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The Art of War
Around 500 B.C., Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. It is the oldest military treatise in the world. Commentators over the last 25 centuries have praised Sun Tzu’s work. Particularly with the United States now involved in a protracted war, it is useful to examine Sun Tzu’s wisdom. In The Art of War as translated, each chapter is begun with the preface “Sun Szu said,” a practice which I have followed here.
One
Laying Plans
“Sun Szu said:
…The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and a few to defeat.”
Two
Waging War
“Sun Szu said:
…When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the state will not be equal to the strain.
Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will … be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
Thus, although we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been associated with long delays. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
…The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.”
Three
Attack by Stratagem
“Sun Szu said:
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so profitable. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to annihilate them.
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans. The next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces. The next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field. The worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities…
Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field….
Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat…”
Six
Weak Points and Strong
“Sun Tzu said:
…Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected… Hence the general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack….
Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us….
So in war, the way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak.”
Eight
Variation of Tactics
“Sun Szu said:
…There are roads that must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.
…The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.
Eleven
The Nine Situations
“Sun Szu said:
Rapidity is the essence of war; take advantage of the enemy’s unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots.
…If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.
…To be ignorant of any one of the following principles does not befit a warlike prince.
When a warlike prince attacks a powerful state, his generalship shows itself in preventing the concentration of the enemy’s forces. He overawes his opponents, and their allies are prevented from joining against him…. He carries out his own secret designs, keeping his antagonists in awe.”
Twelve
Attack by Fire
“Sun Tzu said:
…Anger may in time change to gladness, vexation may be succeeded by content.
But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.
Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution.”
About the author: William Weissinger was graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1982, with honors. Since 1990 he has had a general law practice in the San Juan Islands, focusing on real estate and real-estate litigation, general business law, and estate planning. For more about the author, see sanjuanlaw.com.
Fire & Ice
In the December, 1920 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice” was published. http://www.bartleby.com/155/2.html “Some say the world will end in fire,” Frost said, “Some say in ice.”
Frost’s powerful poem was about desire and hate, not the world’s end: in 1920, humans didn’t yet have the capability to end the world. Nearly 90 years later, we can’t be so sanguine. Growing up in the 1950s, I first learned that we could destroy the world by nuclear war. Then in the early 1980s, we learned that global nuclear war might create “nuclear winter” -- the end of the world in ice. And now we face predictions that the world for many millions of its inhabitants will simply disappear beneath the waves as the seas rise due to global warming.
I listened to Dr. Richard Gammon speak on April 15, 2007 at a conference organized by Navigating our Future (see navigatingourfuture.org) and the students of Spring Street School. Dr. Gammon is a professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography, an Adjunct Professor in Atmospheric Science, and Co-Director of the University of Washington Program on Environment. He is a climate scientist of the first order. In the months since his talk I have been pondering the implications of what he told us.
Earth is warming. Dr. Gammon said as a fact that mankind is responsible for most of the global warming that is happening. Scientists don’t know if mankind’s share is 71% of the global warming or 93%, he said, but he stated that it is almost certain that the acts of man are responsible for more than half of the current global warming.
By 2100 Dr. Gammon said that scientists forecast global warming of 3 degrees to 11 degrees worldwide. If global warming by then is only 3˚F – the bottom end of that range –he forecast that more than 50 million people will be displaced by rising water. Where will they go; what nation has room for 50 million refugees? Many (most?) of those 50 million people will likely die by drowning (as in storm surges from typhoons), by war as those pushed out by rising waters fight for space, by disease, by starvation, and (ironically) by thirst. 2100 is 93 years away. Some children born today will still be alive then.
That prediction of 50,000,000 people is for the very bottom of the range – a number which Dr. Gammon feels is not avoidable, that it is coming regardless of whatever preventative steps might be taken now. If we fail to take preventative steps now, he said, the temperature rise – and the many millions who will be affected – will increase much more.
50 million people? 100 million people? 400 million people? All are within the range of predicted impacts, depending upon what steps we do – or don’t – take now. Six millions Jews died in the Holocaust: these numbers dwarf those. If we are to believe what I understand to be the majority of scholars, driving our cars and heating our homes will be killing people in the future. What are we to think of all this? In his poem The Arrow and the Song, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said
I shot an arrow in the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where.
We find it easy to kill when we don’t see the victim pierced by an arrow – or a gunshot. The deaths this year at Virginia Tech were so shocking in part because we could see the bodies and watched their loved ones cry. Although millions may well die from global warming, most of them will be dying, unseen by us, in a future we hope is far off.
So what about those 50 million people, the minimum number that Dr. Gammon predicts will certainly be displaced – and many of whom will die – from global warming? What do we say to them? When we create memorials for the dead, the dead are of course past listening, past hearing, past understanding what we might have to say.
