I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO.

“Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937).

The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years.

Yesterday the Dow fell over 500 points. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sigh…

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I wrote the letter because: (a) I had recently read three thought-provoking books about racism in America during the early years of the 20th century and (b) the magazine’s profile of Clarence Darrow overlooked an important and defining episode that checkered the man’s career.

The first book, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James Bradley, deals with Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy, highlighting the central role of paternalistic racism in American decision-making.

In the summer of 1905, Roosevelt, seeking to extend American hegemony into Asia, sent a huge diplomatic legation eastward from San Francisco on the passenger ship Manchurian. It was headed by Secretary of War William Howard Taft and, as this was still the era of monarchies, decorated with Roosevelt’s 21-year-old daughter Alice, America’s own “princess.”

The three-month journey across the Pacific also included seven senators, 23 representatives, and about 40 aides, servants, and hangers-on. In the aftermath of Imperial Japan’s stunning victory over Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War—the first victory of an Asian (non-white) power over a European (white) power in modern history—Roosevelt wished to “show the flag” to Hawaiians and demonstrate authority to America’s Filipino subjects (referred to more than once as  “Asian niggers” on the floor of Congress). The Philippines, after gaining independence from Spain in the Spanish-American War, was still in turmoil seven years later over its annexation by the U.S.

Roosevelt justified western control as necessary (what Kipling had called in 1898 the “white man’s burden”) because Taft, governor of the Philippines at war’s end, had assured President McKinley that “our little brown brothers” would need 50-100 years of close supervision “to develop anything resembling Anglo-Saxon political principles and skills.”

The second book was Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang. It deals with the reality upon which Chan’s character was based (real-life Honolulu detective Chang Apana) and the racial implications of an intelligent Chinese hero in American fiction. I’ve already posted about it.

The third was David Stannard’s Honor Killing, an exhaustive, historical examination of Honolulu’s Massie Affair, a racially explosive case of alleged rape (1931) that led to a hung jury and the murder of one of the Hawaiian defendants (1932) by the mother and husband of Thalia Massie, a 21-year-old white woman whose rape story had failed to convince the jury.

Clarence Darrow

Thalia’s father was the illegitimate son of Theodore Roosevelt’s brother; her mother’s grandfather was Alexander Graham Bell (even though Jill Lepore’s article stressed Darrow’s dedication to the oppressed, The New Yorker edited these facts out of my letter…for “space considerations”). Calling on wealthy friends, Thalia’s mother collected enough money to hire Clarence Darrow, whose defense of the accused murderers included creating a fictional scenario that attempted to prove temporary insanity.

The shorthand version of what happened is in my letter.

Most stories of racism in America are about African Americans. This one isn’t.

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©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Crowds of mostly young people outside the White House are celebrating. Surely there is justification for bringing justice down upon terrorists. His death will undoubtedly change the nature of the world conflict for which 9/11 remains the signature event. But the hooting and chanting is unsettling and unthinking. It is as if those celebrants had just watched a team win a sporting event.

Celebrating at V-J Day marked the end of World War II. Bin Laden’s death is not an end. It is a sober reminder that many have died, and many more will die.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

It is hard to imagine a more wrong-headed analysis of Rev. King’s philosophy of non-violence. After correctly noting King’s unwavering stand against the Vietnam War, Johnson loses his way. Quoting from the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech given the day before King was assassinated, Johnson mistakenly likens King’s reference to the  compassionate aid of the Good Samaritan to the Shock and Awe of a mighty armed force. He equates giving aid to waging war.

It would be charitable to assume Johnson was being sensitive to his military audience and ignorant of history. More likely he was willfully changing the past to justify the present.

Whatever your opinion of America’s War on Terror, our military deserves better. Shame on Mr. Johnson.

*     *     *     *     *

I include the relevant portions of Johnson’s talk below, but first, an impassioned take on this issue.

*     *     *     *     *

Excerpts:

[T]he most controversial and difficult stand Dr. King took the final year of his life was against the war in Vietnam. Other civil rights leaders urged him to remain silent on the issue, not to alienate President Lyndon Johnson, who had been their best friend on civil rights. Martin Luther King hated violence. He believed that violence “is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy,” and that “returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars . . . He also believed “an eye for eye leaves everybody blind.” So, beginning in April 1967, one year before he died, Dr. King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, turned this message into an impassioned plea against the war in Vietnam. Indeed, from that point on he questioned the whole rationale for war in general.  From the gospel song “Down by the Riverside,” Dr. King repeated the line: “I Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.”

I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our Nation’s military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack.

