it is amazing the number of countries and central banks who announce each week that they are going to lower interest rates or spend a bunch of money to pull their country's economy out of the funk that no other country has yet to pull out of by using the same tools**. Now all the bullets are gone, and our hero is left to come up with a plan for killing all those zombies which relies on either wrist rockets or thermonuclear weapons.

But it does bring up an interesting question. The entire reason for the Fed's existence as the federal cartel in charge not only of creating money but for controlling interest rates is the assumption that "conventional monetary policy" provides the power to run the economy in an orderly and proficient military manner. According to Bernanke, that is not the case, therefore the Fed must search for new*** tools in order to accomplish that ask.

So at what point does the nation as a while realize that rather than the Fed being the solution, it is itself most of the problem?

* "The Engine of Economic Growth" is the most popular inaccurate analogy.

** Seriously, if it hasn't worked in the US, Germany, Britain, or Japan, - each of whom are quickly bankrupting themselves by the effort - why do Thailand or Vietnam think doing the same thing will not have the same effect (or non-effect, in the case of their economies) on them?

*** and therefore by definition, theoretical and untried.

Three articles

that should never be strung together:
  1. Scientists have resurrected one of the world's great killers in the laboratory, hoping that the genetic secrets within the 1918 influenza virus will help them predict and combat the next major microbial threat to mankind.
  2. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Missing vials of a potentially dangerous virus have prompted an Army investigation into the disappearance from a lab in Maryland.
  3. ZURICH -(Dow Jones)- The World Health Organization said Sunday there is no evidence an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico represents an act of bioterrorism.
It has always amused me that in science fiction stories, futuristic "theocratic" societies are inevitably peopled by superstitious numbskulls who irrationally fear the truth and enlightenment that can only be unveiled by our friends in lab coats.

I rather think that if such a society ever developed, it would be the direct result of a scientific screwup so epic that the sliver of mankind who remained would gladly forgo that enlightenment for a chance to perpetuate human life on Earth.

Friday, April 24, 2009

A spot of good news


Being based on a more stable tax base (sales and property vs. income), state and local receipts are probably not dropping quite that quickly. But they are likely following exactly the same trend. And unlike the Federal government, locals cannot simply print money to cover their spending*. The years of budget "cuts" that end up with higher budget numbers are over for a while, at least at the state, county, local, regional, township, community college, and water district levels. Real cuts are coming, and I expect that fully half the states in the US will have some manner of "special session" by the end of the year to make real budget cuts.

This is very, very good news for most people** though they don't realize it yet and will not hear it from the press. Real good news is always treated as a catastrophe.

(hat tip: Vox)

* It is one of the great ironies of history that the Constitution specifically bans states from creating their own money because they abused the privilege during the Revolutionary War era. A federal government, on the other hand, would never do such a thing.

**
in the same way that falling housing prices are good news for most people, especially your children.

Why I'll laugh as counties go broke

It's not that I dislike them, but because they so desperately deserve it:
FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — A South Florida county that rode high through the housing boom earlier this decade, then crashed hard when the foreclosure crisis struck, declared a state of economic emergency on Tuesday.

St. Lucie County's action authorizes $25 million to $30 million for a slate of new construction projects — with the condition they use largely local labor and supplies — in hopes of jump-starting a sorely distressed local economy...

"I don't care what we have to do to get it done — we need to get our people to work now," Commissioner Chris Dzadovsky said. "I want to put people to work. I want to keep people in their homes."
If there's one thing Miami suburbs don't need, it's more construction. Homes are empty, malls are empty, office buildings are empty - they have already built too much*. So it is absolutely economic idiocy for a county to declare an "emergency" for the sake of spending $30 million in taxpayer dollars to build more things that aren't needed, simply to keep people busy.

I suspect it will be another year or so, once the current crisis is reflected in dropping sales tax revenue and reduced property taxes, that governments are going to start going literally bankrupt - court cases and everything - because of the idiocy of spending money purely for the sake of spending. This year budgets are tight. Next year**, the cuts will be as brutal as they are necessary.

Eventually voters are going to heap scorn on the idiot politicians who are driving them to the poorhouse. Unfortunately, they have some hard lessons to learn before they gain the wisdom to do so.

* This is how all those now-unemployed construction workers got there in the first place.

** Economic projections of recovery starting later this year are simply wishful thinking with a PhD.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Apology neglected

Leadership means saying you're sorry for the sins of others:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has warned Barack Obama of the risk of squandering the goodwill he says the US president's election has generated.

In an article for BBC News, he says it would be "wonderful" if Mr Obama apologised for the invasion of Iraq*.
Now, I'm rather of the opinion that a guy ought to only apologize for stuff he did. Like when Obama apologized for calling a woman reporter "sweetie," or when he apologized to Nancy Reagan for saying that she held seances in the White House, and, of course, when he apologized for accusing Special Olympians of bowling as poorly as him. That's his own mess and he's man enough to clean it up.

But liberals like Tutu are big on apologies for stuff that other people did, and there's a reason for that. As CS Lewis noted 70 years ago, in an essay called "The Dangers of National Repentance," the very terms used in such an apology serve to conceal its nature. What looks like contrition is actually moral grandstanding**:
By a dangerous figure of speech, [this kind of penitent] calls the Government not ‘they’ but ‘we’. And since, as penitents, we are not encouraged to be charitable to our own sins, nor to give ourselves the benefit of any doubt, a Government which is called ‘we’ is ipso facto placed beyond the sphere of charity or even of justice. You can say anything you please about it. You can indulge in the popular vice of detraction without restraint, and yet feel all the time that you are practicing contrition. A group of such young penitents will say, ‘Let us repent our national sins’; what they mean is, ‘Let us attribute to our neighbour... every abominable motive that Satan can suggest to our fancy.’
It's actually a very clever ploy, but it is obviously not a very new one. Obama will get to stand there all contrite and apologize for what "we" - by which he means George Bush - did, and everyone will ooh and ahh and say what a fine chap Obama is, except I suppose the folks in Pakistan and Afghanistan who are so unimportant that liberals don't care Obama is still dropping bombs on them.