But the 50 million people – the minimum Dr. Gammon says that will be displaced by global warming even if we institute strident control measures now –aren’t dead yet. In many cases they aren’t even born yet. Unlike the dead to whom we erect memorials, they will know what we said, back here in 2007.
All I can tell you is what I’m going to say to them. Since that April 15th lecture, I’ve been working on a series of models for what I call PreMorials™. We all know what a memorial is – a tribute to those who have died in the past. A PreMorial™ is a tribute to those who are yet to die. My PreMorials™ are models for large – perhaps fifty or 100 feet -- interactive water feature landscape sculptures. The sculpture itself is laid out as an area with landscape features: hills, valleys, mountains, lowlands. In a repeating cycle, a pump gradually fills the sculpture from huge underground tanks, and over a space of hours you watch the sculpture slowly disappear beneath rising water. And then – in a symbol of hope – the water slowly drains away, revealing the landforms that had been swamped, only to have the cycle repeated over and over again. I hope to have a series of other artists will follow my lead, and that many PreMorials™ will be erected across the country and beyond.
But even if the full-size PreMorials™ never get built (they are very expensive to construct), I have chiseled my first PreMorial™ in stone. My sandstone PreMorial™ model will be here 100 years from now. The few of Earth’s citizens who see it then can read from it what they will.
Remember the stock cartoon character, the bearded man dressed in a long white robe, carrying a placard announcing ''Repent -- the world is coming to an end.'' My mother tells me I had a great-great-great grandmother who went off to live in a cave with others of her church to await an end of the world that never came. I suppose she came out eventually.
We’ve all heard various doomsday predictions. Some are science-based. For example, in 1919, meteorologist Albert Porta predicted that the conjunction of six planets would generate a magnetic current that would cause the sun to explode and engulf the earth on December 17th of that year. More often, the predictions are religion-based. For a list of “63 failed & 1 ambiguous end-of-the-world predictions from 30 CE to 1990 CE”, see http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm.
So here we are, listening to dire predictions of global warming-induced disasters. Is this, as Yogi Berra said, “like déjà vu all over again?” Just #64 on the list of failed end-of-the-world predictions?
All we can do is to decide who we trust, and hope they’re right (or in this case, wrong!). That’s what I’ve done. I trust Dr. Gammon, and the many articles I’ve read on global climate change and its impacts.
Some of you no doubt don’t believe the predictions. This article is likely to generate my usual quotient of climate change deniers, criticizing my logic and calling me a hypocrite and worse. Attacking the messenger is a tried and true tactic, and frankly it works well: I’ve been advised against writing controversial articles for fear of the effects on my law practice. But what are a few unpleasant letters compared to 50 million people? I know who speaks for the conservatives, but who speaks for those millions and millions of people?
As Popeye said, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” With the PreMorial™ I’ve sculpted, and with the other steps I’ve taken in my personal life, I’ve made peace with myself on the issue. That is all anyone can ask for. I hope you can do the same.
What about the costs of dealing with global warming? Dr. Gammon estimated the costs at 1% of gross domestic product (“gdp”). The costs of not dealing with it? He estimated those costs at 5% to 20% of gdp. Of course, those costs would come later – when the disasters start to occur. Putting carbon into the air isn’t free, he pointed out – it is just that we aren’t yet paying the cost. As Dumbledore said in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, “Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we will face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” That time is now.
Like Wimpy in the Popeye cartoon, we’d much rather pay Tuesday for a hamburger today. Unfortunately, the Earth’s Tuesday has come much faster than we’d like.
Dining With The Devil
I don't like people telling me what to do. Indeed, none of the three Weissinger children � off-spring of a strong-speaking welder and an independent woman who railed against fate and authority � are good at having other people tell us what to do.
John Milton in Paradise Lost, Book 1 had the Devil speak of this disinclination on a cosmic, metaphysical scale:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
"Better to reign in Hell, then to serve in Heav'n:" I had never before considered that powerful line to be relevant to anything more than conflicting power relationships on a vast scale � at least national, if not cosmic.
Which brings me to my dinner table a few weeks ago: a conservative friend and I were discussing global warming. After more of the obligatory conservative assertions that there is no proof we are undergoing global warming, the truth came out. My friend said:
"Even if it is true that global warming will cause widespread devastation, I would rather we did that, than be forced to follow the dictates of petty bureaucrats."
Well, "petty" is just a meaningless insult, and "bureaucrats" in this context is merely a reference to those who write rules to protect the environment. So translated, my friend would rather see widespread devastation from global warming, than be forced to follow rules designed to protect the environment written by people for whom he has little or no respect.
As I said, I don't like being told what to do either, but my conservative friend's startling pronouncement takes that attitude to new depths. He may as well have said, "Better to reign in a degraded earth than serve environmental regulators on a pristine planet." He is not alone in that sentiment.