To our individual servicemen and women who wonder whether their mission is consistent with Martin Luther King’s own message and beliefs, I refer you again to his very last speech in Memphis, the night before he died. In it Dr. King talked about Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan on the dangerous road to Jericho. With great effect Dr. King drew a parallel between the priest and the Levite who passed by the man on the road to Jericho, beaten and robbed and in need of aid, and failed to help him, and those in Memphis in April 1968 who hesitated to help the striking sanitation workers because they feared for their own jobs, for their own comfortable positions in the Memphis community. He criticized those who are “compassionate by proxy,” and said to those in the audience in Memphis that night, “The question is not, if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?  The question is, if I do not stop the sanitation workers, what will happen to them.”

In 2011, I draw the parallel to our own servicemen and women, deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the comfort of conventional jobs, their families and their homes.  Those in today’s volunteer Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have made the conscious decision to travel a dangerous road, and personally stop and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of the American people.  Every day our servicemen and women practice that “dangerous unselfishness”

*     *     *     *     *

Rev. King’s actual words were: The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Omar Samhan

If so, then the first two rounds of March Madness may promote more US-Islamic tolerance than all the State Department visits Hillary Clinton can schedule.

Two young men, Ali Farokhmanesh of University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, IA) and Omar Samhan of St. Mary’s College (Moraga, CA), excited the nation’s sports fans over the past weekend with their confident, inspired play. Against the odds, #9-seeded Northern Iowa cancelled #1-seeded Kansas’s ticket to the dance, and #10-seeded St. Mary’s took #2-seeded Villanova out of the chase, with Farokhmanesh and Samhan playing leading roles.

Ali’s father’s first name is Mashallah. Omar’s dad comes from Egypt. Obama’s middle name is Hussein.

Are they Muslims?

Doesn’t matter. They shoot hoops, don’t they? And here in America, sports trumps politics.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

It included this comment:

Personal questions are asked by the census taker, [but] I answer only “2 persons live here”. That is all. I consider that anything more is invasive…In past years we have had census takers in our face, in our house, persuading us to give all sorts of info which we refused. Everything from how much money to how many bathrooms. As I recall, the constitution grants the census only the head count.

Actually, this is incorrect. Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution includes:

The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.

So, what is the current US law? TITLE 13, CHAPTER 5, SUBCHAPTER II, § 141[g] states:

“census of population” means a census of population, housing, and matters relating to population and housing.

Why someone would decline to state how many bathrooms they have is beyond me (unless there’s an armory hidden in a toilet tank, but I think that’s covered in the Second Amendment).

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

—attributed to Josef Stalin in Boris Bazhanov’s
Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary, publ. 1992

*     *     *     *     *

Bev Harris is one of democracy’s watchdogs. She leads Black Box Voting, a non-partisan group that seeks transparent and honest elections. Here’s her unsentimental, hard-facts take on today’s important Senatorial election in Massachusetts.

SHINING A BRIGHT LIGHT ON AN UNDEMOCRATIC TACTIC

For 10 years, I’ve been watching a trend to manipulate elections through premature “call” of the race by a media outlet. See below for predictions on what may follow a media call for either candidate in Massachusetts.

Bev Harris

The media “call” can be manipulated because the public doesn’t know that projected winners come from a system that is not even a governmental source! In fact, the media “calls” elections based on data from just one media outlet — usually a quiet little division of the Associated Press that occupies a little corner somewhere and answers very few questions. Volunteers call in result reports to the corporation. The reports are often inaccurate (see below for examples). The names of these volunteers are not part of the public record. We will never get the list of names for those who will call in the 351 numbers which will result in “calling the election” for Tuesday’s Massachusetts election.

HOW THE MEDIA “CALL” MAY ULTIMATELY CONTROL POLICY

Martha Coakley

Scott Brown

Sixty votes are needed. If Coakley is called and installed, they’ve got the 60. If Brown is called and stalled, they’ve got 59. Either way, the media “call” on Massachusetts is going to be under exceptional political pressure.

No matter where you stand on the controversial healthcare bill, be aware that what you see reported on Election Night is not only not “official” or “final”, but is not even real, and may not even be the numbers written down by poll workers or printed out by the voting machine.

ISSUING FALSE NUMBERS TO THE MEDIA TO CREATE A FALSE “CALL”

In the recent controversial NY-23 race, volunteers in multiple wards called in zeroes instead of votes for Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. There WERE votes, but they called in zero and later said oops. This was not a plausible oops, because the zeroes were not called in randomly for various races, nor did the zeroes spread themselves among different candidates. Doug Hoffman had false zeroes reported while votes were called in for the others. Incorrect figures provided to the media resulted in a margin which appeared thousands of votes larger than it actually was, goading Hoffman to concede prematurely.

In the Florida 2000 presidential election, impossible numbers were provided to the media producing exactly the margin needed to “call” the race for George W. Bush. Minus 16,000 votes were reported for Al Gore, and (not knowing the margin was false), Gore conceded privately to Bush and nearly conceded to the nation.

In New York City’s 2008 presidential primary, more than 50 wards falsely reported “zero” votes for Obama (but not for Hillary), creating a superficially low result on Election Night.

