Photo credit (c) 2006 Anchor Tool and Plastic Inc. All Rights Reserved

© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved

This may be a new millenium, a new age, a virtual universe, all information all the time, but somebody still has to build the things that support it in the material world. That’s me, and guys like me. I own a factory, we make the finest widgets money can buy.

I inherited an efficient, if not exactly modern plant, the easy part is getting my product out the gate. My employees really handle all that, and they’re pretty darn good. My real job is keeping my production line running, which is mostly about keeping those employees happy, but sometimes things break. I have some crack mechanics, my real headaches come from getting them all the random bits and pieces they need to keep the line working.

There are a lot of interconnected machines here, computer-guided pneumatic systems, actuators, servos, lots of sensors, relays, electronic subassemblies, hydraulic systems, each feeds the next and everything has to work for anything to work. When something breaks, the whole line turns itself off pronto, and even all the the indicator lights, bells and whistles in the world can’t always tell you why.

When that happens, we all climb around like monkeys until someone finds it. Then you just figure it out, you get whatever you need to fix it, you fix it, you turn it back on. It sounds so simple. You get whatever you need to fix it, there’s no outsmarting that. You sure can overthink it, though.

I once had a mechanical problem so troubling that I had to call my attorney.
I’d ordered an expensive tool that didn’t work, and it looked like I was gonna be stuck for it. I had concluded the problem lay in the statutes, the specifics of the law. In particular, I’d encountered a complicating unspecificity to warranties of utility, of suitability, and of durability. At first glance, simply answering two questions (Does it work? Does it still work?) would seem adequate to provide clear evidence of a breach, but then you have to ask,
How well does it work?
Did you correctly identify and specify the need?
How long will it work?

It’s a legal can of worms.

One of my machines is a big old #2 whambusker. Just at closing time, one of my foremen tells me that as a result of normal vibration over sustained operation, it has developed a leak in its 3” submersible rumkinbucker, my master rumpkinbucker is shaking loose. He thinks we just need to tighten the tension nut on the 3” submersible rumkinbucker on my #2 whambusker, but we don’t have a tool that can do it. And that’s exactly what I tell my long-time tool supplier.
“You say a # 2 whambusker? Your master rumpkinbusker must be what, over 120 feet out over the load. You have electrical power way out there?”
“No. I can’t turn it manually?”
“In the the #3 whambusker you can. It’s mounted external to the tank. In a #2, it’s located up inside the tank, you could get a hand rumbkinbusker wrench on it, maybe, but you’d have no room to turn it. You need a powered model. But that’s no problem,” he says, “I got just the wrench you need right here, its a four-inch propane-fired adjustable rumpkinbucker wrench, fits all your smaller rumpkinbuckers, too.”

I sent Bill from shipping to pick it up. When he got back, it was dark. I had my security guard send him home and bring it up.
“You want me to wait, sir?”
“Go on home, Lou, I’ll lock up. I want the line rolling in the morning, I’ll do this tonight myself.”
I unwrap it. Looks pretty keen. When I turn the thumbscrew back and forth, the jaws open and close. I push the button, it gets warm, it spins. Is it the best tool for the job? Well, he didn’t send me a hammer. Only one way to find out.

I turn the yard lights back on and head out the high-bay doors. After a brisk walk in the moonlight, I climb yhe ladder all the way up my old #2 whambusker, shimmy all the way out the boom, reach up, release and remove the master rumpkinbucker cover-plate. I then get up on my tiptoes, put the wrench up into the tank, fish it under the supply hose, and slide it around the suspect master rumpkinbucker tension nut. I tighten the jaws, press the button, it fires right up, and the tension nut starts to loosen even further. I soon can feel my master rumpkinbucker start to wobble, and the drip turns into a stream. I release the button, fish out and quickly pocket the wrench, and start tightening the rumpkinbucker with two hands. Finally, after much groaning and straining, I hear the stream turn back into a drip. Drat.

I pull out the wrench. Upon inspection, it has no reversing switch anywhere. I wipe my hands, pull out my cell and call my supplier. I explain my situation.
Laughing, he says, “If you wanted a reversible propane-fired adjustable rumpkinbucker wrench, you should have ordered one,” and hangs up.
I’ve known him for years, he’s always been a serious businessman, but this is a new low. I wonder, what is he trying to pull?

And of course, all that’s what I tell my lawyer. Good listener, she even listens for a moment after I’m done.
She finally says, “He’s right, you know. You should have ordered the reversible model. We’ll have to argue that nobody in his right mind would provide a propane-fired rumpkinbucker wrench for use in an enclosed space”
“It’s not an enclosed space issue,” I reply.
“I thought you said it was in a tank.”
“I did, and it is, but the guy using it here isn’t in the tank with it when he’s using it, he’s breathing open air, so it’s not an enclosed space issue. That’s not the problem, and the problem isn’t that it only spins only one way, either. The wrench spins only one way, and it’s the wrong way,” I tell her, getting a little exasperated.
She surprises me, “My sister taught me “righty tighty, left loosey. Your rumpkinbucker work like that?”
”Yup.”
“Wrench only goes Lefty Loosey?
“Yup.”
“I can sell that, but it won’t be cheap. You’ve already spent a hundred bucks. Before I ask you for a ten-thousand dollar retainer to start the case, do you want to try to talk to him again first?”
Seems like good advice.