But once that's over and Tutu's attention is safely elsewhere, there are a few other things Obama needs to apologize for:
  1. Slavery, obviously. Since Obama never held slaves and his ancestors were never slaves here, he's the perfect guy to apologize.
  2. Dr. Seuss. I mean, what were we thinking? We owe the Nazis and Japanese huge apologies for what he did.
  3. The Rape of Nanking. The Japanese aren't going to do it. That means Obama needs to step up.
  4. Milli Vanilli. I know they were only part American, but Obama is fully empowered to apologize across national borders as well as racial*** ones. We need to own up to our part in that tragedy of tragedies.
Barack Obama will squander a whole buttload of goodwill - it's like sands through the hourglass, baby - if doesn't get to apologizing more. I'm sure y'all can come up with more suggestions.

* In the very next line, Tutu "also says he prays that Mr Obama will be tough on African dictators." I guess the rule is that African dictators are fair game, but Middle Eastern dictators need to be left alone, lest some meddlesome African bishop ask you to apologize.

** and there are few things religious liberals excel at better than moral grandstanding.

*** It's pretty funny that Rob Pilatus, whose father was a black American serviceman and whose mother was a German national, is routinely described as a "German-American model."

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Blame Canada

Democrats who are (rightly) convinced that the prior administration was filled with bumbleheads who insulted and estranged our allies might wish to take a look up north before they get too smug about the current one:
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government moved on Tuesday to correct U.S. homeland security chief Janet Napolitano after she wrongly said some of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks had crossed into the United States from Canada.
Well, that's not so bad. I mean surely the Canadians will understand...
[National Post, Kelly McParland] Anyone who hoped the arrival of the Obama administration would mean the end of Washington's ludicrous fears about the Canadian border has had their delusions firmly corrected by Janet Napolitano, the new secretary of homeland security...

Napolitano clearly hasn't got a clue what goes on at the Canadian border...
Yeah, but that's just a newspaper writer, surely the government will blow it off...
[CBC] Canada's ambassador to the United States, Michael Wilson, jumped into the dust-up over Napolitano's comments, telling reporters at a Border Trade Alliance meeting in Washington that he is "frustrated" that the 9/11 myth has surfaced yet again.
That's better. Canadians all realize that Obama is assembling a cabinet that is head and shoulders above his predecessors...
[National Post, Don Martin] Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is moving unapologetically forward on beefed-up border staffing and enhanced documentation requirements that will make Canadians and travelling Americans yearn for the security paranoia of the George W. Bush administration.

Ms. Napolitano’s brief interview with the CBC this week was confirmation we’re dealing with an irrational senior U.S. official ...
Yeah, ok, so maybe she's irrational. But surely she was correct? After all, these are the nation's finest, smartest, most informed, and best-smelling professionals...
OTTAWA, April 22 (UPI) -- U.S. Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano backtracked on a statement she made to Canadian media that the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers used Canada as a conduit...
What? Never mind...

The unDecider

Because nothing drives ObamaNation crazier than comparing Obama and Bush:
Exactly like Bush, pt. I9:

"Obama open to some interrogation prosecution"

"WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is leaving the door open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30325495

That is just what George W. would have done!
If you compare them*, then Obamatrons will climb all over themselves looking for the marginal issues on which they disagree or on the things they do marginally differently, while completely ignoring the fact that, on the vast majority of issues that have divided the nation for its history, they are on exactly the same page**. The above article *does* prove that Obama and Bush have some differences, but not in the way ssoundsystem would have you believe.

And that difference is found just a couple paragraphs down:
The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said.
Now, I'm not sure whether this constitutes a "nothing's going to happen, leave me alone" answer, or whether Obama truly does not believe that deciding whether to criminally prosecute members of a prior administration for national security decisions is a presidential-level decision.

No one had any doubt whether, whatever Nixon's sins, the decision to pardon him and the responsibility for that decision rested solely on the shoulders of the President. And though most of his decisions were not exactly, well, helpful, George W. didn't seem the type who backed away from them. But now Obama doesn't want to "prejudge" whether his AG sets a precedent that will, someday, be applied to him, his decisions and opinions, and everyone who works in his administration?

CNN completes the president's thought:
"There's a host of very complicated issues involved there. As a general deal, I think we should be looking forward and not backwards."
This man is truly a new breed of superhero: The unDecider, able to evade tall responsibilities in a single trite, meaningless sound bite.

* and not even unfavorably.

** Yes, there are exceptions, like abortion. But the last 30 years ought to demonstrate that when it comes to the practice of abortion, the opinion of the president is irrelevant.


Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Notes for a meeting with the Bobs

Some of us IT folks were asked once to create an individual profile, though I don't remember if we were interviewing for our own jobs:

My hobbies include designing disposal facilities for low level nuclear waste and gold mining. I have won the National Spelling Bee, a Rhodes scholarship, and the Iowa "Pork Queen" competition. Blessed with tremendous strength and balance, I once assembled a Mack Truck using only a pipe cleaner and a ball of ear wax. I have no eyebrows. I have raised world champion Norwegian Wharf Rats and saved the Ozark Salamander. I have won the Iditarod and the WWF Intercontinental wrestling championship. There are two full-sized statues of me at the Kremlin, and one in Mecca. Several South American tribes have legends that I will one day return. I was drafted by the Mets, the Jets, and the Nets. I can cruise the Miracle Mile. Bass fear me, and often jump into my boat in despair rather than face the wrath of my Hula Popper. I have won 4 dog fights, 3 bull fights, and a cock fight. I have ruled Siam. I conference call weekly with the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and the Great Communicator. The Bering Strait was my idea. I have written several best-selling novels under the noms de plume "Tom Clancy" and "Geoffrey Chaucer". Grizzly bears unquestioningly obey my commands. I am able to emulate a 3270 without software. I am able to charm venomous cobras with a harmonica and a 2" length of scotch tape.

