ProvisionalEastonlow

Republican Treason

2011-09-03T12:46:00.001-07:00

Rick Perry, the leading Republican candidate, recently referred to social security as a "Ponzi scheme." He further stated that telling young people that they will receive benefits when they retire is a "monstrous lie."

It is Perry, and the rest of the Republicans, who are the scam artists. Perry knows that what he is saying is, at best, a gross overstatement. His goal is not to inform, but rather to misinform. He knows that if he can convince people that they cannot rely on social security, they will support reducing or eliminating the entire program, a key element in the Republican agenda.

Playing fast and loose with the truth is not treason, but other Republican tactics are. The Republicans are presently engaged in a war on our own economy, knowing that Obama's chances of reelection are far lower if we are still in a recession come Fall of 2012. The Republicans are willing to damage their own country to achieve the key item on their agenda: making sure that Obama is a one-term president. That is treason.

And these treasonous tactics are nothing new. The Republican party regularly sabotages government institutions -- ranging from public schools, to FEMA, to the EPA -- by shackling them with absurd regulations such as "No Child Left Behind" that are designed to cause failure. Similarly, the Republicans appoint incompetent or willfully negligent individuals to leadership positions within those institutions. The Republicans then point to the institutional failure they have caused and demand that the institutions be shut down.

Willfully causing our a government institution to fail to advance one's own agenda is treason, even if that institution is not the armed forces.

Republicans Seem Determined to Destroy the Economy in an Attempt to Keep Obama from Getting Re-Elected

2011-08-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

The Republicans created the recent budget and debt ceiling crisis for one reason: they seek to destroy our economy, and thus prevent Barack Obama from being re-elected in 2012. What they did was tantamount to treason, and will cause untold misery in the United States and elsewhere by derailing the nascent economic recovery. We need to call the Republicans out on what they did, and hold them accountable in the next election.

The Republicans, like everyone else, know what it takes to get a country out of recession: spending. Yet, they insisted on just the opposite, demanding cuts in spending at what they knew to be exactly the wrong time. And, by acting irrationally, they intentionally panicked the stock market, with predictable results.

The basic economic facts are not complicated, nor in meaningful dispute. The solutions are fairly straightforward. I propose:

We need to spend money to get the economy out of the current recession. At the same time, our infrastructure -- roads, bridges, electrical power grids -- are in need of repair. In addition, there are projects, like the high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, that would be highly beneficial. The obvious solution is to get to work on these projects. In the short run, the spending will stimulate the economy, creating jobs at levels ranging from engineers to construction workers. In the long run, this kind of spending will leave us with capital improvements that will improve the economy and our standard of living for years to come.

Similarly, we should invest in education. Among other things, we should hire more teachers and pay them more. Teachers do not make much money, and they therefore spend a higher percentage of every additional dollar they receive (unlike the rich, who are more like to save a dollar they receive in tax cuts). And, education is just another form of investment. A child who is educated is more likely to earn a good living, pay taxes, invent useful things and otherwise be a benefit to society as a whole. We spend the money now, we get a return on our investment later.

Spending on war, by contrast, is of little or no economic benefit. War creates nothing. Bombs blow up, and they are gone. A solider who spends a year in Iraq could instead by creating something of value here, or anywhere else for that matter. A bomb or missile just blows up and is gone. Military hardware wears out, and while it is still operational, does not add to our economy anyway.

Cutting taxes on the rich is the least effective way to stimulate the economy. Give a poor man a dollar, and he will almost certainly spend it. That means someone else will earn that dollar. Give a rich man a dollar and he may well put it in the bank. At best, that lowers interest rates by making more money available to lend. But, interest rates are already low. And, some rich people will simply buy gold or other commodities, creating no jobs at all.

If you agree with me, please speak up. Vote. Don't watch Fox. Call the Republicans on what they do. Write a blog that no one reads. But please don't sit there quietly.

Stand Up and Be Counted

2011-04-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

Our firm recently interviewed a young job applicant whose resume states that he is a member of the Christian Legal Society. A Google search reveals that the CLS is a student club that requires its members to sign a Statement of Faith that, among other things, rejects homosexuality as inconsistent with Christian values. The CLS sued Hastings Law School, claiming that it was entitled to funding and recognition despite its discriminatory policies.

Presumably, this applicant would not have applied to our firm if he had known that one of the partners is openly gay. Or perhaps he would have simply removed that item from his resume. But no matter, because what he actually did was present a resume identifying himself as a member of the CLS. Needless to say, he did not get the job.

The majority of the members of our firm felt that the best course of action was to simply allow the applicant to go through the interview process, and later tell him that we would not be offering him a job, with no explanation. I disagreed.

This man needs to know that his membership in a group like the CLS has real consequences. Specifically, if he chooses to belong to an organization that espouses hate towards gays, gay people will not hire him. That may not change his views on gay rights, but at least he will understand that his views have consequences in the real world. And he will understand that gays are not just outcasts who can be attacked at will, but rather include people who matter to him -- in this case, someone he wanted to give him a job. Next time, it could be a friend or family member who is afraid to come out of the closet in light of his views.

Telling a single job applicant that he cannot have a single job because of his membership in an anti-gay group is not going to change the world. No single event of this kind matters. But if everybody ignores things like membership in the CLS, then the members will rightly think that nobody really cares. They will think their views are acceptable to all. But they are not, nor should they be. Anyone with a conscience has a moral obligation to speak up in situations such as this. There is no need to be rude or disparaging; in fact, that would be counter productive, but the message must be delivered clearly: you are not welcome here because you are a member of a hate group.

Some of my friends and colleges have asked whether telling the applicant why he was rejected could expose our firm to liability. I believe that the answer is "no." No gay person has a legal obligation to hire someone who is openly hostile to gays, nor does a Black man have to hire a racist. The fact that the CLS is also a religious organization is utterly irrelevant. We did not deny him a job because he is a Christian, nor is his Christianity in any way relevant to our thinking. If he had been a member of a non-religious skinhead gang, for example, my position would be exactly the same. Whereas, if he were a member of a normal Christian group, the topic would not be relevant to our hiring decision. It is the hate, not the religion, that disqualifies him. You say you hate me, I won't hire you. It is as simple as that.

And, if I am wrong and the laws of this State compel me to hire a man that hates me simply because his hate comes from or is cloaked in religion, then perhaps it is time for me to stop paying taxes and leave this State.

Thoughts on the Firing of NPR's Juan Williams

2010-10-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

NPR recently fired long-time news analyst Juan Williams, ostensibly for remarks he made on The O'Reilly Factor. Here is what NPR said about the firing, from NPR's own website:

"Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
Williams also warned O'Reilly against blaming all Muslims for "extremists," saying Christians shouldn't be blamed for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

NPR's position is ridiculous. Williams' statements were not in any way inappropriate.

Williams made it clear that he was talking about how he feels, not about what he thinks. All normal human beings have feelings that they do not act upon. Not acting on all of one's feelings is arguably what best distinguishes humans from other animals, or at least adults from young children. Most, if not all, people have different emotional reactions to people of different ages, genders and races. In fact, one of the most pernicious aspects of racism, and other inappropriate biases, such as homophobia, is that the victims tend to internalize society's dislike of them. Blacks and gays end up believing that they are less worthy than straights and Whites. That is why role models are so important.

But I digress. The point here is that Williams' comments were completely appropriate. He did not say that we should be suspicious of all Muslims. He candidly admitted how he feels, and made it clear that it would be inappropriate to act on such feelings. He was quite clear about that.

Ironically, however, Williams was back on The O'Reilly Factor the day after he was fired. giving what I find to be a very good reason why NPR should have fired him. Williams told O'Reilly that NPR does not want him on the show. If so, then I agree wholeheartedly with NPR. Of course, as a matter of fair dealing, NPR should have warned Williams and should have told the public the real reason Williams was fired. But in the end, I am not sad to see Williams go.

The O'Reilly Factor does not contribute to meaningful discussion of issues. Quite to the contrary, O'Reilly cuts people off and is prone to yelling "shut up" at his guests. He profits and advances his agenda by removing all nuance, and polarizing every discussion. Any self-respecting journalist should know that. Williams certainly knows that, yet he chose to appear on the program anyway, thus making a fool of himself and lending credibility to O'Reilly and his circus.

Even more ironically, what happened to Williams is completely predictable given O'Reilly's behavior. O'Reilly works on sound bites. And, he intentionally makes ambiguous statements that can be taken as offensive. For example, he recently stated that "Muslims" attacked us on September 11. That is literally true, but it suggests that all Muslims or some committee representing all Muslims was behind the terrorist attacks. O'Reilly intends to suggest that, but when confronted directly, he disowns it. This is just like George W. Bush suggesting that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. He wanted to be misunderstood. And he was misunderstood by a majority of Americans.

Williams did not want to be misunderstood, but he should have known better. He opened himself up to being taken advantage of by O'Reilly, and he was. Perhaps he got what he deserved in that regard. In the end, both Williams and NPR embarrassed themselves. I'm not sad to see Williams go, but I am very disappointed -- yet again -- with NPR.

It's Not News

2010-09-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

A man in Gainesville, Florida named Terry Jones threatened to burn copies of the Koran on the 9th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. No, not the Terry Jones of Monte Python fame. This Terry Jones styles himself a minister of some kind, but in fact he has a following of approximately 50 people. This Terry Jones is nobody, and no one actually cares what he thinks. His plans for Saturday, September 11, 2010 are not news.

Yet, every major news outlet has given Jones his 15 minutes of fame. I understand why Fox News would make a fuss about Jones' activities. The story is titillating, and it helps provoke the kind of us vs. them emotional reactions that Fox News and its far right wing overlords thrive on. But why would NPR run a story on Jones? And why would President Obama ask Jones not to burn the Koran? Why does Obama care what Jones does?