I walk into my supplier’s warehouse with the wrench in my hand. As I make my way down the aisle, he sees me coming through the big plate glass curtain wall fronting his office in the back. He sees the wrench in my hands, and recognition lights his face. Then he leans back in his desk chair and grins at me. As he gets up, he waves me back, not at all the reception I’d expect.
“Come on in!” he says, holding the door for me. “How can I help you today?”
Showing him the wrench, I tell him, “I spent a lot of money on this. My family’s bought a lot of tooling from you over the years. I tell you this wrench spins the wrong way and you laugh at me! I don’t have time for this, I’ve a plant to get back online and I need you to make this right, and do it now.“
“I thought you were kidding. Now, huh?” and he grins again.
“Right now,” I say, pointing the wrench.
“Push the button.”
The button was on top, just like before. I pushed it. Lefty Loosey. I glare at him.

“Turn the wrench over,” he says.

Not following, I did.
“Now push the button.”
Now it was on the bottom, I pushed it. Righty Tighty.

As the sun came up, fastening the cover plate back on, I finally recover enough juice to think about calling my lawyer. Balanced on the end of that big old #2 whambusker, cellphone in one hand, and my trusty new reversible propane-fired adjustable rumpkinbucker wrench in the other, I call her office. It goes straight to voicemail.
“This is … blah blah blah ….beeeeep.”
“We worked it out, thanks for the good advice,” I say. “Oh, and send me a bill for the hundred.”

Feeling better, as I hung up, with the morning shift walking in and my whambusker humming, I realized that last part was unnecessary, she’d have billed me anyway.

(c) 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved
2:03 PM 12/8/2009

In the run-up to the last election, I heard Fox  cable “news” anchor Larry Kudlow accuse a guest (who was being slightly critical of the Republican’s “hands-off business-no-matter-what” policies) of “playing the class-warfare card“. It got me thinking, just how many rich men are there who have no rational economic opportunity after High School but to enlist in the Armed forces? Just how many poor people control editorial boards? How many poor people set corporate policies? Investment strategies? Just how many rich men died digging the gold and copper out of other mens’s mines? How many rich men died building the mighty railroads that criss-cross America’s mountains and deserts?

The old ad hominem defense,  accusing your critics of “playing the class-warfare card” just isn’t gonna work, Larry. When what you are trying to defend are self-serving deceptions, byzantine frauds, massive greed, selfish motives, predatory reflexes, evasive accounting and PAC behavior that smells exactly like plain old-fashioned bribery. the jury is gonna want to hear a whole lot more than that. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

Do I hear you right, Larry? Two plus two isn’t four because my shoes need a shine? That’s no defense at all, it’s a simple logical fallacy, Dr. Aristotle.  It doesn’t take an economist to tell a dairyman from his cow. The one ending up with all the milk is… not the cow. Even more revealing, your remark marginalizes the glaring fact that there truly is a class war furiously raging, but it’s been pretty one-sided so far, with one side doing all the warring, and the other? All the dying.

What do the wealthy say about themselves and each other? What do their own behaviors and statements say about their true motives, and those whose interests they serve? So we don’t make anyone still alive too defensive, or get any silly hackles up, let’s start with what the rich had to say a hundred years ago. It’s real easy,  because the “Class-Warfare Card” has been on the table for a long, long time, fruit of “the root of all evil…”

From Teddy Roosevelt: ”…the most dangerous members of the criminal class, the malefactors of great wealth…”. Asked how a meeting went, “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions to be worth hearing, but as a rule, they don’t know anything outside their own business.” Of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman: “…he said he could buy a sufficient number of Senators and Congressman to protect his interests, and when necessary, could buy the Judiciary.”

From Idaho Senator William A. Clark: Defending himself against bribery allegations, “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.” Responding to calls to leave something behind for the future, “Those who succeed us can well take care of themselves.”

House Tyrant "Uncle Joe" Gurney

Congressman Gurney “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois: Opposing the creation of public land, “Not one cent for scenery.” (Cannon signed the 16th Amendment which established Congress’ right to impose a Federal income tax.)

Senator Weldon Heyburn of Idaho: In opposition to the eight-hour workday, “People should toil from sunrise to sundown and to hell with the clock.” On calls to regulate lumber and mining interests in the West, “It is revolutionary to insist that the rights of the public to the national resources outweigh private rights.” Idaho’s Fred Dubois, Heyburn’s Democratic colleague in the Senate from 1903-07, said of him: ”You and I both know his faults, but at the same time he has virtues,” Dubois wrote to mine owner Harry Day. ” One of these is that he will be outspoken and fearless in protecting all the industries of Idaho …”

James J. Hill, greatest killer in Idaho history

Northern Pacific Railroad magnate James J. Hill: When told that building a railroad line through Idaho’s rugged Bitterroot Mountains in winter would kill every Chinaman in his employ, “Then I’ll get Swedes. Give me enough Swedes and whiskey and I’ll build a railroad through hell.”

