A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Obama Infrastructure Portion
Paid By Millionaire Tax
Fails Senate 51-49 (60 Needed):
Thumbs UP!
The Republicans propose an alternative measure focused on reining in regulations (which operates on the supply side of the economy--lowering the cost of doing business is bullish for the economy). Senators Nelson (D-NE) and Lieberman (I-CT) voted with the Republican senators. For Republicans, the idea of taking money from the economically successful lowers relevant spending, savings and investment in the private sector for Obama's picking winners and losers in infrastructure plays is unacceptable in principle. I also think Obama's bizarre strategy of picking winners, say, teachers, construction workers, police and fireman over every other occupation, is arbitrary and unfair.
I am in favor of infrastructure spending, but based on marginal utility and not engaging in morally hazardous methods (e.g., rebuilding local schools). If we engage in raising revenues, the tax should be paid across the board, not based on class envy. Whether or not state and local projects are worthy on their own merits is one point--but to what extent should the US pick up the slack for state and local governments which refuse to challenge unsustainable public sector union contracts?
In Obama, They Don't Trust:
It Calls For an Act of Congress
(Not an Act of God)
In a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia last year, Obama mistakenly said that e pluribus unum was the national motto. This is mistaken; there are 3 mottoes on the Great Seal of the United States, adopted by Congress in 1782, one of which is what Obama identified. However, the US did not have an official motto until 1956, when "In God We Trust" was adopted and subsequently printed on currency.
I don't really see the need to establish what is already the law. I think it's much ado about nothing. Obama certainly would have been correct if he said it was one of the national mottoes or an unofficial American motto. Nine voted against the bill (8 of them Democrats), primarily (by arguments) due to issues of the separation of church and state.
Obama did annoy me with a direct shot at Boehner, saying that the motto vote distracted the Congress from more important things like voting on his jobs bill going down in flames. Actually, the process took 20 minutes. Perhaps if Obama didn't spend all that time playing golf (which takes more than 20 minutes), he might come up with a job-creating business income tax reform measure.
Cain's Sexual Harassment Problems
Democrats must be highly amused by this 'scandal'; their politicians soil the blue dresses of White House interns, have sex with male pages, engage in tickle contests or send pictures of their clothed crotches while aroused, and the Republicans have scandals like an 'I'm too sexy for my shirt' Congressman or Herman Cain referencing a female worker's height relative to his wife's.
This is the only specific allegation I've heard, and it was from Herman Cain himself in a news clip. We don't know the other side of the story here. It's a rather odd observation to make of a co-worker (maybe he was looking to buy his wife a dress and didn't know his wife's dress size, but if I was a clueless male shopping for my wife, I would get help from a department store saleslady, not my work colleagues.) Maybe the woman saw it as perhaps a backdoor attempt to discuss other aspects to her appearance. I generally think as a matter of prudence and civility one should not to make unsolicited comments about a woman's appearance.
I think that Cain has hurt his credibility with shifting stories about whether and how much any settlement was for. It is not unusual for settlements to be made in an expensive legal system where the cost of fighting a frivolous case exceeds a target settlement. I think until the legal profession does a better job policing itself and/or we implement some long-overdue legal reforms, these things are going to happen. (I'm not holding my breath; the Democrats zealously protect the interests of trial lawyers.) I've heard rumors of settlements of up to $35K. I'm not a lawyer and I certainly haven't looked at sexual harassment lawsuit settlement datapoints, but my inference is that a more substantive sexual harassment case would settle for more than that.
I'll just mention a few relevant experiences. When I joined the MIS faculty at UWM, I was given an office next door to a relatively well-known female professor in my discipline. (One of her articles was on the reading list of one of my doctoral research seminars.) She seemed to have an unusual personal interest in me. At first when she demanded to know my salary and I declined to discuss it, she went through state records to find it, accusing me of a "cover-up". (I think she was worried that UWM was paying me more.) But it stretched into other things as well. At some point, I had to apply for some kind of online account at the university, and for some reason she seemed all too eager to help--in person. I wasn't sure why, until she started registering my account and came to a mandatory date of birth. I reluctantly told her, and she looked up at me and said, "Oh, Ron, you're just a pup." What really bothered me there was she kept pressuring me to visit her apartment or condo. I kept sidestepping the requests, but somehow she eventually got me there under some pretext (maybe she had left something in her office and needed me to bring it to her). Of course, nothing ever happened between us (I found some excuse to leave after bringing her stuff); I was never attracted to her, and to be frank she had a quirky personality. Among other things, she proudly claimed she hadn't spoken to her sister in 9 years, and one week she went down to Central or South America to adopt a baby girl. I never really raised the unwanted personal attention issue with the university administration.