NPR should not have run the story at all, or perhaps should have run a story about how other news media were reporting on a nobody in order to provoke a reaction. President Obama should have either ignored Jones entirely or, if asked, stated that the actions of one whack job in Florida do not represent the views of the other 300,000,000 Americans, and that our First Amendment allows people to burn the flag, the Bible, the Koran or whatever else they choose to burn.

The publication of Jones' actions is not just a waste of headline space, it is extremely counter productive. The vast majority of people in all countries just want to be allowed to live their lives in peace. The few nut jobs on the fringes -- Terry Jones, Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- intentionally stir up hatred for other groups. They make it possible for the slightly less nutty Dick Chaneys and Sarah Palin's of the world to exist.

Profit at the Expense of the Consumer, Part 2: Talking to India

2010-02-14T10:58:00.000-08:00

We've all experienced poor customer service. Getting a customer service representative on the phone in the first place can be difficult and time consuming. Large companies like Chase and Citibank force customers to fight their way through computerized menus before we can talk to a human being. Some companies do not even publish their customer service phone numbers.

And, when you finally get someone on the line, they are likely to be uneducated, untrained and underpaid. Often times, they are located in India or El Salvador and might not even speak English well enough to get the job done. Hotels.com comes to mind as a company with laughably bad phone service. Their employees only speak enough English to handle two or three specific tasks. Beyond that, you'll need to speak Tagalog or Spanish, depending on which call center you get.

Part of the reason for poor customer service is a simple desire to save money. It costs a lot of money to staff a customer service line, and it is cheaper to hire someone in India whose English is less than perfect.

But there is another, and I believe more important, reason why some companies make it difficult to communicate: they want customers to just give up. Most of the time when you call your bank, for example, it is because you were charged a $7 fee you should not have been charged, and you want it removed (how many times have you called a company complaining that you were undercharged?). Many companies, United Airlines being a prime example, have an active strategy of making it difficult to communicate in order to be able to get away with overcharging or otherwise not providing what they promised.

Another way in which big American companies try to bamboozle consumers is with incomprehensible bills. If you cannot understand your bill in the first place, it is hard to know if you are being cheated, let alone convince the company to refund the $18.47 they overcharged you this month. For example, my Sprint contract is quite simple. I pay a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of "anytime" minutes each month. Everything is supposed to be included in one price. Or at least that is how they sold me the contract. But, my current Sprint invoice has no less than 42 entries, not including the various taxes. They charge me odd amounts for various items, then credit me back for other items. None of it has anything to do with our actual agreement, and none of it makes any sense. AT&T and DirecTV both do the same thing. Their bills are actively designed to be difficult to understand so that we will not question them. It would be easy to make the bills easy to understand, but that is not what AT&T wants.

These incomprehensible bills nearly always contain mistakes, and the mistakes are nearly always in favor of Sprint, AT&T and DirecTV. I know that from experience, and if you look closely at your own bills, I am certain you will find the same thing. But, finding the mistakes, getting through to customer service and trying to get them to refund the excess charges is rarely worth the time and effort. And DirecTV is smart about the way it overbills its customers. The amounts are generally small, on the order of $10 to $30 each month. That way, some consumers will not realize that they are being cheated, especially given the complexity of the bill. Others may realize that they are being overcharged but are unwilling or unable either to figure exactly where on their complex bill the overcharge appears, or to fight through the customer service jungle to get back $18.47.

It seems that the majority of large American companies have adopted the same cynical policy of abusing their customers in order to squeeze out a few extra dollars each month. True, it is not all of them. Apple, for example, has a policy of providing excellent customer service, often giving their customers more than they agreed to provide, e.g., serving a product a month after the warranty expired. The business practices of the majority of the companies, however, are just the opposite, and the cost to society are high. The uncivilized and dishonest practices of Sprint, AT&T, United Airlines and DirecTV may net them a few extra dollars in the short run, but they make life unpleasant in small but persistent ways. These companies teach people to have low expectations, and to cheat whenever you can get away with it. And, in the long run, these companies destroy their own reputations, at their own peril.

Profit at the Expense of the Consumer, Part I: Gift Cards

2010-02-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

Gift cards have become increasingly popular with consumers in recent years, and for good reason. Say you are looking for a gift for a friend. You know she loves music, and you know what kind of music she likes, but if she really likes an artist she may have already bought most of his albums for herself. That makes it hard to select the right gift. If you buy her a gift card, she can choose for herself, and she always gets the right gift. In a culture such as ours that frowns upon giving cash, gift cards are a good option, both for the giver and the recipient.

Gift cards are popular with merchants for an entirely different reason: about 10% them are never redeemed. Best Buy sells a $100 gift card for $100. Seemingly, there is not profit on that transaction, just a small cost in creating and handling the card. But on average, $10 of that card will never be redeemed. That money does not get forfeited to the State, nor donated to charity. Rather, it is nearly pure profit for Best Buy; a plastic card sold for $10. The business of selling gift cards is less risky and more profitable than selling televisions, computers and cell phones.

Gift cards are only profitable because consumers make mistakes. Consumers buy cards that they do not need, they lose the card or just put it in a drawer and forget about it. If everyone cashed in their gift cards, the business model would not work. It is a business designed to take advantage of people's mistakes; no mistakes, no profit.

Compare that with the ordinary business of Best Buy, which involves selling consumer electronics. Certainly, Best Buy could increase its profits by selling shoddy or overpriced goods, or by misleading or otherwise cheating customers. But none of those things are necessary in order to make money as an electronics goods store. On the contrary, at its core, the business of selling electronic goods is based on the principle of selling consumers what they want and making a profit at the same time: a win-win business model.

No, I do not think gift cards are the devil, or that they should be banned. But, consumers should be aware of what is going on. And, when you buy a gift card, you are buying a very high profit item and you should expect to get a little something in return. For example, Peet's Coffee gives a dollar off for every $20 added to a Peet's card. That makes sense; the consumers share in the windfall profits generated by the gift card business.

Supernatural: Only Because I Want to Believe

2010-01-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

Most people's working definition of the supernatural is something like: anything really neat that I cannot understand and which seems impossible. Harry Potter raises his magic wand, shouts "Expelliarmus," and a flash of lightning sends his opponent's wand flying across the room. That certainly meets the working definition of supernatural. I have no idea how that could have happened, and it sure looks impossible.

But, a 747 taking off arguably meets that definition, too. I don't know airplanes work, and all that metal gliding through the air sure looks impossible to me. Yet no one calls airplanes supernatural. A couple of centuries ago, people might have agreed that a 747 taking off was a supernatural event, had they chanced to see one departing from the local airport, but not today. Now it is commonplace, although a 747 leaving London Heathrow on time does still seem a bit miraculous to anyone who is familiar with that particular airport.

Our working definition of supernatural leaves something to be desired because it is based on what a particular person knows about how the world works. If you don't know how airplanes fly, they are supernatural to you, but if you do know, or perhaps even if you just know that someone else knows, then airplanes are no longer supernatural. The working definition is as much about the observer's state of mind as it is about the allegedly supernatural phenomenon. By that definition, the supernatural clearly exists. It just changes all the time.

So let's get a bit more serious and look at the actual definition, which is something like: outside of nature, or not following the laws of nature. By that definition, or any reasonable definition, the concept of the supernatural is barely coherent. It is easy for someone to say they believe in the supernatural, but if looks at the concept a bit closer, it simply loses meaning. The supernatural does not exist, by its very definition.

For example, let's say that we actually see Harry Potter disarm his opponent by pointing his magic wand and shouting the magic word, "Expelliarmus." Such an event is indeed supernatural -- until it actually happens. Once it happens, it is, by definition, natural. It might be new and surprising, but that does not matter. At one time, flight was new and surprising. For centuries, people believed that the laws of nature simply did not allow bigs hunks of metal to fly through the air. But they were wrong. That does not mean that the laws of nature changed. It simply means we did not fully understand them before. And of course, we do not fully understand them now, either.

The laws of nature are not like the laws of the United States or the laws of Britain. The laws of the United States are only laws because Congress passed them and the President signed them. Those laws can change. Moreover, they can be broken. That is what prisons are for. And, it is even possible to break the law and not go to prison. The laws of nature work in a completely different fashion. Scientists do not write down laws and command nature to obey. Rather, they observe what happens, and try to come up with rules that explain what is happening. Those are not "laws" in the same sense as the laws of the United States.

The laws of nature cannot, by definition, be broken. If the laws of nature as calculated appear to be broken, then it is laws that are wrong, not nature. And of course that happens all the time. The most powerful laws of nature, like F=MA, often turn out to be approximations that only "apply" under certain conditions. Einstein's theory of relativity is a better approximation, and made predictions that turned out to be correct, such as the bending of light in a gravitational field. That bending of light might appear "supernatural" without knowledge of relativity.

When people imagine supernatural events, they imagine them to follow logical rules. For example, Harry's spell would not have worked if he were not a wizard. It would not have worked if he had used a cricket bat instead of a magic wand. It would not have worked if he had said the magic word incorrectly. Ghosts do not randomly appear in the middle of the day, in the middle of the woods, with no one around. Rather, they haunt the houses where they were horribly murdered, in the middle of the night, because it is angry. The fortune teller follows fixed rules to interpret the cards. Perhaps those rules are new, strange or not fully understood. But they are still rules. (And, if those rules were chaotic, that still wouldn't matter. There is nothing that says that nature must be orderly, although it has always proven to be. I'm not going to follow that line of thought here).

Some may be tempted to try to rescue the supernatural by changing the definition to something like: things that humans can never fully understand. But that definition is not terribly interesting, and it certainly does not capture what people really mean when they speak of the supernatural. Those who know the most about quantum mechanics say that they do not really understand it, and never will. Richard Feynman, for example, admitted that he did not really understand quantum mechanics. Yet no one claims that quantum mechanics is supernatural. It is just really hard to understand.