For here, I fear, we see much of the underlying reason that so many conservatives reject the evidence of global warming and its dangers. They don't care about the dangers. Rather, they would prefer the risk of even the worst dangers and the actuality of some the less-terrible consequences of global warming, than to be inconvenienced by the rules, and their costs, that would fend off the dangers.
So, back to the dinner table: After my conservative friend's pronouncement, I reached across the dinner table, grasped my friend by the chin, and told him he was the Devil Incarnate!
Perhaps that was a little over the top. First of all, if my friend really had been the Devil Incarnate, he probably would have turned me into a yellow duck for insulting him, instead of (as he did) merely acting surprised and chagrined. And second, my friend is basically a good guy � he'd happily do me a favor if I needed one (well, so long as it isn't saving the world!), and indeed he has done me favors and an important service in the past, as I have him. But his statement made me wonder about the basic nature of right and wrong � indeed, about the basic nature of evil.
I happen to be reading a book by Joseph Campbell, called Myths to Live By. The book summarizes a series of talks he gave on mythology between 1958 and 1971. In Chapter 9, from a lecture given in 1967, he summarizes the mythologies of war and peace.
Remember that nice, cheerful spiritual, about Jericho?
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho,
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho,
And the walls came tumbling down�.
Sing it to yourself right now: it has a nice rousing beat to it, doesn't it? It is a cheerful tune. Heck, it gives me a rosy glow just to sing it in my head as I write.
But what happened at Jericho, as quoted by Campbell from the First Testament to the Bible, isn't quite so cheery:
"The trumpets blew, the walls fell down, �And then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword� and they burned the city with fire, and all within in it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.'"
Id., quoting Joshua 6:21, 24.
Sometimes civilizations evolve in a healthy manner. What the Old Testament sanctions as God-worship we'd call genocide and mass murder today. That is healthy cultural evolution. Sometimes civilizations don't evolve well: witness Easter Island, whose residents stripped their Island of resources to feed outdated rituals. We (including my conservative friends) are facing our own choice, now, as to how to evolve.
My conservative friend's ideals are shared by many. Would my conservative friends truly allow widespread devastation and destruction in the world � devastation that could be avoided by controlling the factors contributing to global warming � because they don't like to be told what to do? Perhaps not intentionally � although few conservatives think urgent action is needed in face of the obvious environmental crisis in Puget Sound. But their actions might allow such devastation and destruction even so. Solving the global warming problem will require acting contrary to their ideals. Consequently, they will wait too long for the negative environmental impacts on their lives to pile up; when they finally deem the impacts sufficient reason to act, it will be too late. One of the very scary things about global warming is that the consequences are not all forecast to happen incrementally: some consequences are forecast to happen as "tipping points," where causes build and build and build, and then a cataclysmic event happens all at once, and cannot readily be undone. Many of those now doubting global warming someday may rue not sooner supporting action to stop it. But by then it may be too late, not just for them, but for us too.
My conservative friends are entitled to live in as pristine or as squalid a home as they can afford or wish � or as to which they can convince their spouses. But here, it isn't a house of squalor we're discussing � it's a world. And, it's my world too. And yours. Better to serve in Heaven than reign in Hell.
The Walrus, The Carpenter, And Initiative 933
I've thanked God for fragrant flowers, hot showers and the womb-like embrace of my hot tub; for my life, my wife, and (after a brief nightly grace) for a long series of truly wonderful meals. Last Thursday night I thanked God for Hagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream. But on a more fundamental level, I've thanked God for the beautiful world in which we live.
"Be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it," God told Noah after the Flood. Genesis 9. And certainly for the entire history of the world (well, until now) it has been easy to think of the Earth as an unlimited space meant to nurture and to serve us. And we have gone forth and multiplied. We've multiplied to such an extent that the Earth is now full up with humankind.
But our emotions and our myths take a good long while to catch up with fact. After all, in his 1865 editorial Horace Greeley said "Go West, Young Man." In the 141 years since, Americans in our myths, our dreams, our movies, have pictured the West as the land of wide open spaces John Wayne riding across the limitless prairie. And in our hearts and myths, that is the way it still is.
But the land of wide open spaces is gone. The United States' population grows by a net gain of one person every eleven seconds. Year by year, the quality of the environment gets worse. We all recognize these words from Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter":
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead
There were no birds to fly
This is a scene not of beauty, but of desolation. ("No birds were flying overhead; there were no birds to fly.") And as I look out on our Puget Sound waters day after day, we are edging closer to that scene.
Only ten percent of the seabirds survive on Puget Sound now, than did when I moved here in 1990. The ninety percent which are gone fed on herring and sand lance, the populations of which have also plummeted. Development in the Puget Sound area (along with other factors) has destroyed nursery habitat, and polluted the water so that many of the fingerlings which do hatch are deformed. It isn't just sea birds that feed on herring and sand lance; so do salmon. And while we saw shoals of salmon fifteen years ago, the populations now are only at ten percent of their historical numbers. Dead zones in the Sound are spreading. Hood Canal saw its biggest fish kill in history last month.