On weekends, I travel the lecture circuit speaking on the history of the Knights Templar, the moons of Jupiter, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I won a Congressional Medal of Honor for holding off a battalion of NVA with only a spoon and a half-bottle of Tabasco sauce. I am the Egg Man. I designed a Slavic language containing only vowels on the back of an envelope while traveling by train to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. My yard never needs mowing. I have thrown out the first pitch at every World Series since 1873. I designed the flag. I have been the subject of 2 documentary films and an episode of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom". Hoyt, New Brunswick is named after me. Hoyt, Kansas, is not.

To further world peace, I carve artificial limbs out of whale bone, which I personally distribute to the victims of land mines in war-torn Afghanistan. As a Christmas present for my brother, I invented a vaccine for Dutch Elm Disease. I have a world-renowned collection of coprolite. I know what "entropy" is. There are two elements, one compound, and a species of musk turtle named after me. I have won the Nobel Prize for literature, physics, and origami. I designed the Patriot Missile and the city of Baltimore. I caught Captain Kidd, and advised Churchill on what to end a sentence with. I have yet to be nonplussed, disgruntled, or bright-sized. Professionally, I have been an arbitrageur, a speculator, and a carbuncle.

I have worked with the CIA, the FBI, and the Board of Hearing Aid Examiners. I don't need an error-correcting modem. I am the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo and Rocket J. Squirrel. To relax, I often scale the Rock of Gibraltar using only dental floss and a hairpin. I invented cappuccino, steel wool, and the astrolabe. When I am threatened, the hair on my back stands up, making me appear larger than I am. I am glad that creativity is encouraged, even at the expense of truthfulness.

(hat tip: Jozum's old floppy drive)

UPDATE(S): At least I finally figured out whom Hoyt, Kansas, is named after, and Jozum hinted that he still has my old answer to the company diversity survey on his hard drive. If he delivers, I promise to post it, though I really don't remember it all that well.

Good Hater and Wildcat

Since I got my paper back today, I'm going to publish the rest of the pieces of Good Hater, but since I know not all of you want to see it cluttering up the front page, I'll publish it off the front page and then just set up the links. So if you want to read it, great, all the pieces will be linked at the left. If not, I have a really interesting* piece on the 1918 Pittsburg Carmen Strike that I may add as well. If you don't like biography, then a story about a futile labor strike brought on by government meddling in the economy for an unnecessary war might be just the thing for you...

* boring. This is not a piece I would have written given the choice, it just happened to be the biggest story, by far, in March 1918 in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Monday, April 20, 2009

If at first you don't secede

A reading from the Book of Yael:
Now comes failed presidential candidate* Ron Paul, adding his inane comments about Texas possibly seceding from the union.

How's this for ignorance?

"What about all the strong endorsements we have given the past decade or two to all the republics that seceded from the Soviet system? We were delighted about it," the Texas Republican congressman said in a video on his Web site.

Uh, Ron, are you actually comparing the former USSR government to the U.S. government?
Maybe I'm ignorant, too, but how about addressing Paul's actual argument? We DID give strong endorsements to (almost) all the nations that seceded from the USSR and Yugoslavia, and we did so with an argument for the right of self-government. A people has the right to rule themselves, just like the Declaration of Independence says, right? Now, perhaps we really didn't mean it and just used high-falutin' words to cover our glee at the death of the Soviet Union and its hell-hole satellites, but if that's the case, it does not change that Ron is historically correct here.

Maybe Yael actually thinks that Georgians in Europe have the right to self-determination, but Georgians in North America don't. Or maybe people have the right to secede from "bad" governments but not "good" ones. What other problem could there be in "actually comparing" the US and the USSR?

But that last question above is pretty funny, given his next sentence:
And don't forget what happened to the states that actually tried to secede from the Soviet empire three and four decades ago. Those attempts were crushed by tanks, guns and the military.
By some weird coincidence, that's same thing that happened to Texas when it last tried to secede, except for the tanks. Then the entire state was placed under military control and a new government instituted that was more friendly to the national government.

So why does it shock Yael that the comparison is made? Does he really not expect that such a secession movement today would be crushed with the full force of the United States military**? The truth is that he probably hasn't thought that far ahead.
No wonder Paul is seen as a loony political figure by so many people.
The greatest perk of being a newspaper editorialist is that you don't actually have to say or prove anything. All you have to do is print a person's words, then call them "failed" and "loony" and then ask a couple of silly questions that have nothing to do with what your subject was talking about. You can even ask hypothetical questions that are only hypothetical in the sense that you don't know the answers to them and therefore presume no one else does, either. This is sufficient to prove*** the ignorance of your subject.

So long as your readers are ignorant as well.

* Your search - "John Edwards" "failed presidential candidate" site:kansascity.com - did not match any documents.

** Unless the seceding state had nukes, it would. But that's why while Paul is historically correct, it's foolish to believe that an actual secession would be any less bloody than the last one. And until one is ready for that, there's not sense in pretending it's a realistic option.

*** or at least declare.

Friday, April 17, 2009

It's hard to take today's racism warriors seriously

The AP demonstrates an inability to draw distinctions:
In Obama's first two months in office, a New York tabloid took heat over a cartoon appearing to portray the president as a monkey; a California mayor resigned after distributing a picture of watermelons on the White House lawn; and an e-mail making the rounds refers to Obama as "the magic mulatto," with exaggerated ears and nose...

All that underscores how the accomplishment of one man who broke the highest racial barrier hasn't entirely changed the dynamic of a country founded by slave owners. It also shows how far the nation has to go to bridge its centuries-old racial divide.
The key word in the above is "entirely." We have not "entirely" eliminated racism, because though we have elected a black man to be our national "face," a mayor in a town no one but Huck has ever heard of sent an email with watermelons on the White House lawn. We have not "entirely" gotten past our hangups, because in a nation where black people could be legally enslaved 150 years ago, today there is that one political cartoon* that might, if you looked at it from the right angle, have compared Obama to a chimp, an indignity up with which no white president would have to put.

Of course, one can still find racism by looking for it, and one does not even have to look that hard. There might even be occasions racism finds you. But it's a shamed racism of the whispered joke, the nervous look and laugh, the pretended-not-to-see-your-cab-hail or must-have-lost-your-resume racism. It's still there, it still affects people, and it still hurts. But it is not the same racism of prior generations.