This last one turns out to have a personal connection. No, it’s not the whiskey, it’s the Swedes (and no, I’m not Swedish). Although the traffic to hell would surely support it, Congress hasn’t yet awarded the contract for the railroad through hell. The dead have been known to vote, but they are not big on campaign contributions.

In his intended context, Mr. James J. Hill may have been right, but it was at great and tragic human expense. Before the next winter passed, that railroad had indeed killed a whole lot of Chinamen, so he got Swedes. When the Swedes got scarce, he got Norwegians, and killed a bunch of them, too. After five winters, the line was completed. The only reason it isn’t lined with their graves is because the forest was so thick and the granite so hard, that it was cheaper to ship them back down the line for burial in softer ground than to dig that ground any more than absolutely required for the rails.

Were the Swedes a top-of-the-head choice? Hardly. James J. Hill had brought in “Norski” workers before, at the end of the last century, building his Northern Pacific Railroad through Minnesota and North Dakota.

Karl Skarnes, 1880?

My great-grandfather Karl Skarnes, a Norwegian shipwright, son of a shipwright, sailed to America in James J. Hill’s employ, having signed on the Northern Pacific’s indentured line in Oslo. He spent seven years living outside in the mosquitoes and the heat in summer, and in winter endured the sleet and and ice,  felling trees, cutting tie and building trestle through the thickly-wooded land of a thousand lakes and points west. When the seven years was finally up, he returned to make a new life in a little town he’d seen along the tracks,  where the glacial till was deep and the crop was world-class potatoes. Across the street from the new train depot, the co-op, silos and brokers exchange were being built, and soon  he was finally working  for himself . Saving his pay, Karl helped build the local Lutheran Church and then bought a bare plot of land a block away. There,  he built a little hotel, which he and his new wife operated. There, they raised a family.

Their son, Carl, became a carpenter and an electrician, and after serving in France during WWI, returned to Minnesota, and went to work himself. He married, raised a family, eventually moving them to a rented house in sunny Culver City, California. Carl, too old now for WWII, worked as a carpenter for Hughes Aircraft, building the Spruce Goose, with his pretty young daughter Peggy waiting, like so many others, for some sailor to return from the Pacific. After the war, Carl returned to home-building, bought a little home in Northridge, California. Right across the street he built a Lutheran Church, like his father, and an elementary school where my Grandmother, Nellie Skarnes, taught. Nellie was also the Organist and led the choir.

Nellie and Carl’s pretty young daughter Peggy is my mother. The sailor she waited for was my late father, Charles Chereek.

In 1949 he finally came back, they courted and married, eventually buying a home in Glendale, where they, too, raised a family. With the Lutheran Church figuring so prominently in my grandparent’s background, I have no idea why I was raised in the Methodist Church, unless it was to get me into Mrs. Alford’s Children’s choir. My Grandmother Nellie, still directing a choir 40 miles away, may have played a role in that. Did the directors of church choirs network in the mid ’50′s?

Bear with me, now, this just seems like the long way around.

So I sang in choirs through high school, where I used to do my homework at the Glendale Public Library (because it was only a block away from Church and choir practice). It was a beautiful, classical stone building with columns and carved friezes, 30 foot ceilings, artisan cast-iron chandeliers, Illinois limestone, Italian marble stairs, no expense spared.  That Library was built by the Carnegie Foundation.  the charitable vehicle through which robber baron and steel giant Andrew Carnegie tried to give away an inflation-adjusted wealth estimated at four times that of Microsoft’s Bill Gates. That same  Carnegie Foundation built 2509 libraries, all around the world, not even denting his accumulated lucre.

2509 libraries, land, books, all free? Well, not really

OK, we’re back.

Now, Andrew Carnegie was half-partner in the Northern Pacific Railroad with: that’s right, James J. Hill… the same.

The next time you drive by your town’s beautiful old public Library, consider this:

If it’s a “Carnegie Library,” it is only looks like it’s made of stone, iron and glass, and is really built out of the bones of immigrants.

Through the clear eye of history, the real “class-warfare card” looks just like a funeral invitation.

For more on the public/private conflict of 100 years ago, I enthusiastically recommend Timothy Egan’s outstanding book “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America”  http://www.amazon.com/Big-Burn-Jeanette-Ingold/dp/0152164707 , reviewed in http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-timothy-egan25-2009oct25,0,7852974.story

© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
chereek@sbcglobal.net

Just as it takes a nation to keep a well-equipped soldier in the field, there is a whole industrial army behind every guy who swings a hammer, supplying him with all he needs, from lumber and nails, to blueprints and boots. The quality of his work is the sole purpose, and the whole point, so far, of a complex network of logistics trains, all working towards the same ultimate end. All the parts have to be right. Not just his hammer, not just his lumber. I offer three apparently unrelated examples: footwear, raw materials and engineering.