Of course, Feynman could describe quantum mechanics, just as J.K. Rowling can describe Harry Potter and his magic tricks. It is easy to say: This is what I saw happen. The electrons are behaving as if they are both here and not here at the same time. I saw blood flowing from the eyes of the statue. I saw him lifted up to heaven. She was able to read my thoughts. These are all supernatural events by any meaningful definition, and they can all be described in the sense that we can report what happened. The fact that we can report on an event does not mean we understand it, and if we cannot even understand something well enough to report on it, we cannot even begin to have a discussion about it.

Moreover, there may be things even more complicated than quantum mechanics. Some humans, like Richard Feynman, can understand quantum mechanics in the sense that they can show it is true and describe what occurs in mathematical terms. Perhaps there are natural phenomenon even more complicated, such that our minds are simply incapable of comprehending. But that does not make those events supernatural. It just means our minds are limited, something we knew already.

Anything that actually happens is part of nature, whether or not we understand how it works. If something does not happen, then it is not part of nature. The supernatural cannot, by its very definition, exist. So, in the end, belief in the supernatural comes down to belief in gibberish. No one can really believe in the supernatural if they think about it in any meaningful way.

So, why do people insist on saying that they believe in the supernatural? Because people want to believe. Because it is exciting, scary -- or, in the case of religion, reassuring -- to believe in something being "out there" that is beyond our understanding. Harry Potter would not be magical if we knew the physics behind his tricks. Thinking about it to hard -- or reading pedantic blog entries like this one -- takes all the fun out of the supernatural.

In the end, we are just going back to that old working definition of supernatural: anything that we do not understand and which seems, in our experience, to be impossible, but with a slight twist: the supernatural is something we want to believe.

Medical Hell, Part III: 7.5 Minutes

2010-01-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

Most doctors schedule four to eight appointments every hour. Eight appointments an hour, which seems to be the norm for orthopedic surgeons, means an average of less than 7.5 minutes per patient, given that the doctor must spend some time walking from room to room, etc. We're probably lucky to get five to fifteen minutes of our doctors' attention in the average appointment. Next time you visit your doctor, look at the sign-in sheet and figure out how little time the doctor has allotted for your consultation or examination.

In these short appointments, we are expected to make important decisions about our health: whether to take a medication, to undergo a procedure, or to just let things be. It is simply impossible to make a good decision in such a limited amount of time, and I can think of no other profession that gives such short shrift to its clients. Yet there is no profession more important than medicine.

I am confident of the problem, but I am less sure of the cause(s) and solution(s). Nevertheless, in the spirit of the internet (speaking out when you are not really sure if you know what you are talking about), here goes:

The underlying problem is that we simply do not have enough doctors to go around. There are two reasons for this. First and foremost, we do not have enough medical schools. There are only about 125 medical schools in the entire United States, about 1 for every 2,500,000 people. As a result, there are many capable students who would be more than happy to pursue a career in medicine, but who are not able to qualify. We would do well to close a few law schools and open a few medical schools.

Second, medical training is unnecessarily long. Many doctors --dermatologists, for example -- do not use even a fraction of what they learn in medical school. These specialists should be given separate degrees, with training focused on what they will need in their practice. Think of dentists, for example. Reducing the length of training means that each medical school can produce more doctors.

Clearly, there is a need for some doctors who know all fields well, and there is a need for all medical practitioners to have a certain minimum understanding of how the human body works. But, in a world of limited resources, it makes sense to allocate education more carefully.

Airport Security Has Become a Fraud

2010-01-01T18:15:00.000-08:00

I fly frequently, and I care very much about my safety and the safety of my fellow passengers. Some airport security is necessary for that safety. But that being said, airport security in this country has become a very expensive farce.

All activities entail risk. Driving to the airport to catch a flight entails the risk of dying in a car crash. That risk is -- and always has been -- far higher than the risk of dying on the flight from all causes combined. Staying home is risky, too. There may be an earthquake or a hurricane. And, no matter what you do, you might die of cancer or some other horrible disease. Each of these different deaths is, in an important sense, the same. The victim is dead. To put it another way, I do not care if I die from cancer or in a terrorist attack -- I just want to put it off as long as possible!

But of course there are limits to what we can do. Even if we drive 10 miles per hour and wear helmets at all times, there is still a risk of dying in a car accident. Even if we go to the doctor every day, and have every possible test, there is still a risk that some disease will go undetected. We have to make choices about what steps we take to improve our safety.

So, we must apply some common sense. The amount of time, money and energy we invest attempting to mitigate any particular risk should be based on a simple cost-benefit analysis. How much risk can be reduced at what cost? People -- especially Americans -- like to put their heads in the sand and claim that there can never be a compromise when it comes to safety. But there always is such a compromise, whether we like it or not. Best to acknowledge that fact and make the smartest compromises. Refusing to acknowledge that we are making compromises prevents us from making good decisions and ultimately makes us less safe, not more.

The risk of dying in a terrorist attack is, in the scheme of things, trivial. No one has been killed by a terrorist in the United States in over eight years. Not one person. In the meantime, millions of people have died from cancer, heart disease and accidents of all kinds. A few unlucky folks have even died of being hit by lightning and as a result of shark attacks. Certainly, there is a risk of terrorism on airplanes. There always will be such a risk and, like most risks, it cannot be entirely eliminated. But that risk is already very, very low on the list in terms of actual size.

Moreover, there is very little we can do to reduce the risk further. We already spend millions of dollars, and spend millions of hours of people's time, trying to further reduce a risk that is already very small. As with any endeavor, there is a law of diminishing returns. The cost of improving something starts low and gets increasingly higher, while at the same time the benefits become smaller and smaller. At some point, there is nothing more that we can reasonably do. Airport security passed that point long ago.

Furthermore, even if we could make air travel "completely" safe from terrorism, it is unclear if that would make us any safer. Presumably, terrorists would learn that it is impossible to destroy an aircraft, and they would therefore turn their attention to other targets -- boats, bridges, stadiums and the like. Terrorists are going to hit the weakest point, so making one particular facet of our lives "terror-proof" would be of little benefit, even if it were possible.

The irony of all this is that the press and the government are playing directly into the hands of the terrorists by creating unjustified fear. The idea of terrorism is to scare people and to make them stop living their lives normally. The terrorist cannot hope to kill enough people to bring down his victim; terrorism is not war. Terror works through fear, not bombs. A "war on terror" should focus on stopping fear. But we seem to be doing the exact opposite.

The failed attack on December 25, 2009, provides a perfect example. All of our elaborate airport security was unable to prevent the would-be terrorist from getting his "bomb" onto the airplane. The attacker apparently was not particularly skilled nor persistent -- he simply stuffed a small bag into his underwear. Short of a real (or virtual) strip search, the next attacker can do the exact same thing and be all but certain to get his "bomb" onto the plane.

The attacker failed to blow up the airplane, but not because of anything the TSA did to stop him. He failed for two simple reasons. First, he was not very bright. Second, the passengers intervened (this is at least the third time that has happened -- the final plane on 9/11 and the "shoe bomber" being the other two examples of passengers intervening). Experience suggests we can count on both of these factors in the future. Competent terrorists are, fortunately, rather unusual. Brave passengers are not (and it only takes a few brave passengers on a plane to stop a given attack).

Ironically, however, the attack of December 25, 2009, did succeed in an important respect, but only because of the government and media reaction. The US government reacted by imposing more airport security measures. While those measures would not stop a similar attack tomorrow, they do impose a huge cost on travelers, airlines and ultimately the world economy. The stocks of airlines, for example, fell substantially. The attacker may have failed to take down that airplane, but he caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage, based on the airline stocks alone. And he did not even have to blow himself up to do it!

The media did its part, too. Scaring the public is always a good way to improve ratings, and almost all major media outlets could not resist. No one said, "Here is just the second attack in eight years, and again it failed without the need for any security. This is proof that we are safe." Instead, the media ran the story so as to scare the daylights out of anyone who was planning to fly.

Terrorist attacks, like shark attacks, cause visceral reaction in most people. Mature, educated people can acknowledge that fear, but at the same time apply their reason and make decisions accordingly. Please, do not play into the fear game. Do not be afraid to fly. Even when there is another crash -- and sadly, there will always be another one -- use your common sense. Flying is, always has been and always will be, a very safe way to travel. If you want to fight terrorism, do it by not being afraid.

Should You Trust Yelp?

2009-11-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

The review website Yelp provides a useful service. On the most basic level, Yelp is a good place to go if you want to get a list of businesses in any given city, whether it be restaurants, dry cleaners, dog kennels or whatever. Yelp seems to have reached critical mass, in that most businesses seem to listed. Going to Seattle, and want to find a good Thai restaurant? They are probably all listed by Yelp. Need the address of a specific restaurant? Again, it is probably provided on Yelp.

Yelp's reviews, however, are of dubious value. No review, reviewer or review website can ever be perfect, but Yelp could do a whole lot better. Most importantly, the reviews on Yelp tend to be overly positive. Remember, Yelp takes advertisements from the same businesses it reviews. No business would buy an ad of any kind on Yelp if their own review is negative. Because every business that is reviewed on Yelp is also a potential advertiser, it suits Yelp's on financial interest to keep as many reviews as possible positive.

Yelp does a number of different things to keep the reviews positive. Most obviously, Yelp allows a business owner to pay to have a preferred review at the top. And, at the top of each review is a purported "average" star rating. I did the math on Yelp's own reviews of itself, however, the average is just wrong. Guess which way!