In Maine’s 2009 election, the media reported called-in results for Lewiston and Augusta, two of Maine’s largest cities, for seven ballot questions each with two possible choices (7×2=14 results per city), a total of 28 vote results for the two cities. Not a single one of the 28 results was correct, and eight were off by large margins.

In New England, even preliminary governmental results from each municipality are not compiled for a day or so. Results are typically sent by courier or brought by the police to the secretary of state. The results you see on the news are therefore not government results at all, but results generated by unnamed volunteers (or sometimes paid part timers) working for a corporation.

The media “call game” is a political game that can be played dirty, and in Massachusetts, the media “call” could ultimately control national healthcare policy.

Usually, these premature calls can be unraveled if they are incorrect because elections aren’t certified for several days and winning candidates aren’t installed into office for a month or more. But in Massachusetts, because of the special situation with an imminent vote on a controversial bill combined with a temporary senator, the media call can create an undemocratic mess.

JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE

When the media calls an election based on non-governmental verbal information from unnamed volunteers, it displaces legitimate election procedures. Media volunteers can — and HAVE — issued false numbers in order to get the media to call an election for a candidate. The US Congress can — and HAS — installed new voting members of congress before the votes are counted or the contest is determined.

If a media outlet calls the Massachusetts race based on verbal reports from names that are never disclosed, we need to call this what it is: Journalistic malpractice, and a danger to democracy.

If what you see Tuesday night ain’t right, be prepared to speak up. Or shout loudly. It’s our duty.

Coakley and Brown photos: The Boston Globe

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Today, an email that has been circulating for several months came to me. It included a statement purportedly made by Barack Obama about his relationship to ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

“I only saw Rod Blagojevich one time …. And that was in the stands and from a distance at a Chicago Bears Football Game.”

Just like the Keynes quote, it is bogus.

This “Obama” quote (with the words “Football Game” strangely capitalized) is all over the web, usually accompanied by several authentic photographs of the two men together. Like the Obama birth certificate scam, it “proves” that the President is a liar. But not one of the web villains references where, when, or to whom Obama was speaking when he made this statement. And none of the major news agencies mentions this quote in any story about Obama and Blagojevich. Think about this: were it valid, is it conceivable that Fox News would ignore such a statement?

Citizens have a right to disagree. But democracy works when the populace decides based upon truth, not misrepresentation or slander.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Well, that is sad. It seems that making things up has been a major accomplishment of the electronic age. We will probably keep the saying but remove the attribution. This seems to be happening a lot more than it used to. Thanks.

Here’s their updated bumper sticker.

A small victory for truth, justice, and scholarship.

*     *     *     *     *

Update 8/13/09: One month later, the bumper sticker is still being sold online with the attribution.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”

You can find this statement, attributed to economist John Maynard Keynes all over the web. It also appears, somewhat more frequently, in this form:

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.“

In no case, (even in a book about capitalism) is the quotation accompanied by a citation naming its source among Keynes’ many books and lectures. That in itself is not unusual; incomplete attribution is unscholarly, but it is internet SOP. But is either quotation truly from Keynes?

The first version sounds intelligent, but not necessarily Keynesian, and the second reads as if it were written by an illiterate. Since the two are nearly equivalent in their meaning, it is highly unlikely that both of them are from Keynes’ oeuvre. So I queried a number of Keynesian scholars.

Thomas Cate, professor of economics, Northern Kentucky University, specializing in the economics of John Maynard Keynes:
“I do not believe that this quote is by Keynes. It appears to be a re-wording of something said by Adam Smith about the business community.“

J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics, University of California at Berkeley, and former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury:
“I’ve never seen it.”

Alexander Kirby, Associate Professor of American History and Government, University of Wisconsin-Stout:
“Beats me, which is why I’d never use it in a scholarly source.”

Michael S. Lawlor, Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University, co-author of New Perspectives on Keynes (1995):
“The quotation you cite is unfamiliar to me.“

N. Gregory Mankiw, Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and former chief of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors (he even has a dog named “Keynes”!):
“I don’t know where the quotation comes from.”

Allan Meltzer, University Professor of Political Economy, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business:
“I read most of Keynes’s published papers. I never saw it.”

Donald E. Moggridge, Professor of Economics, University of Toronto:
“The quotation is fabricated.“

James M. Rock, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Utah:
“I think it is bogus.”

Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and author of a prize-winning, three-volume biography of Keynes:
“One of the fictions.”

Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business:
“I have never heard of it.”

This is almost certainly one of those cases where someone created an opinion and attached it to a dead person’s name. Gullibility or deviousness carried the fiction onward, and in a while it became gospel.

Except in Wikipedia. This quotation is not included in its Keynes entry.

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Washington Post article: Paul Farhi, Feeding the Beast: The Greed That Lives (and Seems to be Thriving) in Us All, Mar. 3, 2002

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.