Boots uncomfortable? Slow job. Bad nails? Bad job. Inaccurate blueprints? Expensive job.

But the cost for any of these failures is spread out amongst the players, and then through the entire economy. Not immediately or evenly, perhaps, but ultimately all these costs are distributed.

The bad boots costs him sore feet, they cost his wife a grumpy husband, and they cost his kids a hike with Dad. They cost his boss overtime and profits. They cost the manufacturer future sales and your sister has her hours cut at the boot factory. Her friend is laid off, she doesn’t buy that new car. You see how the costs spread.

The bad nails cost him aggravation (and maybe a sore thumb) and his boss overtime and profits, or if they pass undetected, they cost his customer, and his tenants, and their customers, and their families, when the structure fails prematurely. Not only does the cost spread, it increases. This is the multiplier effect at its hairiest.

The blueprint error costs everyone who relied upon it except the guy with the hammer (who, entrusted with finding and fixing it, is paid to rework it at least once), and is therefor disputed by the various insurers and litigated for years.

Whoever loses, the cost of any problem (along with the legal overhead required to argue it) is ultimately added not just to the cost of the particular job, it is also added to the price of future transactions, in the form of higher wage and benefit costs, capital costs, insurance rates, bond requirements, fees raised, rents charged and price tag jumps. These new price levels instantly become the new price floors.

Over time, the multiplier effect drives up overhead (the cost of just doing business) in general. Prices must rise merely to maintain projected margins. Mistakes are therefor inflationary by their very nature.

You may be working by yourself, but nobody really works alone.

Not a UT alumnus, is this a Metallica Fan or a Founding Father's Nightmare?

JUST NOT RIGHT

chereek@sbcglobal.net
© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved
Thursday, November 26, 2009

October 3, 2009, I offered a pre-emptive solution to possible European charges against US citizens. You’ll find it here in the category “Impolitics”, entitled “EIGHT SAD YEARS.

November 5, 2009, the Italians indicted 23 Americans, including an Air Force pilot. a CIA case officer, and one of their own, for kidnapping. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-thur-nw-cia-renditionnov05,0,31329.story

The indictment lists the victim as a citizen of yet a third country, an Egyptian cleric snagged off the street in Milan back in 2003, bound and bagged and flown from Avianno Airport to a US Base in Germany; all part of the Bush White House’s “Extraordinary Rendition” program.

Justice is only Legally Blind

To understand this indictment and its timing, we need to compare a couple of make-believe kidnappings. Let us pretend, like in Milan, they are witnessed and reported to the press. There may even be videos coming to YouTube…

First. let’s suppose that, without consulting the US Government,  a crack British Special Squad secretly bags themselves a ” New-IRA” priest off a side-street in Chicago and hustles him by black helicopter to an isolated detention in the snowy woods of Canada. Suppose an FBI agent helps them with intelligence and safe houses. The press, tiptoe-ing around the religious angle, would tsk, tsk, all about the difficulties posed by our extradition process and relations with our Irish population. Cable tongues would wag, justifiably concerned about our nation’s sovereignty. State Department lights might burn late into the morning, but the Justice Department would close up in time to get to Connecticut for dinner, as usual. No prosecutions would result, although the agent might be reassigned to Nome. Diplomatic exchanges might get frosty overnight, but after privately trading greater co-operation in future extraditions for public contrite promises not to do it again, we’d all be back to business as usual by the time the Financial Markets opened.

And now suppose the same kidnapping is committed by a squadron of Hugo Chavez’ Venezuelan paramilitary extremos, against a pro-democracy blogger, a young political refugee from Maracaibo, coming out of a Kinko’s in Alexandria, Virginia. This time, too, they bind and gag him, bag him and throw him in the trunk of a Buick. But these guys make a run to the marina, where they load him onto a fast cigarette boat to Cuba… and suppose a rogue US Customs agent helps them with intelligence and safe passage. Ranking members would be plaiting hangman’s nooses in the Hallways of Congress. The lights would burn late in the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff would be living on coffee, moving a Carrier Battle Group to the Caribbean, military leave would be cancelled, we might even go to war.

We’ve been acting like we expect our NATO partners to treat our indiscretions as though they were more like the first scenario than the second. Most of the world feels somewhat differently, even most of our friends do. The Italian government is evidently firmly convinced their electorate does.

So, before blaming the Italians, ask yourself, how would you feel if any foreign nation started snatching people off the street here in America? How would you feel about the Feeb who helped them? What kinds of emails do you think our elected representatives would be receiving?

Italian politicians were under a lot of pressure, and by our inaction, we left them little choice.

In the above article, I warned that Europeans would not “wait forever for the US to prosecute those on Pennsylvania Avenue who actually gave the order” for the program that resulted in the operation. Only we have that evidence.

Italy merely prosecuted those implicated by the evidence it had.