Yelp also displays reviews -- and even deletes reviews -- in a manner that is far from transparent. Yelp will not release the algorithm it uses, but they do say popularity of the reviewer counts. Positive reviews are popular, so this pushes positive reviews to the top and keeps them listed. Yelp also fails to tell people when their reviews have been removed. I see no valid reason to remove a review simply because the reviewer is not popular. Let the consumer sort by popularity if he wants, but do not just take reviews down. And, when the reviewer logs in, he actually sees his own review, as if it is were published.

There have also been allegations that Yelp engages in practices that are little short of extortion, such as offering to move good reviews to the top for money, then doing just the opposite when the business owner refuses to pay. I have no personal knowledge of any such incidents, so I will simply provide a link to an article that contains more detailed allegations.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635

Finally, I recently had Yelp remove one of my reviews, with notice to me, for an alleged violation of their rules. I was looking for a painter, and found one on Yelp. He had one five star review. But, when I called him, it became clear that he had written his own review on Yelp; foolishly, he did not even bother to use a pseudonym. The name on his answering machine matched the review. So, I never spoke to the guy and never used him, but I did post a review on Yelp calling him out for cheating. Yelp pulled my review, saying I had no personal experience with the business. I think they should have thanked me!

All that being said, Yelp is still useful. You can find a business, its address, phone number and website in a flash. Even the reviews are of some value, just so long as you know what it is you are getting.

Down with the Dow!

2009-10-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

The American news media are addicted to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Radio and television stations seems to believe that reporting the Dow (and, often, the NASDAQ) is an essential part of any news cast. Even NRP includes a mention of the intra-day progress of the Dow repeatedly throughout the day. CNN is the worst. It displays the Dow constantly in a corner of the screen. Watch CNN, and you will see ever little movement, refreshed every few seconds. What a waste of electrons!

These constant updates on the stock market are worse than useless. The fact that the market is up 0.4% on a given day is utterly meaningless to the vast majority of people. The stock market's daily, and even weekly, drift is no indication of the direction of the market, let alone of the economy. Even a relatively large move in the market, say a rise or fall of 3% in one day, is not meaningful. There is nothing that any intelligent person can or should do in response to it, nor does it change anyone's life.

Reporting the Dow is, at best, a colossal waste of time. At worst, such reports create paranoia and fuel speculation. People who listen to the news, with its moment-by-moment reporting on stock values, could reasonably infer that these reports mean something. The Dow is down -- the economy must be in trouble! The Dow is up -- things must be improving! But that is not true. The Dow is up 0.4% today as a result of random drift, not because "bargain hunters are snapping up shares," as ABC reported.

Worst of all, the reporting of the market's small random drifts encourages people to speculate. The true value of stocks, over the long term, is based on the value of the businesses. More specifically, the value of stocks is based on the dividends that they will pay. Therefore, the value of a stock does not go up or down on an hourly basis, absent some important event, e.g., Merck's latest drug obtaining FDA approval. In any market, however, there will always be an element of speculation as well, people who buy solely for the purpose of finding a greater fool who will pay more. They do not care what the stock is worth, only what others think it is worth. Focusing on ultra-short term fluctuations in the market encourages people to focus on what the market will bear, not on the value of what is being traded.

Finally, although this is really beside the point, the Dow is a poor measure of the value of stocks, as it takes into account just 30 large companies. If you need to measure the value of the stock market, look to the S&P 500 or the Wilshire 5000, which take into account the broader market.

State Funded Religion in America

2009-10-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

Approximately half the funding for churches in the United States comes from the government. The Federal government allows its citizens to take a tax deduction for money they give to their church (or synagogue or mosque). So do States that have an income tax. In addition, churches are exempt from property tax, and some of the money their pay to their ministers is also tax free. Add up these tax benefits, and approximately half of the money given to churches comes from our tax dollars.

This government funding is available to all religions, regardless of whether they preach love or hate. The government pays, whether or not the religion treats blacks, women or gays as full human beings. The government pays, which means you pay. So, if you are an atheist, you pay for Catholic churches. If you are a Baptist, you pay for Muslim's mosques.

Some have claimed that the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of religion, and that it would therefore be unconstitutional to tax churches. That is an obvious fallacy. The constitution also guarantees free speech, but that does not mean that money you spend on books or newspapers is tax deductible, and it does not stop the government from requiring book stores to pay property taxes, income tax and sales tax. Hospitals pay property tax. Private schools pay property tax. But churches do not. And our taxes therefore have to be higher to make up the difference.

Freedom of religion means that there should be no laws designed to discourage religion. If you want to have a church, you should be free to do so. The government should not tax or otherwise burden something just because it is religious. On the other hand, the government should not be in the business of giving benefits just because something is part of a religion. That is forcing people to fund religions in which they do not believe and, ironically, violating the rights of the religious, as well as the atheists and agnostics.

What I have written here is hardly new. No one who studies law seriously disputes it. Yet, one rarely hears anyone complain about it openly. I want to go on record saying that I am outraged that the government takes my money through taxes, then gives it to anyone and everyone who runs a church.

If it is not torture, why bother?

2009-07-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

There is an on-going debate in America about whether water boarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques constitute "torture." On the surface, everyone pretends to agree that when pain or discomfort rise to a certain level, they become "torture" and are no longer morally acceptable. The entire debate is a farce.

No one really believes that mild pain or discomfort is an effective interrogation technique. Just image that hardened terrorist breaking down because of mild or even moderate pain. The very idea is comical, even worthy of a Monte Python skit. I do not know if real torture is an effective way to get information, but anything less certainly is not. (Of course, there are other techniques that do not involve any meaningful pain or discomfort at all; I am not referring to those here).

Reasonable minds can differ about whether torture is ever morally acceptable and/or a good strategy in the long run. But half measures are silly, and I cannot believe anyone seriously contends otherwise. Those who are advocating the use of these techniques must really believe that they inflict intolerable pain, otherwise they would not even bother.

So, let's give up the charade and either agree that torture is acceptable under some clearly defined and limited circumstances, or ban it altogether and stop fooling around.

Phasing Out Pharmacies

2009-06-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

There was a time, or so I was told, when pharmacies and pharmacists played an important role in our health care system. If those days existed at all, they are now long gone. It is high time that we begin to phase out the pharmacy. We should do so by progressively making more and more medications available without a prescription. At the same time, we should ban advertisements for any medication.

Pharmacies add a significant layer of expense to our health care system. While I can buy aspirin or ibuprofen at the 7-11 store, I can only get meloxicam (an anti-inflammatory that serves the same purpose as ibuprofen and is no more dangerous) at a pharmacy. That creates two different kinds of expense. First, it adds to the cost of the medication. A pharmacy must have a highly trained -- and highly paid -- pharmacist on duty at all times. In addition to the pharmacist, there is almost always a second employee who hands out the prescription medications and often rings them up on a separate cash register. Furthermore, the pharmacy incurs expenses in complying with various regulations. Compare that to the cost of selling aspirin. A store simply stocks the shelves with bottles, and the customers help themselves.

The pharmacy also imposes a non-monetary cost, one which I find particularly vexing. I can get an aspirin at the 7-11 or Trader Joes at any hour, without a prescription and without an appointment. Getting propanolol (a common beta blocker) requires a prescription, which must be presented at a licensed pharmacy. I must then wait until the pharmacist fills the prescription, and stand in a special line to receive that one item. That process is a waste of time, in addition to a waste of money.

I suspect that the prescription system imposes yet another cost, which may be even more important than the two costs described above. The prescription system discourages patients from being good consumers and paying attention to the choices they are making. Prescription drugs are treated as holy: only the doctor decides which ones we take, when and in what doses. The insurance companies have their secret formularies, which try to impose on the doctor's choice. Then, only the pharmacist can actually deliver the goods. Even a patient who wants to get involved in choosing a medication will have a hard time doing so in the face of those three forces.

Compare the purchase of pain killers, where the patient can select from a variety of over-the-counter medications, in various doses, brand name and generic. These medications quickly lose their magic aura, and patients learn to make intelligent choices. Consumers feel free to think for themselves and experiment appropriately with the available products. They learn to avoid overpriced brand names, and they learn which medications work best for them. I suspect that eliminating the prescription requirement on a medication would quickly create more savy consumers and thus reduce the price the market would bear in many instances. I bet the big pharmaceutical companies would hate the idea of phasing out the pharmacy.

We do not get anything worthwhile from pharmacies. Few, if any, patients actually seek the advice of the pharmacist. If a few patients want to pay for such advice, they should of course be free to do so, but there is no reason to require everyone to pay for advice which very few of us want or even receive. Pharmacists do not tell us how and when to take medication; doctors do that. The pharmacist simply copies what the doctor wrote down and, in my case, often makes mistakes in doing so. Theoretically, a pharmacist could alert a patient to conflicts between medicines. That only works, however, if the patient always uses the same pharmacy. The only time I have been alerted to a conflict was by my doctor, and one of the conflicting medications was non-prescription, so a pharmacy could not catch it, even if it knew all of the prescription drugs I was taking.

The prescription system most certainly does not protect those who would abuse drugs from getting what they want. Even making a drug completely illegal does not prevent determined buyers from getting ahold of it. The prescription system provides even less protection than an outright ban. One who is determined to get his hands on a prescription drug can always find a crooked doctor, forge a prescription, fake a symptom and/or send the same prescription to ten different online pharmacies. Pharmacies are not in the business of preventing the improper sale of medications.

Far more importantly, only a small minority of prescription medications are drugs of abuse, i.e., fun. No one is going to pop Lipitor at a party. Sudafed, on the other hand, can be turned into a drug of abuse.

Most prescription medications are no more dangerous than over the counter medications. It is easy enough to kill oneself with all sorts of household items, beginning with alcohol. I doubt that taking an entire bottle of Crestor is any worse than taking an entire bottle of ibuprofen.