A thought hit me** while listening to the blatherings of Janeane Garofalo concerning the Tea Parties, which caused me to go back and dig out the above couple-week old article: those who refuse to admit that the great racism fight has been won, those who still assert that fighting the trivial racism of today amounts to glorious battle in which powerful foes will be vanquished, are not warriors but lemmings***.

When you see someone who focuses on the 2% not solved while minimizing the 98% solved, you're seeing someone fighting for glory in a battle already decided****. But you're also seeing someone who, 100 years ago, would have been just like the cultural majority in that day as well. They would have been as loudly racist then, as loudly prohibitionist then, as loudly anti-Irish then, as the most rabid nativist. Because it takes no guts to be an anti-racist in a culture where no one can get along publicly as a racist, it therefore accrues no glory. They are simply a product of their times, like all the dead white males they bash.

* my, my, how they have changed.

** It didn't hurt much, I was just momentarily stunned by something so unexpected.

*** There are two exceptions: people who draw paychecks for "fighting" racism (i.e. political boiler room penny stock salesman) and those for whom the entirety of meaning in their lives has revolved around this fight and they are simply afraid it will end and leave them empty.

**** when politicians make up stories about how their fathers were civil rights marchers, those marchers have won a victory as great as WWII, where politicians routinely make up stories about their own families' exploits.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

If you don't want to see the genie

Don't rub the lamp:
Wall Street's belief that bank stress-testing would be a non-event for the stock market has changed, and investors may not like the results.

The government's efforts to analyze whether the nation's 19 largest banks have enough operating capital to avoid federal cash infusions had been receiving scant attention—until serious questions began to arise over whether the process was flawed...
I don't know that Wall Street considered stress-testing a "non-event;" rather I think they fully expected the government was going to be forthright about which banks were strong and which not*. They probably should have considered it one, and should even moreso now, because it is simply another symbolic action that attempts to instill that magical quality - confidence - that allegedly makes the world go round.

What the government apparently wanted was a "test" that would show that all the children are above average, and they hoped that everyone would believe the results. What they are doing by not being transparent with those results is undermining confidence by giving the impression that either the banks didn't pass or the test was fake - in that sense the way the test is being handled makes the situation worse than if there had been no test at all**. Whatever confidence might have been buttressed through honesty is being destroyed by what looks to observers very much like deceit.

The only conclusion a wise investor can draw is that the banks were so weak that the government is afraid to tell people how weak they are. That may not be true. It's certainly not true in all cases. But if your doctor should ever refuse to give you your biopsy results and instead talk about false positives and the advances he expects to be made in medicine over the next decade, only a complete fool would fail to seek a second - and more competent - opinion.

* After all, why test unless there is a possibility of failure? And why announce the test if they had no intention of announcing the result?

** A perfect illustration - as if we needed another - of how "nothing" is exactly what the government should be doing. By constantly mucking about they will make the situation far worse for far longer than it ever needed to be.

First impressions

I don't watch the show, but wow. Just wow.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

A pet that will outlive humans

Roach is the new kitten:
Nine-year-old Austin Heard is raising the big black bugs in his mother's house. In three little plastic cages he's got about 75 of them. When he picks up two of the cages the roaches scurry up and down the plastic wall.

Heard, with no hesitancy whatsoever, handles the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches frequently. He touches the insects with the same care most kids use on puppies or rabbits. But then, puppies and rabbits don't hide out under shirt collars.
Back in 1981 I went to the national scout Jamboree at Fort AP Hill*. All the kids from my council made the trip from Minnesota to Virginia and back on two buses, only one of which had a tape deck. Between 48 kids we had but one cassette, so in the wide open spaces outside of radio range - and there were a lot of them - we listened to the B52s, over and over and over. I still know all the words to Rock Lobster by heart. But this really isn't about that.

So anyway, on the way home we stayed in a dump of a motel or on a school or church floor or somewhere in our nation's capital. And the place was crawling with roaches. Being from northern Minnesota, we had never seen roaches at all**, so of course a bug hunt was in order. We would flip on the lights, catch the biggest ones we could, and hold impromptu races and the like. It never compared to the reptile wars we used to hold in inflatable boats at scout camp, but sometimes you just have to play the hand you're dealt***.

Among the dozens of fine specimens we captured were two who could have been the gods of all DC roaches. Each of them hung well over each end of an upright Coke can, and while I'm no expert on roaches, I still think that's pretty impressive. We named them Cock and Roach and attempted to smuggle them back to Minnesota.

We made it as far as Ohio before the scoutmasters caught on and made us let them go, which of course we did in true boy scout fashion. We couldn't release them on the bus, so at the next rest area we held a little going away ceremony and let them go - into one of those self-closing change slots on a pay phone.

I would sure hate to have been the next unsuspecting Ohioan who thought all he was going to get back from that phone was his dime...

* I don't remember all that much about it, to be honest, except that 35,000 scouts singing "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly" along with Burl Ives himself is a memory that sticks with a kid.

** the mosquitoes eat them, I think.

*** Hey, what else are you going to do in DC? It's not like we could raise taxes.

A kinder, gentler tax man?

The Taxman cometh:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As a deep recession strips Americans of their jobs, homes and investments, the 2009 U.S. tax season promises to see a large uptick in first-time delinquent income taxpayers...

The Internal Revenue Service, which collects taxes in the United States, vowed to show its gentler side this year...

Critics are skeptical this will happen.
I wonder why critics might be skeptical, even (gasp!) cynical, that an organization that operates secret courts, charges punitive interest and penalties that cannot be dismissed in bankruptcy, issues myriad, contradictory rules that no human can follow or obey, has unlimited resources that it can bring to bear against an individual, and has the power to throw people in jail for life - yeah, you have to wonder why people might not believe that the IRS is going to be kinder and gentler.