How many other nations can do the same? According to the LA Times , “…U.S. operatives left a trail of cellphone calls, credit card charges and photo ID documents. The evidence enabled … Italian police to assemble a detailed case that became an anatomy of a rendition.” http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-italy-verdict5-2009nov05,0,2106586.story

Evidently some of our tradecraft is a little sloppy. Do we have any reason to believe US rendition operations left any less evidence behind them anywhere else? Do we have any reason to think this is the last such indictment possible on the evidently widespread practice? The presumption must be that NATO nations everywhere are littered with the same kind of records.

How do we stop this from snowballing? There is still only one way.

Make further low-level prosecutions unnecessary.

Our own Justice Department indicting a former Vice-president would be, I suspect, an apology acceptable to those whose hospitality, jurisdictions and laws we have apparently trampled.

We need to get off the dime NOW and prosecute the Bush/Cheney leadership that authorized the operation. the very freedom of more Americans who were merely doing their jobs is in question. Anything less than that undermines the troops. Cheney, if this rendition program was his baby, hung himself out to dry, he can take his own fall. Surely he has asked, and even ordered others to do the same for the “good of the nation.” The Bush/Cheney Administration put American troops in jeopardy by merely giving them such illegal orders, and we will become Cheney’s informed and willing accessories-after-the-fact, his stooges, if you will, if we leave those Americans -who dutifully followed what were presented as lawful orders- hanging now.

More important to history, even beyond the threat to American troops, and beyond straining our relationships with our allies, even beyond pouring gasoline on the cartoon hate of our enemies, by their own light, these were illegal orders, clear abuses of discretion committed under color-of-authority, and certainly unconstitutional. To leave them there in history, uninvestigated and unprosecuted, for all future generations of young Americans to stub their consciences upon, is just not right.

THESE WERE ILLEGAL ORDERS - A Modest Proposal

If the Justice Department is paralyzed, the Uniform Code of Military Justice has a remedy for those who give illegal orders, Cheney was Vice-Commander-in-Chief, placing him squarely in the Military Chain of Command.

What historical irony that would be, Cheney being hustled off to a US military prison, guarded by American MP’s, tried by an American Military Tribunal, and potentially shot like Saddam… and the law provides for it, but I think we’d ALL be better served if a civilian process were announced by the President, with the Attorney General by his side, on the Evening News.

(I can almost hear the speech: “In calling for a new Special Prosecutor Statute, with all it may entail, we are NOT looking back, we are seeing this as the only honorable way to clear an obstacle that is yet before us. For the unity of the Nation going forward, and for the sake of legislative bipartisanship, we fully intended to leave it alone, but the weight of accumulating evidence now finding its way to light raises some deeply disturbing questions. American men and women who followed some questionable orders are now at risk of foreign prosecution under the laws of some of our closest Allies. American law appears to have been broken. The law binds us to follow the evidence. It is, indeed, our constitutional responsibility.  And may no man ever be above the law, especially one elected to act in service of the Law.”)

And let no former VP be shot by an American firing squad; unthinkably, that would be lawful, and the law could still do that. Admittedly, a JAG officer would need some real courage to bring those charges, but it’s a proposal many could live with. Few, anywhere, would question its Justice. in an Old Testament sort of way, and that might be just the kind we need.

Cheney could plead guilty, refuse to testify, fall on his sword and become a martyr himself… now that’s irony.

But a simple conviction and a loss of pension would send the same messages: This man behaved in violation of his oath, our national principles, and our Law.  No man is above the law. The Constitution and its institutions work.

Quite different messages are sent by our continued inaction.

Who’s left?

THE LOGIC OF INDIVIDUAL WORTH:

THE ADAPTIVE ARGUMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved.

Beginning with the first little wiggle in the ocean and going to the very stars, the only path from your ancestors to your descendants runs through you. So if you want to play in traffic, for your family’s sake, at least wait until after you have reproduced, or all that have come and gone before you will have done so in vain. For you, and you alone, carry a unique message encoded in your genes, one-half of a blueprint for future individuals of your kind, and, within some range of environmental limits, a wealth of contingency plans. Evolution is a relay race, and a slowly-morphing baton is passed from generation to generation by individuals.

Within the bounds set by their individual (and so-far mysterious) mating decisions. a large variety of genetic combinations are tried. Occasionally, an advantageous combination comes to predominate within a family line and the dis-advantaged trait falls by the way.

Just as they have for the whole of history, the descendants produced of such individual decisions that may carry any advantageous trait, will prove better adapted to prosper through whatever lies ahead, and prevail, reproductively. It’s why we’re ALL shaped just like this, within just this range of variability. By hook or by crook, blueprints containing just these traits out-survived and then out-reproduced all others offered. Any trait that inhibited that, passed into history with the individuals whose genetic messages included them.

As the environmental conditions and unintended consequences ahead of us may be unknowable in the longer run, and as any given line is just as likely as any other line to be among those best suited to whatever conditions have by then unfolded, any message at all may turn out to be precious to our human future, and all are therefor equally priceless beyond all measure, completely irreplaceable; and therefor so is each messenger. for from an individual, a trait may radiate globally. It would be a shame to lose for all time the specific message that you carry to a moment of cruelty, carelessness or recklessness. Think about tomorrow and stay out of traffic, metaphorically speaking. And just as it would be a shame to lose the genetic message only you carry, so, too, any message, and therefor any messenger.