In the end, pharmacies are just another entrenched special interest. We take it for granted that they are necessary, but they are not. It is time to start phasing them out.

Giving

2009-06-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

Most of us have heard the saying: "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime." It seems to me that the old saying may not go far enough. Giving a man a fish may provide a lesson along with the meal: the way to get a fish is to wait until someone gives you one. Simply handing out free food may, in the long run, do more harm than good.

It seems that most charity focuses on eliminating an immediate need without addressing the underlying problem. In fact, Mother Teresa herself, that icon of giving, has been criticized for perpetuating poverty, rather than trying to alleviate it. She is alleged to have said: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." That, in my view, is not kindness.

Government charity is often in that vein: food stamps, unemployment payments, medicare, welfare and Section 8 housing vouchers address the need of the moment without doing anything about the underlying problem of poverty. The unintended result of this kind of charity is poverty that is passed down from generation to generation. Similarly, food kitchens and homeless shelters do nothing to address the underlying problems of poverty, addiction and mental illness that lead to homelessness in the first place.

I realize that there is a place for simply giving support to the needy. Victims of one-time disasters such as hurricanes need help now. Similarly, there are those who simply will never be able to take care of themselves for whatever reason. There is no point in trying to teach them to fish, because they simply cannot learn for whatever reason. In these instances, it is makes sense to provide what is needed. In my view, however, the more important task is addressing the underlying problems that leave people sick, uneducated and poor.

Recently, I have become a fan of Kiva.org, a micro lending organization that allows people to make no-interest loans to small businesses in the third world. The borrowers include taxi drivers in Moldova, small farms in Peru and grocery stores in Nigeria. The borrowers do pay interest to Kiva's local partners, but at lower rates than would otherwise be available to them, assuming that they could get a loan at all. One of the biggest problems in the third world is the lack of access to capital. Hopefully, these small loans help people grow their own businesses and move them up just a little bit towards economic Independence.

eBay "Giving Works" and MissionFish are a Scam

2009-05-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

eBay now allows sellers to auction an item for charity. Sellers can agree, in advance, to donate anywhere from 10% to 100% of the proceeds to the charity of the seller's choice, so long as that charity is on eBay's approved list. The listing shows a cute little ribbon, telling the bidder that the auction is for the benefit of charity, as well as a short paragraph extolling the benefits of the particular charity that will benefit. What's more, eBay discounts its fees in connection with charity auctions. The discount is proportional to the percentage donated to charity; eBay gives up almost all its fees if the auction is 100% for charity. Sounds great, but sadly it is a scam.

In the fine print, it turns out that all donations must be made through "MissionFish." What's more, MissionFish takes a fee for its service. There is a small notice on each charity listing stating that a "small deduction may apply." Those words are in faint print and small type. There is no "may" about it, and the deduction certainly is not "small." In fact, MissionFish charges far more than eBay. That's right, you would be better off ignoring eBay's offer to waive part of its fees. Simply sell the item, pay the fees and donate the balance to charity. Far more will go to charity that way than if you take eBay up on its supposedly charitable offer.

MissionFish charges:

20% of the first $50

15% of the next $150

10% of the next $800 and

5% of the amount above $1,000

So, for an item that sells for $500, MissionFish will charge $72.50. That's right, MissionFish takes $72.50 from the charity for the "service" of delivering your $500. By way of comparison, on the same $500 item, eBay would charge a $4 insertion fee (at most), plus a $19.69 final value fee, for a total of $23.69. So, eBay does not waive its fee. Quite to the contrary, the fee nearly triples! And, what is worse, you do not even see it unless you look very carefully.

Here is how MissionFish and eBay hide the fact that they are stealing from charities. Again, say you auction an item for $500 to benefit charity. The buyer sends the money to you. You then take the $500 and give it MissionFish, which tells you that you made a donation of $500. You never find out that about 15% of your money went to MissionFish.

Finally, eBay (which owns paypal) gets a fee when the money is sent to you by the buyer. So, you end up with less than $500 because paypal/Ebay takes a bite up front, but then you have to give MissionFish the full $500 so that MissionFish/paypal can take their next bite. And, if you forget to feed MissionFish the full $500, they will bill your credit card. Want to take your credit card off their account? No problem, just enter a new card and click that you authorize them to charge that. The website does not allow you to simply remove your credit card.

Do not be fooled! If you want sell something for charity, by all means do it, but do not tell eBay. Just sell the item and donate the proceeds yourself.

Letting Go of Gay "Pride"

2009-05-27T21:49:00.001-07:00

For years, western society has preached that being gay is a sin. Most gay people internalized that message and were ashamed of being gay. Eventually, some gays began to stand up for themselves, and they stopped being ashamed. Instead, they became proud. After all, being proud is, in most people's mind, the opposite of being ashamed. In fact, this new gay "pride" misses the point entirely and is ultimately counter productive to the gay rights movement.

Being gay is not something to be proud or ashamed of. Sexual orientation is a preference, and it does not make sense to be proud or ashamed of a preference. For example, no one is ever proud that they like ketchup, or cold weather, or that their favorite color is blue. The fact that people are born gay is not even the point. Being gay still simply means that someone has a sexual preference for people of their own gender. There is nothing to be proud or ashamed of, no matter what one prefers.

The use of the phrase "gay pride" is far more than a simple gramatical error. Quite to the contrary, it confuses the debate about gay rights and alienates straight people. It confuses the debate because it perpetuates the wrongheaded idea that sexual orientation is one of those things that we should be either proud or ashamed of. The entire point of the gay equality movement is that sexual preference is not something good or bad. Saying otherwise frames the issue in a way in which gays will lose. If sexual orientation is something to be proud or ashamed of, then straight people will surely decide that they are proud of being straight -- and that gays should be ashamed. It creates a pitched battle over who is better, gays or straights. That is the opposite of the message gays should be sending: we are different in our sexual orientation, but those differences do not make us better or worse than you.

United Airlines' Charity Policy

2009-05-18T11:57:00.001-07:00

I had a few extra United Airlines upgrades in my account recently, and realized that I would not be able to use them before they expire. I know that United does not allow the sale of upgrades or miles, but they do allow members to donate miles. I therefore decided to donate my upgrades by holding a 100% charity auction on Ebay, with all the proceeds going to Kiva.org and Much Love Animal Rescue. In the listings, I expressly stated that the auctions were subject to United's rules, and that if United objected, I would remove the listings.

United waited until the listings were over, then told me I had violated their rules. Even though 100% of the proceeds went to charity, United still views what I did as a "sale." Moreover, United penalized me by taking away two systemwide upgrades which, based on the Ebay auctions, were worth $500 each. Even worse, United took away the upgrades from the Ebay bidders. So, they did not get what they bargained for. The charities already have the money, so I cannot get it back to return it! I protested with United, but got nowhere.

I am done with United Airlines. Hello American!

Cancer as a Political Issue

2009-05-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

For the eight years of the Bush administration, our political were dominated by an irrational fear of terrorism. Even now, with President Obama providing immeasurably better leadership, terrorism still plays far too large a role in our political debate. Terrorism killed a total of approximately 3,000 people in the continental United States on September 11, 2001. It has killed approximately zero since then.

Cancer, on the other hand, kills thousands of people every day. Cancer is the greater threat to public health, by a huge margin. In fact, in terms of the threat to publich health, terrorism is lower than the common cold, while cancer is at the very top of the list. As far as I am concerned, a death by terrorism is no worse, and maybe in some ways much better, than a death by cancer. Yet, we spend far more money on preventing terrorism than we do preventing cancer.

The most important function of a government is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves individual. This includes things like building roads, maintaining a currency, national defense and disease control. Basic cancer research is far too expensive and far too long term for any individual to undertake it alone. Only the government can fund it adequately.

Moreover, the benefits of successful advances benefit not just all Americans, but everyone on the entire planet -- as well as everyone who is born in the future. The market cannot provide adequate incentives under those circumstances.

If there is anything that our government should do for us, it is to fund basic cancer research and make the result as widely available as possible. This is something that we all have an interest in, and it should be a major political issue, well ahead of relatively smaller threats, such as terrorism.

Shimbashi Station

2009-01-31T16:22:00.000-08:00

Shimabashi Station glistens and bustles in the late November rain. We stand on the platform, overlooking the crowded square, criss-crossed by men and women carrying umbrellas. Behind us, the rush of crowded subway cars. Below us, the steam engine whistles on the hour. Underneath the tracks, brightly-lit stores, well stocked and teeming with rush hour shoppers. We turn, and hurry down the stairs towards the exit.

We don't know it yet, but it is the last time it will ever be the same.

Medical Hell, Part II: I Wish I Were a Dog

2009-01-31T11:22:00.000-08:00

Our medical system is so badly broken, we would all be better off if we were all dogs or cats. I do not say that sarcastically; I believe my pets have received far superior medical care to what I have received, and at a far lower cost. We would do better to simply scrap our entire system, and replace it with what we give our pets.

My dog can get an appointment for a check-up within a day or two. I have to wait several months. My dog can see a specialist within a few days. Again, I wait for months. His wait at the emergency room is a fraction of mine. Moreover, his vet spends time with him and with me, explaining the situation, offering various options and even sympathizing when times are hard. Our vet returns phone calls. He even gave us his cell phone number, without me asking. Our vet also hands me all the medications my dog needs, without having to go to a pharmacy. Most importantly, our vet seems at least as knowledgable as any doctor I have met. The nurses I encountered while in the hospital were so bad I would have been better off without them. Doctors often seem to know their stuff, but spend so little time with each patient that it hardly matters. In every respect, our pets get far better medical care than we do.