The problem eventually went away; I got on her bad side (what can I say? I have a gift...) She had an ABD ("all but dissertation") student writing a thesis under her and decided to have the student use the term "end user computing" (an MIS buzzword, but basically the idea is of user- (vs. technologist-) driven applications); the doctoral candidate was really looking at PC software. The concepts are not synonymous and I wanted the candidate to use more precise terminology. My colleague vetoed my suggestion for the always-satisfying reason: "because I said so". Apparently that challenge to her authority was enough to put me on her enemies' list. Even after I achieved PhD faculty status (before the business school weakened qualifications to make breathing versus publications the main consideration), none of the MIS PhD students asked me to be on their committees (one of my motivations for choosing UWM's offer over, say, Bowling Green State's offer: BGSU only had one MIS graduate course, the core course, normally taught by some textbook writer in the area).
In an earlier post, I explained a story of how in one of my first post-academic DBA gigs I initially worked for a tech co-founder of a company, later acquired by Equifax. Because of office politics, I was not named to replace him, despite his recommendation, after he left to join another company. (The co-founders were at war, and the CEO reportedly had threatened a lawsuit for his leaving to join a perceived competitor.) I eventually applied for a transfer to work under a different account manager, whom had just signed a major million-dollar contract with SBC (now AT&T), just before deregulation legislation. The person who replaced the co-founder was a woman whom had been a manager of the mainframe programmer group. (One of the reasons later told to me why I didn't get the position was because the mainframe programmers thought that I was top management's axman; the company was getting rid of its mainframe to rehost their applications on Sun servers, my principal platform, and that top management was going to fire them all and replace them with young college graduates up to date on Sun platforms. This was all paranoia; I had not even worked directly with any of the programmers, and in fact, management prized the workers' business knowledge and thought they could be trained to work in a Unix Oracle environment.)
This woman and I had very different personalities; within the very first 5 minutes of our meeting for the first time, it was clear she did not like or respect me (e.g., she started the conversation by immediately dismissing all my past accomplishments: I had to prove myself anew to her satisfaction, etc.), and I didn't want to work for her: it wasn't just that she had no background with the technology, the business side and the applications, but she had an unprovoked, hostile attitude towards me. I had stroke with management to get a transfer, but even after I transitioned to my new role, she tried to block my new account manager from sending me to Brazil on a Citibank subsidiary project, worried her new DBA (whom left soon afterwards to join Oracle Consulting) couldn't function in my absence (despite my walking him through scheduled monthly activities twice and detailed documentation on my processes).
Now what does all this have to do with sexual harassment policy? I had to work a few interim weeks with her, and she made my job miserable in ways I won't discuss. I've had to deal with more than my fair share of bad bosses before and since, but there was a difference I hadn't had to face before: she happened to be a very well-endowed woman. The last thing I needed was a bad boss whom "felt uncomfortable" in dealing with me. She always dressed professionally (no Hillary Clinton cleavage thing going on), but I was acutely self-conscious in her presence, always trying to maintain eye contact. It was never an issue, but it was always in the back of my mind.
In fact, management was worried I might quit and pushed her to do some fence mending. Everyone knew that I worked out daily at a nearby Bally's affiliate after dinner; I would often drive to work maybe a mile or two away after finishing my evening workout (maybe about 10PM to check on the status of computer jobs; David, God rest his soul, a minor partner/company DBA/architect, normally had his wolves' howling soundtrack playing over the intercom; the offices were dimly lit and we had one or 2 overnight computer operators working the mainframe. I thought it was awesome...) So one day my car was in the shop and she volunteered to drive me somewhere (maybe it was to pick up a rental car; I had a long auto repair involving a no-collision accident skidding over a patch of ice on a snow-covered road). She tried to make small talk during the drive, mentioning she was doing the Jenny Craig program and had lost a few pounds. I knew better than to make any comment about my manager's appearance and quickly changed the subject.
However, she didn't seem to be self-conscious about her figure. I remember some time after my transition when she participated in some team building event at the company. She was the magician's assistant in a skit; the magician suggested that he had managed to remove her bra without her knowledge without disturbing her outer garments. Then he reached into his top hat and pulled out the biggest bra I've ever seen. She pretended to be surprised and immediately wrapped her arms across her chest.