Well, there's a reason they will not be, and it has nothing to do with whether IRS agents are sadistic or greedy or evil or whatever stereotypes are - often unfairly - leveled against them. The reason is that the income tax is not a means of raising money as much as it is a means of social control and coercion - and coercion will not work unless people Fear - with a capital F - the IRS.

But it is not the IRS that is the problem: it is merely one of the many coercive arms of Washington. It's not even the income tax that is the problem, though it is definately a very big problem. The problem is a government that looks upon people, as Bastiat noted, "as raw material to be formed into social combinations." You are a tiny cog to be added into a machine that they wish to build. It is not enough that people live happy and peaceful lives, they must ask instead what they can do for their country.

And then they must be forced to do it.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Family doodle

Wildcat - The Pittsburg Carmen Strike of 1918

The train from Pittsburg arrived precisely at noon on the second of March. Expectant passengers all along the Joplin depot's boarding platform breathed a sigh of relief, not that the train was on time, but that it had arrived at all. Almost three weeks earlier, the operators – known as “carmen” – of every train that plied the Joplin & Pittsburg Railway line had walked off the job, leaving the J&P's passengers without reliable transportation. With the trains now operated by replacement carmen, service looked to be back to normal, just as J&P president Joseph. J. Heim had promised. Satisfied riders bustled off the newly-arrived car toward job or home, while those passengers who waited for boarding began to edge forward on the platform, the coins in their hands eager to fulfill their appointed task. Suddenly the cars and the lights went dark. The J&P railroad strike was not over after all - it was about to veer off on a course which would lead from Pittsburg and Joplin to Kansas City and Detroit, carrying passengers, politicians, owners, and union officers along with it. None would be more surprised at the strike's path than the railroad operators who started it.

From its inception in 1907 until its demise in the late 1920s, the J&P provided public transportation in and around the capital of the Kansas coal fields, Pittsburg. Anchored at their main depot on Broadway - Pittsburg’s main street then as today - the J&P’s electric tracks stretched north to Franklin, and from there east to Mulberry and west to the county seat of Girard. Its lines carried people, freight, and mail south to Columbus, Kansas, from which a short spur shot westward to West Mineral. Crossing the state line into Missouri, the longest of the J&P’s tracks ended in Joplin, directly joining the two towns who lent their names to the company. In total, the J&P's lines provided nearly seventy miles of consistent, affordable transportation for those who, like most of the frustrated patrons milling about Joplin's darkened platform, did not have automobiles of their own.

In the summer of 1917, the owners of the now-silent railroad had signed a contract with the carmen, represented by the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America (known as the “Amalgamated”), that granted them a 20% raise. Though that contract was designed to last until 1920, barely nine months after its ink dried the company's carmen demanded still another raise. The Amalgamated sided firmly with the railroad; it ordered the Pittsburg carmen back to work immediately and when they refused, revoked their union charter.

That reaction to the carmens' walkout changed the strike from a union action to something far more volatile and unpredictable: a “wildcat” strike, one in which union workers could not rely on their own union for support. When their now-expelled local leaders issued monthly union cards for March, the Kansas City branch of the Amalgamated publicly declared the cards “unauthorized and illegal,” exposing any worker who relied on one as evidence of union membership to charges of fraud. Now the carmen had to worry not only about criminal prosecution, they had to be concerned that their own union might be the driving force behind it. It also meant that if the J&P replaced them with other Amalgamated members – which it quickly did – their former union would side with the men who were now driving “their” trains.

When the J&P brought in their new carmen on March second – having placed newspaper ads for experienced operators in newspapers as far away as Kansas City - the engineers who provided power for the J&P turned off the switches. The lines of the J&P went dead, leaving stranded passengers milling about boarding platforms from Joplin to Mulberry. Unfortunately, the carmen would learn that this show of solidarity would prove far less helpful than they initially assumed.

It was not greed that drove the carmen to defy both their employer and their union; it was simple economics. “War,” the newspaper noted, “changed the price on nearly every article,” and few people knew that truth more keenly than the carmen. Unlike farmers who enjoyed almost guaranteed markets and business owners who profited from higher prices, hourly workers found their paychecks buying less and less every month. The day President Wilson first arrived in Washington a carman could have purchased five pounds of chili beans for a shiny silver quarter, just about what he might have earned in an hour. The day he went on strike, that same quarter would buy only two pounds, a 150% increase in price.

Other foodstuffs suffered the same fate. Hard-earned pay that had purchased six pounds of pinto beans in 1913 now brought home only two. The price of syrup rose 33% in a matter of months, soap was up 50%. Dried peaches cost half again what they had before. And lard had risen a massive 200% in the months since America's war efforts began in earnest. Despite the best efforts of the newly-established United States Food Administration, the price of nearly every item that supported their families far surpassed the significant raise the carmen had accepted in July of 1917. There seemed no end to the price increases, and no way short of another raise to escape their disastrous effects.

The Food Administration, established as a wartime measure to ensure sufficient food supplies to American troops and civilians in allied countries, issued a continuous stream of regulations designed to ensure that the shiploads of American farm products being sent overseas would be underwritten by increased production and efficient distribution at home. But their continuing modification of rules and quotas often had the opposite effect: food producers had to continually guess how much food they would be allowed to produce and at what price, forcing work stoppages and exacerbating shortages. On March fifth, the Milling Division of the Food Administration announced a repeal of its “75% of a 90% basis” rule – allowing companies to return to 90% of pre-war production at controlled prices – after half of the mills in Kansas City became unprofitable and closed their doors. Four days prior to that repeal, they had announced the extension of a rule that allowed bakers to use rye flour as a substitute for wheat flour. That rule was scheduled to expire March first; however, the Food administration was forced to extend it for another month. Many areas of the country, they discovered, lacked the ingredients they had mandated to serve as a replacement for rye flour, which was currently serving as a replacement for wheat flour, which was in shortage at least partially because their prior rules had unexpectedly closed down dozens of mills that produced it.