The cost of this service is far lower than what we pay. My dog was hospitalized for five days, and the total cost was $1,900. I was in the hospital for 12 hours, and the co-pay to the hospital was over $3,000. The doctor charged me separately. Moreover, those are the amounts that I paid personally, with insurance. The insurance company paid more, and I paid the insurance company premiums every month for the privilege of paying those prices.

I am not sure why our medical system is so badly broken. Some might point to the high cost of medical malpractice insurance. While the cost is indeed high, it is not nearly high enough to play a material role in causing the problems we face. Perhaps different kinds of people become veterinarians rather than doctors. Maybe it is the absurd bureaucracy created by the insurance companies that has broken our medical system. It could be that the massive amount we spend on the last six months of life bogs the system down, whereas our pets euthenized when that is the merciful thing to do. I certainly am not qualified so say what is causing the problem, but I can say this: nex time I need medical care, I will be wishing I were a dog.

Patriotism

2008-11-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

Patriotism is nothing more than tribal "us versus them" bigotry.

What does it mean to be patriotic? Most people will tell you it means to love your country, but that definition is not very helpful. What part of the country does one have to love in order to be patriotic? Loving the land -- the mountains, the valleys, the lakes -- is not patriotism. If it were, I would be patriotic to Peru, Japan, Scotland and Canada, among others. I suspect I would also be patriotic to Iran, if I had the chance to go there. Obviously, that is not what patriotism means.

Patriotism cannot mean loving the current government. As I write this, George W. Bush has an approval rating of 23%. Congress' approval rating is even lower. Yet, the overwhelming majority of Americans still claim to be patriotic. They obviously do not mean that they love their current government.

Patriotism cannot mean "loving the principals for which our country stands." No country lives by a fixed set of principals, at least not for long. The U.S. Constitution originally upheld slavery. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed citizens of Japanese descent to be placed in concentration camps, without one ounce of evidence that they had done or were planning to do anything wrong. Today, the United States ignores its own constitution by imprisoning people in Guantanamo Bay for years without charging them with a crime. Yes, the United States government has done some wonderful things of the years, but it has also done some horrible things. Do people who claim to be patriotic actually think about all these things, and come to the conclusion that they love some alleged underlying principal behind this country? More to the point, do they think about other countries -- Great Britain, for example -- and decide that the principals behind our country are somehow better? Clearly not.

Patriotism cannot mean loving the people of a country. Again, if that were so, many of us would be equally patriotic to more than one country. Americans think that they are kinder, smarter, better people than the Swedes? Is that why Americans are so patriotic? Again, most Americans -- and especially those who tend to be most patriotic -- do not have the experience to make a judgment about whether Swedes tend to be more or less kind than Americans. When people say they are patriotic, they are not thinking of such things.

In the end, patriotism means loving your country more than other countries, simply because it is your country and for no other reason. Go team! Up us, down you! Patriotism in America is about liking America better than other countries because we are Americans. That is not only immoral, it is extremely dangerous.

Evolution

2008-10-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Things that tend to survive, tend to survive. That single sentence, a tautology, in fact, sums up the theory of evolution. The rest flows naturally from that simple observation.

If a chimp has two offspring, the one that is better equipped to survive in its environment will probably live longer. As a result of living longer, it will probably have more offspring. Children tend to resemble their parents. Therefore, the next generation of chimps will be more like that chimp than its sibling. Over a long period of time, the population of chimps will become more and more like that first chimp that was better equipped to survive in its environment.

No rational person can argue with the basic theory of evolution, as described above. Of course, there numerous ways in which the picture can be refined. For example, the phrase "better equipped to survive" can be replaced with "better at getting its genes into the next generation." The two are not always the same. If the chimp survives a long time by not expending energy fighting for the ability to mate, the story falls apart. A bee may gets its genes into the next generation by sacrificing itself for its genetically identical siblings. The details of evolution -- what kinds of animals in fact tend to evolve, and under what conditions -- are complex. The basic theory, however, is an obvious truth.

Many Americans refuse to accept that evolution applies to humans. But they have no basis to do so. There is no rational basis to believe that humans are somehow exempt from the laws of logic. Human populations are subject to the same forces of nature as any other population. The humans who tend to survive will tend to survive, and the next generation will be more like them.

That fact alone, however, does not prove that humans and chimps (and indeed all life) share a common ancestor. But a look at the real world makes it abundantly clear that we do. From our obvious physical similarities to other animals, to the distribution of plants and animals that exist, to the common DNA we share, to the fossil record, to the very ways in which are so well and so poorly designed at the same time, the evidence is beyond overwhelming. It would be easier to deny that the heart pumps blood (a fact which, like evolution, was unknown in Shakespeare's time) than it is to deny that we share a common ancestor with other primates.

But what does it matter whether people belief in evolution. I, for one, uses to think that creationist were foolish but harmless, like the Flat Earth Society or the people who think Elvis was abducted by space aliens. Whether we shared a common ancestor with chimps six million years ago makes no difference in our daily lives. Or so I thought. I was wrong. The process of evolution sculpted our bodies and minds of a period of more than a billion years. Evolutionary thinking is critical to understanding who we are, emotionally, intellectually and physically. Understanding evolution is important for medicine, but it is also important for understand ourselves, our loved ones and every other human with whom we share this earth.

I highly recommend the following books:

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, by Richards Dawkins http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223754778&sr=1-4

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, by Richard Dawkins http://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Tale-Pilgrimage-Dawn-Evolution/dp/061861916X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223755602&sr=1-1

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C. Dennett http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Dangerous-Idea-Evolution-Meanings/dp/068482471X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223754873&sr=1-1

Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, by David Sloan Wilson http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everyone-Darwins-Theory-Change/dp/0385340923/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223754672&sr=1-1

The Real Terrorist

2008-09-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

The terrorist who has done the most damage to the United States is George W. Bush. I am well aware that Bush did not plan 9/11, nor do I believe that he had any advance knowledge of the plot. On the other hand, George W. Bush is primarily responsible for the terror that has needlessly gripped this country and changed it so dramatically for the worse since September 11, 2001.

Terrorism is a tactic usually employed by those who, like bin Laden, know that they cannot win a conventional war. Rather than trying to do physical damage, the terrorist tries to inflict emotional or psychological damage on his enemy. The clever terrorist does not attack military installations, but rather seeks to kill civilians while they go about their regular lives, on a bus or plane, or working in an office building. (Bin Laden is not a very effective terrorist. He attacked one spectacular target, feeding his own ego, rather than hitting many smaller, random targets -- the best way to scare the daylights out of a population).

It is all but impossible to physically protect oneself from a terrorist. There are simply too many targets. On the other hand, terrorist do not really do that much damage. Human society suffers from all sorts of risks that are far more lethal, even in the most terror-ridden countries on earth. Cancer and car accidents being two obvious examples.

The best way to address terrorism is to think rationally about it. In an important sense, it is a tragedy when even one person dies, whether of cancer or an accident or an act of terror. But those three deaths are all deaths, one no different from the others. We should pay attention to the lethal risks in proportion to the actual damage they do, not based on how spectacular they are. In societal terms, physical damage from terrorism not very that important, and it does not deserve to take up that much of our attention. In the end, it is somewhere between lightening strikes and shark attacks. Yet, it gets more attention and causes more fear than many far more substantial risks.

Enter George W. Bush. Bush, along with his cronies, used 9/11 to create as much terror as possible in this country, for their own political advantage. They used it to justify their invasion of Iraq, and to get Bush re-elected. They used it to destroy our constitution. Bush claims to be prosecuting a "war on terrorism" and to be a "war president," meaningless phrases used to keep the American people terrified and submissive.

Terror is a psychological tactic, and the man who has terrorized this county is not bin Laden, but rather our own pathetic president.

The End of Faith by Sam Harris

2008-08-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

At its heart, The End of Faith is about the difference between faith and reason. Faith is blind. It is not based on evidence or reason, and therefore offering evidence or reasons will not shake the faithful from their beliefs. Harris thinks that is very, very dangerous. It will come as no surprise to anyone that he began writing this book on September 12, 2001.

Harris argues that relying on faith instead of reason is a bad way to lead your life. It leads to all sorts of weird and dangerous beliefs, prevents important scientific discoveries, and stirs hatred between people who hold mutually inconsistent faith-based beliefs. Of course, people make mistakes when they rely on evidence and reason, but at least if we rely on reason and evidence, we are moving in the right direction and we are open to changing our minds when we are wrong. If our beliefs are based on faith, we are stuck forever.

There can be no doubt that faith gets in the way of progress in areas such as medicine. For example, a sizeable and vocal minority of Americans do not believe in evolution because it clashes with their faith-based beliefs. Yes, there is a vital connection between evolution and medicine. Our bodies, and our minds, are the products of evolution. An understand of evolution is crucial to understanding how our bodies are designed, but because of the faith-based, unreasoned beliefs of a minority of people, evolution is not sufficiently taught in schools. As a result, we all suffer in terms of medical care, mental health and many other areas of life.

The End of Faith will make religious people uncomfortable. Harris says exactly what he thinks, without making an attempt to spare the feelings of the religious. He does not, however, call anyone names or say anything in order to be mean or offensive. He simply states that facts as he sees them. Some reviewers claim that Harris is "intolerant" or a "fundamentalist." They are wrong. Harris, unlike many religious leaders, fully supports the right to think, say and believe as you wish. He opposes any form of oppression.

On other hand, Harris also reserves the right to think some beliefs are foolish. You probably do not respect the belief that Elvis is alive. Harris feels the same way about religious beliefs. He certainly would not want to see Elvis believers put in jail or denied rights, but he feels free to say that belief in Elvis is just plain wrong.