A paradox lies in that, while no message is replaceable, none is indispensable. The planet cares not a whit how well-suited any species is to the changing conditions it presents at any given time, and will reward with continuity whoever and whatever shows up to pass along their messages most prolifically.

Genetically, there is no other measure. Ask any Neanderthal, he’ll tell you the same thing: “I wish somebody hadn’t played in traffic…”

But it is not apparent who that somebody was, even after the fact, let alone in advance, so the lesson of the extinct is: be careful, and take care for the children, all of them. We can best do that by ensuring our habitat remains within the environmental range that our blueprints specify. Exceed those, and we void all warranties, and can take a seat beside the Neanderthals.

That seems obvious enough, yet we are failing to do that, for reasons that escape my limited comprehension. By knowingly and unnecessarily heating our atmosphere, we are playing in traffic, indeed, and about to settle for the remaining versions of the human blueprint that best handle wide climate swings, drought, famine, dehydration, pestilence and civil unrest. Any other conclusion is arguing with simple arithmetic, and must be discounted accordingly. Even if it preserves short-term financial profit, it is longer-term suicide.

THE LIEUTENANT WORE BLACK

© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved

You can tell a lot about a war by its’ heroes,
be they sharpshooting’ dough-boys or fliers huntin’ zeros.
Joan wanted to know where the flowers had gone.
She and Arlo Guthrie were the heroes of Saigon

You can believe the TV News has left out most that matters, and
spliced in every inch of tape that poisons, bleeds, or flatters.
The old men on the upper floors whisper when they talk
of ways to twist the news to pump the stock.
Where are the heroes of the War in Iraq?
Under her burka, the Lieutenant wore black.

You have e-mail? You have power, your contacts are your ammo.
”We count ‘em all in Washington,” the Senator told the panel.
“Its’ good to know what the people think, ‘n’ it really sure is nice, to
wave them at the lobbyists (they help to jack the price).”
Where are the heroes of the War in Iraq?
Under her burka, the Lieutenant wore black.

Bedrock’s lost its’ grip on the sediments,
ancient rain rides the wind as our old heroes rust.
We’re not fated to be faded if yer conscience has a plan,
You have a voice, you have a choice. I bought myself some stamps,
and I wrote my smiling Senators to tell ‘em what I thinks…
my last letter said, “Sir: The whole thing stinks.”

You can tell a lot about a war by its’ heroes,
be they sharpshooting’ dough-boys or fliers huntin’ zeros.
Joan wanted to know where the flowers had gone.
She and Arlo Guthrie were the heroes of Saigon
Where are the heroes of the War in Iraq?
Under her burka, the Lieutenant wore black.

Just trying hard to blend in, are we? Hardly.

Silly Love Songs and the Occasional Politics of Popular Music

© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved

Each of The Beatles brought their own contributions critical to the band’s identity. Paul McCartney made them melodic and emotionally available, George Harrison made them deep, clever and true, Ringo made them everyman, fun, and danceable, but it was the words of John Lennon that made the Beatles vitally important, critical even. It is indisputable that the culture and the time would have been much different without them.

WE would be.

In hindsight, whether you agreed or not, his politics were consistent and compelling. But lot’s of people’s are, and even if you ever learn of them, you are unlikely to pay their views any mind. Why were John’s views different? Why did they have such an impact? He sang of Revolution, but that’s hardly revolutionary. I submit it was because he was outrageous on purpose. What that purpose was may not have been clear even to him, but we can hear the echoes of its consequences today, far beyond the music.

He was outrageous enough to make you listen to him, almost as much as to keep himself entertained in what he surely must have found to be a very square world. When he said the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” he may have been decrying the fall from popular focus of the humanism Jesus symbolized, he may have been crowing like a rooster, he may have been poking fun at how the members of a mere musical group could be sought out for their serious opinions on current events and what world leaders were saying. He may have been doing all three, but with that single sentence he doubled the number of people who would recognize his name the next time they heard it, and he ensured that each would at least consider his next quote, if only to find fault. It may have been unintentional, but it hardly matters, the effect was the same either way.

In a matter of months, The Beatles had re-inserted a hip populism back into popular music that, for the most part, had just recently been re-excluded from the cultural vernacular. The steady produce coming from the radio at the time rattled NO cages. “A Do Run Run” is not an attack on anybody, and is unlikely to change the human condition very much. “Up on the Roof” is just what it was designed to be: catchy and comfortable. Although few songs are more pop-perfect, I submit musical lyrics have a higher purpose, a catalytic social function that only lyrics can perform as well.

Whether it be to answer a call to arms, or to support Andrew Jackson’s latest political campaign, beginning in America no later than “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, the lyrical call to do the honorable thing is an old tradition. The protest lyric has long been been one of the truest arrows in the progressive quiver, and from Stephen Foster through Henry Rollins, has long shaped public debate. But only in spurts, as the emergence of protest music inevitably provokes a swift reaction from those at whom the protest is aimed, usually the rich and powerful.