To reduce the nation's reliance on its farmers and on the railroads which moved their produce from the farms to the cities, the federal government established a commission tasked with promoting “War Gardens” in every city, town, yard, and sun-drenched window across the nation. The National War Garden Commission issued booklets explaining the basics of gardening, from pest control to home storage, and worked with employers to ensure that every field and vacant lot would be available to employees who wished to grow their own food. President Wilson joined that effort personally, publicly expressing the hope that “every school will have a regiment in the volunteer war garden army” and encouraging school children to raise a half-billion dollars' worth of food that might further reduce railroad traffic and high prices.

But with ever-increasing requisitions of food being shipped across the Atlantic, increased production alone proved unable to keep the supply/demand equation in balance. To reduce the domestic demand for food, the government declared “meatless days,” announced via newspaper cartoons that featured patriotic families forgoing meat, symbolically reaching across the Atlantic to provide that valuable commodity to the boys in France instead. “The final success of the war effort depends upon our thrift in conserving food products,” noted Food Administrator Herbert Hoover. Making the same point more bluntly, Cara Binzel of the Food Administration scolded an assembly of citizens in Parsons, “Every bit of bacon consumed by you people at home is taken from the soldiers and our allies across the sea.” High prices, while unwelcome to those forced to pay them, also served as a valuable ally in the effort to decrease Americans' food consumption.

Elected officials did their part to help the food situation, which in their inimitable style was accomplished mostly by looking for witches to burn. While accusing the president of neglecting the nation’s farmers, Senator Kenyon of Iowa held Senate hearings on a proposed takeover of the packing industry to alleviate the recurring shortages. “I believe Hoover . . . would do a lot of things,” one witness testified before the assembled solons, if only Wilson would give him authority to implement a better plan. Three days later, former Kansas Governor W. R. Stubbs laid responsibility for the same problems at Hoover's door, asserting that due to mismanagement, “the meat division of the Food Administration is controlled by the large packers.”

Food Administration bureaucrats at the state and county level tried to deal with the situation through vigorous enforcement of the administration's myriad rules. When meetings to explain the rules publicly proved insufficient to garner compliance, Dr. H. M. Grandle, food administrator for Crawford County, ominously announced that he had received reports that unnamed ladies in Pittsburg were violating the so-called “50-50 rule” on the use of wheat flour, selling contraband bread at church bazaars and thereby unfairly competing with law-abiding merchants. Those merchants in turn complained that ladies at church bazaars believed the merchants had caused the rise in food prices through price-gouging and war profiteering. “The Federal Food Administration,” claimed A. G. Johnson, a Salina grocer addressing a convention of retailers meeting in Pittsburg, “is unjust in proclaiming this to the public.”

Uninterested in whom to blame, some members of the public took it upon themselves to enhance their personal food supplies through more direct means than growing or buying it. Robert Clark and two of his friends appeared in juvenile court to explain the disappearance of a load of beans from a barn attached to the Kansas Normal School, now Pittsburg State University. While the boys thought they had escaped undetected with their loot, Clark's dog had been “arrested” at scene of the crime, revealing their identity to unamused law enforcement officers.
Whoever was to blame for the incessant price rises, J&P maintained that since these unfortunate side effects of the war lay beyond their power to remedy, the contract signed with their workers the prior summer remained in force. They again ordered the carmen and now the engineers back to work.

Contract or not, the carmen dug in their heels while hoping the addition of diplomacy might bring success where direct action alone had failed. A committee of three carmen traveled to Kansas City to meet personally with J&P president Joseph Heim. The scion of the Heim brewing family of East St. Louis and Kansas City, Heim's business interests included a telephone company and a food products company, both based in Kansas City. Unfortunately for the carmen, he proved singularly unsympathetic to the complaints of recalcitrant employees from one of his lesser ventures. When R. L. Reeves, the general secretary of Amalgamated, sent a telegram to the Headlight reiterating that the ad hoc committee could not represent a union whose officers had all been suspended, the talks broke off. The trio immediately departed for the Amalgamated's main offices in Detroit, hoping to salvage some support from the union that was now publicly undercutting their efforts at reconciliation.

Pittsburg's city council finally began to look at the issue. The J&P carmen quickly offered a regulation that promised to bring the strike to an immediate end. While the city lacked the authority to force a settlement, it could enforce training requirements upon any railway operating within the city limits. If Pittsburg would simply require that all carmen be trained by men with three years' experience in Pittsburg and who had worked in the city in the previous twelve months, the carmen reasoned, that would make it impossible for J&P to hire replacements. They would simply have to meet the carmens' demands, and service would thereby resume. Though several large meetings were scheduled for Pittsburg for March in addition to the assembled retailers, meetings which all but demanded that rail service be in operation, the city council sat on the request, hoping for a settlement in the meantime.

Stunned by the city council's inaction and dejected by word back from Detroit that the national union office would not even meet with their ambassadors, the carmen voted to return to work on March twelfth. But they quickly discovered they were powerless in more ways than they anticipated. Though they expected to be running their cars by noon, upon their arrival the carmen found that because the engineers were still not working, there was no power on the lines. The cars sat motionless and the strike went on, now beyond the control of the men who started it.

The engineers, who had been drawing their salary since the carmen first walked off the job in February, insisted, much to the dismay of both the company and the carmen, that since “they had not left their places” they were not on strike at all. After stopping the engineers' pay when they cut the power, the J&P had offered to provide carmen who were members in good standing of Amalgamated, which excluded the original carmen, since their local union charter had been revoked. The engineers refused the offer, adding to their own salary demands the stipulation that they would only supply power for the original carmen. Now while those carmen stood ready to take up the jobs they had refused the month before, the engineers demanded to be paid for the ten days that had passed since they first cut the power in addition to the previously-demanded raise. The carmen could no more address that situation than they could make the trains run.

One speaker in Pittsburg might have encouraged the carmen in their despondency, or at least illuminated their circumstances. The United Mine Workers District 14 convention opened on March fourteenth with a surprise visit from “one of the most striking figures of the labor union movement,” Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. Now in her eighties, Mother Jones had been at the forefront of the labor union movement for four decades. She told the assembled miners not only about the ongoing organization of miners in places like Colorado and West Virginia, but also revealed how companies infiltrate the labor movement to undercut the efforts of unionized workers.