Medical Hell, Part I: Sign Your Life Away

2008-07-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on posting a short series of comments on the failings of our medical system, based on my experiences. In each case, my point is not to whine that I have been treated poorly. Quite the opposite, I believe that the treatment I received is typical or even "good" by our incredibly low standards. It is the medical system that I wish to criticize, not my particular health care providers. Here's the first installment:

A couple of months ago, I decided to undergo a relatively low risk heart procedure. The first available appointment was about six weeks in the future when I made the decision. During that six week period I visited the doctor once, received various papers in the mail with instructions on where to show up and when, as well as several phone calls asking to confirm the appointment and for information designed to make sure that the hospital can get paid for its services.

It was not until the just before the procedure, however, when the IV was already in my arm, that the hospital gave me detailed legal waivers to sign. Then, the nurse came in and told me she wanted to discuss the various risks of the procedure so that I could give my "informed consent." All this while I am already lying in a hospital gown with a rubber pipe sticking out of my arm. One other minor point: before all this happened, I had already passed out once when the nurse tried to get the IV into the back of my hand and, after several minutes of trying, failed and had to pull it out. My blood pressure dropped to 72/42: the perfect time to sign legal documents and make important decisions about one's health care.

I know I don't really need to say more, but I cannot resist. Just imagine me saying, "wait, nurse, I need to review the fine print in this release before I sign it." Or how about, "nurse, I'd like to negotiate here in paragraph 24.2(a)(2), where the arbitrator is JAMS. How about the AAA instead?" Or how about this one: "What? There is a risk of stroke in this procedure? Well, in that case, I changed my mind. Take this IV out of my arm, I'm going home!" Sadly, I was in no condition to be a smart-ass. What actually happened is that I signed the releases without reading them and told the nurse not to go over the risks with me, lest I pass out a second time. She beat a hasty retreat. (Yes, I knew the risks. I did my own research).

This "sneak attack" is standard operating procedure in our hospitals and doctors' offices. After the patient has bought the health insurance showing the doctor as a preferred provider, and after the patient has arrived for his appointment, the doctor presents forms waiving many important rights. Sign it or you get no treatment. Hospitals routinely wait until the patient is checked in before demanding that the patient sign their forms. Sign it or check back out.

I used to trust doctors and hospitals, but no more. This outrageous conduct is only one of the many reasons.

Not My Heroes

2008-07-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

Our press and politicians are fond of referring to the men and women of our armed forces as "heroes," and saying that we owe them a great debt. In large part, I disagree. Most of our armed forces are not my heroes. At best, they are victims of their own ignorance who have damaged themselves and others. I might feel sorry for some of them, but they are hardly heroes.

Our armed forces are volunteers. Each and every member of the armed forces chose to join the military. Moreover, anyone who joined the military since approximately January 1, 2003, knew that they would likely serve in the invasion of Iraq: a fiasco of mind-boggling proportions that has cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of lives and irreparably harmed the reputation of this country, not to mention what it has done to the people of Iraq.

I fail to see how volunteering to participate in the invasion of Iraq qualifies one as a hero. I agree that a person's motivation in agreeing to serve is morally relevant. Some members of the armed services thought the invasion was a good idea. They were wrong, and their mistake damaged both themselves and others: not heroes. They may be good people, but they made a bad mistake and we are all paying the costs.

Some soldiers may have not concerned themselves with the merits of the mission, and simply joined out of a sense of loyalty to the country. Given that the country made a decision to attack, they volunteered to be the ones to put their lives on the line. Those who served Hitler could make the same argument: "It is not my business whether my country should be at war, I should always support my country." Blind allegiance to any one or anything is dangerous, and anyone who is willing to risk their life because George Bush wants to start a war is anything but a hero.

Asset Protection

2008-07-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

Many people fear that they will one day lose a lawsuit, and that all their hard earned assets will be taken away. A google search for "Asset Protection" will reveal numerous companies that play to that fear, and offer strategies to prevent creditors from taking your assets. Some of these strategies are legitimate, such placing funds into retirement accounts. Others, such as buying insurance, are actually beneficial to all concerned. For the most part, however, asset protection means committing fraud on your future creditors. It is relatively easy to see why.

Asset protection usually means placing assets into a "trust" which the owner still controls. The owner can do whatever he wants with the trust assets, including spending them or taking them out of the trust. These trusts have provisions that state that, when you are sued, or a judgment is entered against you, you "lose" control over the trust. The trust is then run by some third party in an off shore location, and it is supposedly impossible for creditors to get at the funds. I am not aware of any court in the United States upholding such a provision, nor stating that it is anything other than blatant conspiracy to defraud creditors.

An asset is either yours or it is not. If you really wish to give away your assets, you are free to do so (so long as you still have enough money to pay your debts). If not, then the assets are still yours and your creditors are entitled to get them if you do not pay your debts. One major way asset protection works is by trying to have it both ways -- the assets are yours when you want, but are not yours when creditors come knocking. No court is going to let you get away with that.

The other major way asset protection works is outright fraud. Just hide your assets from the creditor. And lie. Sadly, fraud works, but then again so does robbing a bank. On the other hand, getting caught committing fraud has consequences. The consequences of engaging in asset protection is that you will have a very hard time ever filing bankruptcy if you need to do so. Bankruptcy courts generally make debtors account for their assets before they discharge debts. If you tell the Judge, "I used to have money, but I sent it all to the Cayman Islands so my creditors couldn't get it," you are not likely to get a discharge any time soon.

Some of these "asset protection" companies pretend to legitimate businesses. For example, take a look at the following website: http://www.southpacgroup.com/contact.html. These people operate a scam. My client has a judgment against them for more than $3,000,000 as a result of their attempts to help a rapist avoid paying his victim, but that does not stop them from teaching "continuing education" courses to members of the California State Bar. Or consider this website: http://www.assetprotectioncorp.com/. It is run by disbarred lawyer Robert Lambert, who says, "All asset protection techniques have one thing in common: they each make it more difficult for a creditor to either find or take assets." Ask him if he can tell you about a single plan he has devised that withstood an attack in court.

Many asset protection companies try to justify their actions by blaming the legal system. "Those evil lawyers are just predators, waiting to take your hard earned money away." I am no fan of our legal system, but asset protection does not offer reform: it offers chaos. A creditor can only take your money if, after a trial, a court determines that you owe the money. If you insulate yourself from that, you place yourself above the law. More importantly, no one can seriously hope to live in a society with things like bank accounts, long term leases, credit or home ownership if anyone can simply stick their assets into a trust and avoid paying their legitimate bills. Would you loan money to anyone, knowing that they could avoid repaying you by placing all their money in a trust?

Incredibly, no one seems to care about the asset protection industry. It would be easy enough to shut down. California has no obligation to honor corporations or trusts from countries such as the Cayman Islands or the Cook Islands, which are essentially safe harbors for white collar criminals. California could shut down most or all of Southpac's business by simply forcing the Cooks Islands to choose -- either enter into reciprocal agreements to enforce each other's judgments, or your corporations and trusts cannot do business in our State. California could shut down Robert Lambert by prosecuting him from practicing law without a license -- a felony, considering that he lost his license.

Asset protection is nothing more than a scam, designed to trap the greedy and the fearful.

Original Intent

2008-06-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

Many judges, including perhaps a majority of the US Supreme Court, subscribe to the belief that the US Constitution should be interpreted based the drafters' intent. At first glance, the idea makes perfect sense. After all, the Common Law generally provides that a contract or law should ordinarily be interpreted as the authors' intended. When it comes to the Constitution, however, seeking original intent is completely irrational.

The Constitution is 230 years old. No one alive today voted for it. Even at the time the Constitution was ratified, only small minority of those then alive had anything to do with the decision. Women did not get the vote until over 100 years later and blacks in the U.S. were nearly all held in slavery. Moreover, no matter how good their intentions, the authors of the Constitution had no right to impose their will on their contemporaries, let alone everyone who lives in the United States (as it has now expanded) for all time.

Thankfully, human society has advanced substantially in the past 230 years. Although the authors of the Constitution may have been enlightened for their time, their views on interracial marriage, slavery, crime and punishment and numerous other matters are barbarian by today's standards. The fact that these people thought we have a right to bear arms, for example, should not control our lives. Their judgment about right and wrong is questionable at best, and perhaps more importantly they knew nothing about the weapons or society of today.

Ironically, looking for original intent ignores the true genius of the Constitution. The drafters never intended to legislate 23o years in advance. Rather than defining the rights of the citizens in clear terms, the drafters used phrases like "Due Process of Law" and "Equal Protection." These phrases were intended to be vague, so that each generation could interpret them differently and thus govern themselves. Asking what the drafters meant by "Equal Protection" is not only asking for trouble, it is actually ignoring the drafters' intent.

Corruption at the United States Passport Office

2008-02-23T17:26:00.000-08:00

My recent experience with the passport office raises two concerns about our government.

The passport office website informed me that it would take approximately 6 to 8 weeks to renew my passport. The actual work in issuing a new passport is minimal, and probably takes less than an hour. There is no reason why the entire process should ever take more than a couple of days, even at busy times. A typical private company would accomplish a similar administrative task in one day, or else be forced out of business by other companies that did. Denial (or delay) of a passport is a serious matter, preventing one from leaving the country. I am troubled that our government is unable to (or does not care to) perform a simple but important task in a timely fashion. But it gets worse.

I discovered that a "private" agency can get a passport in a day -- for a fee. That is corruption, pure and simple. The private agency does not know the secret way to fill out a form, nor does it have people standing in line holding a place just for its next customer. Quite to the contrary, the private agency has a connection (what kind, it is impossible to tell) which allows it to get a passport as fast as you happen to need it, for a sliding scale of fees. I paid to get my new passport back in a week, and that is when it was returned to me, but I noticed that it was actually issued the day after I left my old passport at the agency. Obviously, those with connections have no trouble getting a passport in the usual time.