By following the repeated rise and fall of protest lyrics, we can see the cycle of populism/and what could be called “depopulism” through the popular music that has grown in its strength to shape the American consciousness ever since since the player piano gave way to radio. But the peoples music, local and regional traditional music, was at first left out as unfit for high minds, and so the ancient populist lament of the unfairness of the many suffering for the enrichment of the few has been disproportionately under-represented in early popular music, that is, codified and packaged music.

The first tape recording of the American populist view was but an academic exercise intended to save American folk music for posterity at a time when the smart people selling packaged music wouldn’t touch its subjects with a stick. William Jennings Bryant’s failed campaign and Teddy Roosevelt’s failed Bull Moose Presidential bid had left smoking craters in the populist movement within living memory, that battle had been fierce, and the folk music and the blues that had produced its anthems were thought to be endangered species, surely to pass from the stage when it’s current, ear-trained practitioners passed on. When Alan Lomax was first taping American blues, it was in the same spirit that impelled museums to send expeditions out looking for the last Dodo.

For the lyrical content was not the focus of the effort to collect the songs, it was more of an anthropological study, focused on the songs only as artifacts of a passing people, much like creation myths, baskets or pottery. An earlier collection called “The Child Ballads,” provided the model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads).

There are no protest songs in Big Band music, whose lyrical message was crafted to be innocuous if not non-existent, nor in the music of it’s immediate successor, be-bop jazz, and so it was despite the lyrics that America’s native hill and flatland folk music first came to market as a novelty at a time when big bands ruled the airwaves and the charts.

To the amazement of most, America loved it. Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives and The Weavers adopted the forms to write new songs, and ascended the Monday through Saturday pulpit for the small farmer, the working man, the poor, and the dispossessed.

But folk music, which is by definition protest music, is most definitely not the music of the rich, it is their unsworn enemy, and the rich recognized it quickly. Networks, record companies and radio stations were even then rarely owned by the poor. NBC worked very hard to drive protest down with Mitch Miller and his ilk, CBS tried to beat it to death first with Arthur Godfrey (who outsmarted them), and then with Art Linkletter and his like, but it kept coming back to life, like all necessary things. The message from the media was, what could you possibly have to protest? You have televisions, soap operas, comedies, game shows, and Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour, don’t you? Just leave the big questions to the Big People, and you’ll be fine. Though it has served them poorly, it is a message the rich have been loathe to abandon. Perhaps they believe it, but we who are not, know better.

Every time protest came back into the lyrics, as in the earliest rockabilly of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, the protest was tediously pared back by its marketers to mere romantic hedonism. “Rhythm and Blues” became acceptable only once pared of it’s class-consciousness, Rock and roll was only tolerated once  shorn of its race-consciousness.

Yet protest came back, with the folk revival of the ’60′s But by now the media knew it’s playbook well.

Surf songs, especially the instrumentals, were the bullets fired back by the American media moguls. In England, the label that released The Beatles had no idea they weren’t doing more of the same. Cute lads, happy harmonies, love songs: bread and circuses. When John’s lyrics turned them out to be secret populists and unrepentant utopians, a “harmless” version of the same was inevitable, and so we get the identical formula repeated over and over but without any lyrical protest, hence Herman and the Hermits (sorry Peter), Chad and Jeremy, The Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, and The Monkees. There is the carrot of great wealth (and American visas) to dangle, and then even the Rolling Stones suddenly abandoned Muddy Waters for: you guessed it, a romantic hedonism.

Rock and Roll has learned it’s lessons well, too, so plain speech in protest music is being abandoned for the double-entendre. The lyrics of Bono are not as provocative on their face as his spoken vision, while even classic 60′s  stations make a religion of romantic hedonism, and stay the hell away from protest music. Janis Joplin is fine, Country Joe and the Fish are evidently not.There are no private radio stations anymore, concentrated wealth has lobbied the FCC effectively to price Ma and Pa broadcasters completely out of the market. If your songs are not picked for one of the three big media holding companies’ playlists, you are not played over the air anywhere, they control them all.

Artists like Michael Jackson or Brittany Spears can wear, say, snort, drink, screw or do anything but sing a protest lyric, and their albums will be promoted to be pre-release platinum. That means they have shipped a million copies of their album before anyone outside the label has even heard it. Why? First, because they are incredibly gifted entertainers, and second, because their lyrics have been  found politically acceptable. There are only so many minutes on the playlist, this is a “must play,” and gee, that’s funny, there’s no room here for anything else. Funny how that works. How many artists have made the transition from “Indie” to “Big Time” since the FCC has relaxed it’s rules on media consolidation?