Whether or not that was the reality in which the carmen now found themselves, they could certainly appreciate the sentiment. With the national office of their own union standing arm in arm with the J&P, there remained little for them to do but to await word from the governor, who had been asked by a fellow union in Kansas City to intervene or to pray for the city council to act. If those avenues failed, they could only fall back on the hope that the engineers could force the railroad into a settlement that included them.

The hoped-for solution was not long in coming, though neither the city council nor the engineers had any hand in it. On March 16th, a week after the house and senate agreed on a bill that would put all short line railroads under President Wilson's control until the end of the war, the Railroad commission announced that railroads should offer assistance to their workers to help with the inexorable price rises. Much to the carmens' joy, the commission also proposed that “the lowest-priced man should have the greatest amount of assistance.” Suddenly the engineers' demands, which represented the last remaining obstacle to their return to work, did not seem so impossible to overcome. Five days later, the J&P agreed to them; the lights came on, the tracks hummed, and the carmen who had started the wildcat strike six weeks prior returned to work, though they had not yet agreed to a specific pay raise. “It is a patriotic duty for the men to keep the cars running,” declared Amalgamated's Frank O'Shea, in announcing the end of the standoff. Whether they felt patriotic about it or not, the carmen were just happy to be back at work.

On April tenth, the Joplin & Pittsburg Railway awarded all their employees, union or not, a raise “in consideration of the high cost of living.” While the raise did not modify the existing railroad contract, it did amount to about a 10% increase for the carmen. The new money failed to overcome the continuing price inflation, but it provided a welcome down payment on what they hoped would be an opportunity to catch up on six weeks of lost work. As the lights flashed on and the cars left their stations, the Carmen Strike of 1918 sputtered to an end.

Friday, April 10, 2009

When is a stereotype invidious?

Despite the warning*, someone is inciting racism on the MSNBC Race and Ethnicity message board:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The search is on for a team of crooks who robbed an Arlington couple at gunpoint for their takeout Popeye's chicken.

According to police, a young mother was leaving her shift after closing the Popeye's restaurant in Arlington on Atlantic Boulevard when she noticed she was being followed home.

Authorities said four men drove by several times in a burgundy Pontiac sedan yelling, "give us the chicken," at the woman and her boyfriend.
Due to the fact that the article does not describe the suspects, I don't know the race of the men who eventually robbed this lady and her boyfriend of their chicken, but I did notice that question was first and foremost on the minds of any number of commenters across several forums where the story was posted. Just the fact that this story was posted in Race and Ethnicity presumes that race is germane here, which means that - if I may jump to a conclusion - the posters, like the commenters, figure that four guys in a burgundy Pontiac robbing people of their fried chicken are black.

I'll admit that if I were forced to guess the race of the perps, I would give even odds that they were black. But I say that as one who finds stereotypes a) more true and b) less offensive than modern politically-correct Americans are allowed to. It's not the fried chicken I would base that on, but the Pontiac. If my personal stereotypes hold true to reality, there are two types of people who drive burgundy Pontiacs: old white ladies and young black guys. And according to the latest FBI stats, old white ladies are underrepresented in the armed robbery demographic. So I'm really just playing the odds here.

But be that as it may, it does make me wonder about stereotypes in general. When I posted my vacation thoughts over in the Fire Swamp, which included my observation that black people have more rhythm than white ones, I was informed that, "I think quantifying something like 'rhythm' and then breaking it down along the lines of race based on your personal observations while on vacation is problematic at best..."**. As if I was the first person to make that particular observation.

So while my horribly racist picture*** above perpetuates a stereotype, is the stereotype itself invidious? If black people are noted for a tendency to like fried chicken, is that any more invidious than expecting to find crab rangoon in a Chinese restaurant? Is it any more invidious than my cartoon from a few days ago that alleges that "young pinkies from Columbia and Harvard" are drunk on power****? Is it more invidious than a chicken joint in a predominantly black neighborhood named "Obama Fried Chicken"? How about the nearby "Obama Beauty Supply"? And if there is a difference, why?

Stereotypes are not only universal, they are useful for helping us put things in context. When Eddie Murphy played an old Jewish guy in "coming to America," it was a stereotype. When he played the smart-assed black robber in "48 Hours," it was a stereotype as well. While no one thinks, I suspect, that all old Jewish guys hang out in barbershops or all black guys sing "Roxanne," those stereotypes help us organize our surroundings, right or wrong. When they are invidious is when they apply negative moral qualities to the innocent. If I offer cornbread to a black guy who doesn't like it, I may have made a fool of myself through ignorance. When I treat him like a criminal because I make an incorrect assumption based on his race, then - and only then - I have committed a moral offense.

* "You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, disseminate, distribute, or facilitate distribution of any content, including text, images, sound, data, information, or software, that: incites, advocates, or expresses adult content such as pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism..." When commenters post their racist thoughts in reaction, I suppose they are without blame. They have been "incited."

** But even funnier is the number of people who insist very loudly that because something is a stereotype, it must be FALSE. I guess that explains all the stereotypes about Japanese high jumpers and about sprinters from American Samoa.

*** I have it on the good authority of AuthenticHistory.com that it is, in fact, racist.

**** Actually, it's certainly less invidious; there is no moral approbation attatched to the enjoyment of fried chicken, while being a pinko with a fifth of powerade does carry such. More invidious than fried chicken or rhythm is the stereotype that the face of crime is black.

Good Hater II - John Brown's Body

Four years prior, a baby-faced attorney named George Hoyt had presented himself before a magistrate judge in Charlestown, Virginia, to organize the defense of “Osawatomie” John Brown, on trial for his life for the failed assault on Harper's Ferry. Though Hoyt's unannounced arrival surprised the defense as much as the prosecution, Brown quickly agreed to accept his help. After a brief challenge to his qualifications, this “mere boy,” admitted to the Massachusetts bar barely a year before, took upon his slender shoulders the impossible task of defending John Brown.