Someone inside the government is selling the right to get a passport. It is no wonder that it takes six weeks to get a passport the "usual" way. If it took a day, no one would pay to get their passport faster!

Slowly but surely, the United States is becoming a corrupt third world country.

Free Will

2008-02-19T20:25:00.001-08:00

The "problem" of free will escapes me. Some seem to think that free will means that human decisions are not deterministic, i.e., that they are unpredictable. That makes no sense to me. The fact that you can predict, in advance, that I will make a certain choice does not change the fact that the choice is mine to make. I will always choose tuna sushi over natto. I could, if I wanted, chose differently. But it happens that I like tuna, and not natto, so I always choose the former. Still, it is my choice. I could choose otherwise, if I wanted to, but I don't.

Being undeterministic is not the same as having free will. Quantum mechanics tells us that an electron behaves unpredictably, but an electron does not therefore have free will. Or at least there is no reason to believe that it does. Indeed, although the behavior of a particular electron is not strictly predictable, the behavior of a large group of electrons is. That is because quantum mechanics tells us the odds that an electron will take a certain path. The choice of each electron is not really "unpredictable" at all. If being undeterministic is "free will," then there really is not such thing.

The false "problem" of free will seems to be a function of a misunderstanding of the term "I." The fact that you can, theoretically at least, always predict in advance what I am going to chose does not change the fact that I made the choice. Now, if I am served natto, no matter what I request, then of course I did not have a choice in the matter.

This brings me to the issue of accountability and blame. Perhaps I am destinted to commit a terrible crime. It is a certainty that I will chose to kill a man. Can I be blamed? After all, I am exactly what my genetic background and my upbringing, and given those facts about my existence, it is certain what I will do. Circumstances may have conspired to make me a bad person, someone who chooses to do evil things. Still, that does not chance the fact that I can still be blamed for what I do, so long as I have a choice.

By "choice" I mean that circumstances are such that, if another person were in the same circumstances as I, the result might be different. For example, if I am driving and decide to run a red light, you (and many other people) would have been able to act differently. You would have stepped on the brake. Assuming that the brakes work, my running the red light was a choice.

Of course, there are all sorts of problematic cases, such as where my leg spasms, and I am not able to step on the brake. Most people would not blame me under those circumstances, yet you would have done better had you been in my place. It seems that, in this example, my body and not my brain made the "choice." Without getting into a mind-body argument, this seems like a clear example of a decision made by my body, for which I am not morally responsible. Strictly speaking, however, perhaps I did have a "choice," as I have defined it. Of course, change the example to add the fact that I was taking medication that I knew gave me leg spasms, and perhaps I am to blame again.

And what about people who do things under the influence of drugs or mental illness? At least by my definition, they have still chosen to do whatever it is that they do. Perhaps the moral implications are different, depending on the complete circumstances, but the drunk person still chooses to punch someone in the nose.

Is JAMS Fair?

2008-01-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

January 11, 2008

More and more disputes are being resolved through private arbitration rather than litigation in a court. Courts are run by the government. The judges are public employees. They draw a fixed salary, and they take whatever cases are filed. The filing fees in court are minimal. On the other hand, the courts can be overcrowded, overworked and slow, although that is not true of the Los Angeles County Superior Court where I practice law. I do not mean to imply that the LASC is short of cases. In fact, it is busy, but, on the whole, cases get resolved promptly.

If the parties to a dispute agree, their dispute can be resolved by a private arbitrator, who is selected and paid by the parties, rather than by a court operated by the State. This agreement to arbitrate a dispute can be made in advance, for example in an agreement between a patient and a doctor to arbitrate any malpractice claim, should one arise in the future. Alternatively, the agreement to arbitrate can be made after the dispute has already arisen.

Courts favor arbitration for one obvious reason: it lightens the courts' burden. If a private arbitrator resolves a case, the court does not have to. The State saves money, and the individual judges have less work to do. The State Legislature loves arbitration, for the same reason. Therefore, courts send cases to arbitration whenever there is a basis to do so. Moreover, once an arbitrator had made a decision, the courts almost never set those awards aside. The fact that the arbitrator made an obvious mistake of fact or law is not a basis for a court to vacate an arbitrator's award. There is no "appeal," as there is from a judgment entered by a judge.

The increase in the number of arbitrations has resulted in an increase in the number of arbitrators. Many, although by no means all, of the arbitrators are retired judges. (In fact, some arbitrators are not even lawyers).

I have come to oppose the growth of arbitration, for two main reasons. First, some arbitrators take advantage of the fact that there is no appeal from an arbitration award. They do what they please, without regard to the facts or the law, knowing that the courts will almost certainly overlook their "errors" and affirm their awards as judgments.

Perhaps more importantly, many arbitrators are biased. For example, some health care providers, such as Kaiser, force their patients to sign arbitration agreements in advance as a condition of providing care. Imagine that you are an arbitrator who handles the resulting medical malpractice arbitrations between Kaiser and patients. If you rule against Kaiser, you run the risk of never being selected again by Kaiser to arbitrate another case. If you rule against the patient, that patient might never agree to use you again, but that hardly matters. The bottom line is that arbitration can favor the repeat customer -- the big company vs. the consumer.

Of course, that is not true of all, or even most, arbitrators. Take, for example, ADR Services. ADR provides the services of retired Judges, both as mediators and as arbitrators. I have never found any of the professionals from ADR to be biased, although admittedly I have used them more as mediators than as arbitrators.

I am deeply concerned, however, about JAMS, another company that provides the services of retired judges, who act as mediators and arbitrators. I recently had a terrible experience with JAMS, and specifically with retired judge G. Keith Wisot. I practice in a small firm, one that cannot provide any meaningful amount of business to JAMS. On the other side of the case is a large firm, which can. Judge Wisot made rulings that can only be described as bizarre. Well, that is not quite true. They can also be described as acts outside his jurisdiction and most likely a violation of my clients' Procedural Due Process Rights. In fact, that is how the Los Angeles County Superior Court described Judge Wisot's actions in finding that his award is defective and must, at a minimum, be corrected. As mentioned above, it takes quite a bit to get a court to take a second look at an arbitrator's award.

I cannot explain Judge Wisot's behavior in a satisfactory way. He is not a stupid man, and he did not simply make an honest mistake. He has no past history with me, nor with my clients. I doubt that he is taking bribes, at least not as that word is normally used. What I believe is that he ruled in favor of the big firm, knowing that, if he continues to do so, he will continue to get business from them. That is the only explanation I can come up with, although I admit it is just conjecture on my part, and I cannot prove it.

I do have one other piece of evidence: Judge Wisot's outrageous billing rate. JAMS bills his time at between $600 and $1,000 per hour, and sometimes at even higher rates. By way of comparison, there are 42 retired Judges and Justices (a higher position than a Judge in our system) on the ADR Southern California Panel. That panel includes several highly sought after individuals, such as Judge Alan Haber, Judge Enrique Romero and Justice John Zebrowski. Yet, not one of those jurists charges even $600 per hour. Judge Wisot's lowest rate -- as charged by JAMS -- is higher than every one of ADR's 42 jurists.

Moreover, Judge Wisot has no meaningful reputation. I can safely say that because, in my 18 years as litigator in Los Angeles, I cannot remember a single time when any attorney suggested Judge Wisot for anything, nor have I heard anyone curse him. By way of contrast, I have repeatedly had other attorneys suggest Judge Romero, especially for settlement purposes. I only vaguely remember Judge Wisot when he was on the bench, many years ago. Since becoming involved in the cases before him, I have asked several other attorneys for their opinions. If they remember him at all, their opinions are uniformly neutral: no one particularly likes or dislikes him.

I believe that JAMS and its overpaid mediocre group of retired judges has a cozy relationship with big law firms. The big firms agree to over pay for the services, and in return JAMS rules in their favor. I doubt very much that there is an express agreement along those lines, but my limited experience seems to suggest that is the case. I would welcome a detailed survey of the success rate of big firms in cases tried by JAMS versus cases tried in open court, and subject to review. In the meantime, I will continue to use ADR Services, and avoid JAMS.

Okinawa Soldiers

2007-12-24T16:57:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving, 2007

Almost all the passengers on our flight from Tokyo's Narita Airport to Naha, on Okinawa Honto, were Americans, presumably either army personnel or family. Most seemed to be in their 20s or early 30s at the oldest, although there were a few older than that. Based on their dress and manner of speech, it seemed that they were mostly lower middle class, and came from places other than the two Coasts. We saw the same people in and around Naha, the main city, and also near the army bases, where we saw the businesses set up to service them -- A & W Root Beer, McDonald's, taco stands and shops selling various American goods.

We also saw the protesters outside the army bases. Even though we could not read their signs, it was clear what they wanted. I had to wonder, however, if all the locals felt the same way. Clearly, a large part of the local economy is based on selling to the Americans.

I could not help wondering about these young Americans and what they were doing thousands of miles from home. From what I could tell, they had no interest at all in Japanese culture. They were not there to learn about Okinawa, or even to enjoy the tropical weather, for which few of them were properly dressed. Although I did not ask any of them, I drew the conclusion that these young American were in the army because that was the best option available to them. The fact that they had been sent to Okinawa, as opposed to some other base, was merely a coincidence.

It also occurred to me that my tax dollars are paying for all this. What are these soldiers doing in Okinawa that they cannot do at home? Certainly, they could train at home; that is not why they have travelled over 5,000 miles from the continental United States. Are these Americans going to prevent an invasion by China or North Korea? The idea seems preposterous. Neither of those countries would actually invade Japan. And if there is a risk of such an invasion, why is the United States willing to fund an army base to prevent such an invasion, when Japan is not?

It is time for the Okinawa Soldiers to come home.