I know of one complaint filed (subsequently dismissed) after the guy asked a female colleague to lunch at the building cafeteria. The guy had tried to ask her out in September; she declined, saying that she had a serious boyfriend, although she was frustrated that he hadn't asked her to marry him yet. The male co-worker said if he wasn't her type, he would understand and not ask her again; she responded that she wanted to keep her options open. No history, pattern or evidence of inappropriate or intimate comments or conduct, no interim personal communications, no contact outside work hours. So after Christmas, he tried to ask her out to lunch. He found himself suddenly scheduled into a meeting in the executive vice president's office; no salient questions were asked--he was informed that the complaint was under legal review. Three hours later he was told that he still had a job. This was clearly an abuse of process, and it undermined legitimate cases of sexual harassment. All the young woman had to do was say, "No, thank you; I'm not interested. Please don't ask me again." And she could have done that in September. What was her motive? Did she "feel uncomfortable" because an unattractive geek dared to ask her out to lunch? Who knows... Maybe she had been hoping her boyfriend would propose over Christmas, and the co-worker was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On the other hand, at the same company there was this female Indian junior Unix system administrator, whom had an obvious huge crush on the senior male Indian Unix system administrator. She shadowed him everywhere--and I mean everywhere. One evening he had just come home from work, heard a knock at the door, and opened it to find the young woman there, begging him to let her in. I don't think he filed a sexual harassment complaint; I think there was a conversation between the young woman and a senior manager.
Companies have to show a good faith effort to investigate even frivolous complaints. If company lawyers find that the behavior has exposed the company to risk, that employee--even a CEO--can be subject to immediate termination (under at will employment), no doubt to show the judge that the company took immediate action to correct the situation once alerted to it. There are no due process procedures for the complaint target, no costs or penalties to the frivolous complainant.
Things I would keep in mind in analyzing the Cain allegations include the pattern and timing of the allegations. For example, were they clustered or distributed across time? How close were the incidents to his leaving the company or companies? Years later? I am skeptical that a serial harasser's career would have advanced as Cain's did, and I'm sure all the other victims would have been coming out of the woodwork by now for their 15 minutes of fame, the inevitable book deals, etc.
I do think Cain is making a mistake by offering to allow the complainants to be released from their confidentiality agreements. The last thing he wants is a "he said, she said" battle play out over the next few weeks. Every minute Cain is talking about this nonsense is a minute that he is not talking about Obama's atrocious record and incompetent handling of the people's agenda and the economy.
Oddly enough, Cain is getting a boost from all this among the activist base; media conservatives like Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity are acting in a typical pattern about hypocritical treatment in coverage by the liberal media; you saw the rally behind Sarah Palin as the liberal media attacked her. Take my word for it: this is a no-win situation for Cain with the political center of the country; I don't care if he gets a 90% favorable rating from conservatives. The reason Palin is not running doesn't have to do with the conservative base.
I haven't checked to see if Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann have made comments on this issue yet, but they view themselves as the Republican equivalent of cracking the glass ceiling; I don't think either of them wants to be seen as throwing female claimants under the bus.
I watched the reruns of the Fox News Channel prime lineup and was appalled by Hannity and/or VanSusteren all but spitting out the words "anonymous" complaints, the race card (i.e., Clarence Thomas), etc. I do not know the nature of the complaints. This same type of reaction surfaced after McCain staffers anonymously complained about Sarah Palin being difficult to work with during the campaign; all Fox News attacked the anonymous sources. We already knew that the McCain campaign had delayed making Palin available for interviews; we also knew her network interviews weren't going well. Whatever the motivation for the leaks, the point is, you can't put the genie back into the bottle. All this fingerpointing for the leaks is besides the point. Herman Cain should stop bitching about "poor poor pitiful me"; I swear to God, if I hear him talk one more time about the arrows sticking in his back, why this is a reason why good people don't run for public office. All of this may well be true, but I strongly feel that conservatives should not play the victim card.
The fact is that Herman Cain's biggest problem is himself--shifting stories about settlements, etc. You don't give public statements until you've done due diligence in drafting your message. Second, be charitable to the complainants; even if you feel they misinterpreted your words, acknowledge that there was a failure in communication and the reality of their feelings in the context of their experience. Apologize for how your interaction made them feel bad about their experience with you, and wish them well in their endeavors.
Political Humor
"Lindsay Lohan is going back to jail again, for 30 days. On the bright side, if she goes back to jail one more time, she gets a free sandwich at Subway." - Craig Ferguson
[Wait until Lindsay finds out that the facility will no longer honor the 'get out of jail free' card from her Monopoly game...]
An original:
- The House voted 396-9 to reaffirm the national motto "In God We Trust". They felt the need to do this because international currency markets no longer have faith in the fiat money bearing the motto.
Foreigner, "Double Vision"