Even the most ardent Brown supporter held little expectation that a trial would result in anything short of Brown's execution. So rather than sending the finest defense available, a number of his partisans, wealthy backers known later as the Secret Six, plotted a more direct, if less visible, course of action. A careful observer might have questioned why Brown's supporters appeared content to wager the defendant's fate on this completely unknown intruder. In truth, they were not counting on Hoyt to win a trial at all.

“Hoyt went to Charlestown, at my insistence,” confessed John Le Barnes, a Boston attorney and member of the Secret Six, because “so youthful and physically fragile a person in appearance . . . would not create the suspicion that a more mature man might.” That suspicion was that Hoyt's real objective was to gather information about the physical layout of the jail, the numbers and movement of guards, and possible avenues of entrance and retreat.

It was generally assumed at the time that Hoyt, “in his eagerness to be on the ground, had rushed off to Charlestown on his own responsibility.” Hoyt carefully cultivated this naive conclusion, a task made easier by his youthful appearance and near-complete lack of legal qualifications. From the beginning, his job was that of a scout, sent to reconnoiter hostile territory in preparation for an attempted rescue of Brown through military means.

One factor that remained outside the Secret Six's control was convincing Brown to accept the assistance of counsel he neither knew nor expected. Here it was Hoyt's name, rather than his baby face, that opened a door stubbornly wedged shut as much by Brown – whose mind was unalterably set on making a last stand in Charlestown – as by the prosecution. George Hoyt was not the first man of that surname the prisoner had encountered. In 1858, John Brown had spoken throughout New England of the troubles in Bleeding Kansas. As part of his testimony, he often recalled his friend David Starr Hoyt, a staunch free-state man from Massachusetts who was killed in 1856 by border ruffians. “I was present,” Brown would say, “and saw the mangled and disfigured body of the murdered Hoyt . . . brought into our camp. I knew him well.” The significance of the young lawyer's name was not lost on Brown. When asked if he wished this new arrival's help, Brown requested that George Hoyt take his case.

The “beardless boy” who offered his services to Brown had been raised in the middle of the radical abolitionist activity that consumed much of Massachusetts in the 1830s and 1840s. His father was a doctor long-remembered for holding “an interest beyond the care of his patients, the cause of freedom and the slave.” Among Dr. Hoyt's more celebrated abolitionist accomplishments was a successful lawsuit concerning a 10-year-old slave boy named Anderson, whose mistress had foolishly brought him into that state. He won custody of the boy, who quickly became a sensation at local abolitionist rallies. George's mother, of the same political mind as her husband, served as an officer in the local women’s anti-slavery society. Barely three months past his near-fatal beating by a pro-slavery colleague on the Senate floor, Senator Charles Sumner had invoked in a letter to a teen-aged George “the protection of Liberty in Kansas, and the overthrow of the oligarchical Tyranny which now degrades our Republic.” Raised in this electric atmosphere and with a freed slave as a boyhood companion, Hoyt quickly developed a reputation as “a most eloquent young speaker, of decided Anti-Slavery sentiments.” He also shared with the rest of John Brown's men a burning desire to, “with one desperate and triumphant stroke, dash in pieces the accursed South. ”

John Brown ultimately vetoed the breakout that Hoyt had proposed to him. After a trial that lasted barely a week and jury deliberations that took less than an hour, he was found guilty on all counts. Brown was hanged for treason a month later, in December, 1859, his legend and legacy cemented. Brown's execution dragged the issue of slavery to the forefront of the nation's conscience, where it would fester throughout the war, but nowhere more than in Brown's adopted, bleeding Kansas. So George Hoyt followed David Starr Hoyt's footsteps, and John Brown's oldest son, into the heart of that fight.

Hero of the Blue

By the end of the war, George Hoyt's time in Kansas was drawing to a close. On July 9, 1867, he became the editor of the Leavenworth Conservative, the same day it was noted that, thankfully, the grasshoppers were all gone from Leavenworth. The next year he was elected Kansas' sixth Attorney General. In 1871, the year after he completed his two-year term as the state's chief law enforcement officer, Hoyt moved with the wife he had married in the middle of the war back to Athol, Massachusetts. It was the home town of both of them.

Hoyt spent two years as Athol's representative in the Massachusetts legislature, where he led an effort to censure Senator Sumter – the same Senator who had written him in his youth - for introducing a bill he deemed insulting to the Union's soldiers . He edited his hometown newspaper and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic. On February 2, 1877, George Hoyt died, leaving a wife and two children behind. He was thirty-nine years old.

“Here Hoyt, the hero of the Blue, fought brave and well the battle through .” So wrote the poet Thomas Brower Peacock in his epic Civil War poem, The Rhyme of the Border War. To Peacock, like most Kansans, Hoyt's war on the border made him a hero in blue. Many Missourians and not a few Democratic partisans in Kansas considered him a baby-faced demon loosed from the Union-blue bowels of hell itself. But what are we, separated by generations from the passions of that age, to make of him?

That he was a horse thief? The evidence is thin, though it might be noted that while Jennison retired to a horse ranch , Hoyt became the attorney general of Kansas. That he was a looter just playing soldier? It must be stated that while Jennison was run out of the army and prosecuted for jayhawking, Hoyt was appointed a brevet brigadier general.

Perhaps we might be tempted to think that he sought military glory, a fame that would last the ages. If that was his hope he failed, for one of Sumner's biographers, writing a mere two decades after Hoyt's death, noted that he had been a soldier, “but not one remarkable for any service .” No author ever honored him with a biography as they did Sumner or John Brown or even “Doc” Jennison. Even the town named for him - Hoyt, Kansas, a bedroom community on the northern outskirts of Topeka – contains no monument to his glory.

Surely he was brave; one can hardly imagine the fear he swallowed while throwing himself into the hornet's nest of John Brown's trial or the cavalry charges at Westport. No one who knew him could doubt for a moment that he was loyal and articulate and intelligent.

But mostly he was a young man of exceptional talent and drive with a misleadingly innocent face who – like so many others of his generation - threw himself, sickly body and bloodstained soul, headlong into the greatest struggle this nation has ever faced. Somewhere along the bloody trail that led to Kansas and back, he managed to forge hatred into leadership.