Protest can never be prevented, but it can be diluted, and it can be discouraged. There is a pattern here. It was the love songs of Joan Baez that got the heavy rotation, a tiny part of her repertoire. Bob Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay,” a love song, got heavy promotion, his “Everything is Broken” received little. The Paul McCartney’s get knighthoods and the John Lennon’s get shot. Gangsta Rapper Ice T (“Cop Killer”) tones down his tune, moves uptown and gets a recurring role on Law and Order, Tupac Shakur gets shot. Marvin Gaye could get play for his protest lyrics only after a decade of the Supremes’ love songs opened the door for him to FIRST become a star with his love songs. And then he was shot. In modern lyrics, anybody, anything and everything can be debased, and any sin elevated to a virtue, that is evidently just fine, just don’t threaten concentrated wealth.

And that, Sir Paul, is what’s wrong with silly little love songs: they insulate the status quo.

New kid does good!

© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved
Friday, November 6, 2009
La Crescenta, California

I am not, by nature, a big fan of speeches, with a few historical exceptions. Being articulate is a common human capability, ideas worthy of the time spent articulating them, less. Multiply that time spent, by the number of listeners, and you can waste a whole lot of time in a hurry. The Internet compounds the loss with what I call the personal deception, I’m just spending a little time… while tens of millions say the same. If the articulate speaker has nothing to say, he has just sucked human attention away from anything and everything else to which it might have been applied. An economist would call it the opportunity cost of time. No matter what you do, you have forgone the opportunity to be doing anything else.

In the time it takes one elected blowhard on C-span to say, “As my friend, the distinguished Senator from the Noble Land of Cheese and Butter well knows…” 10,000 viewers have just invested 6 seconds of quality human attention better spent otherwise. 6 seconds is no big deal, but 6 seconds times 10,000 viewers is a thousand minutes.

Viewed 1,000,000 times later on YouTube, you’re up to 101,000 minutes, which is over 1683 hours, or more than 70 days, working three shifts.

That arithmetic is why my default attitude has long been, if you have a point, Senator, get to it. Imagine my surprise when one just did.

Between sporting events, I saw part of an excellent speech in the US Senate on C-span, and was so impressed I just watched some more of it.  See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ogY3JndwAc.

In it, Minnesota’s freshman Senator Al Franken gives an extremely clear and concise summary of the evidence that has been presented to the many committees and sub-committees of Congress on the question of Health Care Reform. Where another speaker might have obscured his point with popular attacks, impassioned hyperbole, flowery embellishments and folksy campaign formulas, Franken’s organization spotlit his argument. He showed just how unnecessary and counter-productive all that political fizz really is. just by leaving it out. Brilliant!

It should be required viewing for anyone ever within earshot of a microphone, and titled:  This is how it’s done.

Good work, lad.

If he knows better, he’s a liar.

If he believes it, he’s delusional.

If you believe it… you are deceived.

I am biased, everybody is biased. Being unbiased would be a lot like having amnesia, walking around with no clue where you came from, who you are, where you are.

I am a Man, an American, a Californian, a native of Los Angeles. I have been hungry, I have been full. I love, I have been loved. I have traveled, I have read. I am an artist. I have listened, I have sung. I am a veteran, a homeowner, a family man, a Union Man. Those are the eyes I have.

Someone has said there are many windows in God’s house, if so, my biases locate my window. On your mental blueprint, they can help you locate the window through which I am viewing the Universe, they say nothing at all about the view. Our biases are just the accidents of birth, development, perception, choices and opportunities. We all have those, we are shaped by them, they define our biases.

We could all wear signs listing ours. Then, when a guy shows up wearing a sign that says “I have no Bias!”  we would save the time we currently waste listening to fools and/or liars, and get straight to the laughing.

Officer, I’m not a burglar, lower your flashlight and gun.
The lights are all off and you’re locking the gate, Officer, Sir? Would you wait?
I’m waiting on a promise from Dolly, the dancer with the Pisces tattoo?
She told me to wait (she just must be late). So that’s what I’ll do.

I lost my heart to that red-headed tart, I lost my job and my wife.
I’d do it again, so I’m waiting for Dolly, Security, don’t take my life.
Look, here’s the ring that I bought her. these, here, are ti-ckets to France.
Here is a picture that I downloaded, in her little red pants.

I am waiting for Dolly, she got off a while ago. I
can’t even breathe when she’s down on her knees and the music is slow…
Dolly is dancing for dollars at Diamond Legs Saturday nights
If she can stop working for other men’s money, I will make Dolly my wife.

Dolly loves dancing for strangers. Her every move says that it’s true.
Locked onto my eyes while she swore with her thighs, “this is for you…”
Sir, what time is it? Really? I didn’t know it was that late. What?
Her tinted Honda ten minutes ago? I’ve done it again.

True Love dances for dollars at Diamond Legs Saturday nights. I should
call my old boss in the morning. I should crawl back to my life. I would
rather light my hair on fire. I would would rather forget how to talk
I would rather Dolly’d met me in the parking lot. I think I’ll go for a walk.

Officer, I’m not a burglar, lower your flashlight and gun.
The lights are all off and you’re locking the gate, Officer, Sir? Would you wait?
I’m waiting on a promise from Dolly, the dancer with the Pisces tattoo?
She told me to wait (she just must be late). So that’s what I’ll do.