But what can we do about it? Something simple, and yet critical. Understand that if we want to live in an environment shared by herring and birds, salmon and whales, we can't just take what we want from the environment, wherever we want it, whenever we want it. It is easy for even the greediest of us to talk the talk of preservation:
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
The key is doing something about it, not talking about it. A genial, twinkly-eyed conservative friend of ours thinks that Orca whales will be extinct in 100 years because of development. And the Seattle Post-Intelligence on October 18 page B1, stated that three of the 90 orca whales that call Puget Sound home are missing, and that "experts believe [the] missing adult whales have died of starvation."
Our friend thinks extinction of the whales is unavoidable because of property rights that nothing can be done to stop the inevitable development. We're headed in that direction: "A landmark study in 1992 titled "Pacific Salmon at the Crossroads: Stocks at Risk from CA, OR, ID and WA," identified 214 wild spawning salmon stocks that were at risk of extinction or of special concern, including 17 stocks that were already extinct." Since then, a variety of salmon stocks in Washington State have been listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. It all sounds very depressing, but my twinkly-eyed friend to the contrary, we can do something. We can start by voting against Initiative 933.
Initiative 933 puts government (the State, the Town, the County) to a choice: waive environmental protections, or else pay the property owner for not being able to develop as he wishes. We can't afford to waive good laws for bad development. And it isn't just a question of current law with whales in Puget Sound apparently beginning to starve to death, we need more protection, not less.
Initiative 933 is called by its founders the "Property Fairness Initiative," but it might as easily have been named the "Hurt the Environment Initiative" or the "Kill the Whales Initiative." The environment needs our protection. And as the population of the State continues to increase, it is likely to need more protection, not less.
I know it is tempting to fight back against what appears to be increasing governmental power to regulate and even take private property. But I believe this initiative is horribly wrong.
Waiving environmental regulation (or making governments pay for it) might make sense, perhaps, in a limited way, if we had turned the corner on Puget Sound, if we had done all we needed to do, and the Sound was getting healthier each year. Turning back the clock on environmental enforcement is not the answer, when Puget Sound is in crisis.
Still thinking of voting for Initiative 933? Then consider the dramatic financial burden on the State, the Town and the County that will be imposed by Initiative 933 if it passes. Note from the Voter's Pamphlet the estimated cost over six years: $2 billion to $2.1 billion for State agencies; plus $3.8 billion to $5.3 billion for cities, plus $1.49 billion to $1.51 billion for counties. But consider this additional issue which isn't raised by the Voters Pamphlet. Initiative 933 states that anyone "seeking to enforce" the Act will be entitled to their attorneys fees. This appears to mean that even those with bogus grounds under the Act, who file suit but lose, would still be entitled to attorneys fees! This will do nothing but encourage litigation, and enrich attorneys at the cost of the County, its taxpayers, and the other County programs that will lose funding in order to pay the costs of Initiative 933.
Getting back to Noah and the Flood for a moment, after the Flood was over, Noah lowered the ramp of the ark for all the animals to leave. He said to the animals: "Go forth and multiply!" All the animals left except two snakes who lay quietly in the corner of the ark.
"Why don't you go forth and multiply?" demanded Noah. "We can't," answered the snakes. "We're adders."
If you're an "adder" too, start adding those billions up, and you'll see another reason to vote against I-933. That is what (according to the October 9th edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) all six of the living ex-governors of Washington State including two Republicans will be doing.
Tax-cutting Republicans and their Canterville Ghost
We recently watched a re-run of the 1986 TV movie, The Canterville Ghost. You remember the plot, perhaps: Simon de Canterville, the Earl of Canterville, was responsible for the deaths of his wife and their daughter. His wife cursed him as she died. (Warning to the well-read and to movie fans: the cause of death differs in the original Oscar Wilde story and in the 1944 movie starring Charles Laughton.) For three hundred years thereafter he led the existence of the damned, doomed to rattle his chains and frighten off the Canterville heirs from Canterville Castle. A stained carpet even marks the spot of Lady Canterville's death.
I thought he'd viciously stabbed his wife, or perhaps whacked off her head with an axe. But no: here is his awful sin. Charged with the repair of the highways, the Earl chose to enrich himself and to let the roads and bridges fall into disrepair. His daughter died when a bridge collapsed under her. (I think his wife collapsed in shock at the news, and died from a fall down the stairs.)
So his sin was enriching himself instead of repairing the highways. How is that different from cutting taxes for the rich, while the nation's infrastructure roads, bridges, overpasses, elevated highways rots? And that is what is happening in this nation.
According to a report issued in March of 2005 by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and summarized in a Reuters report by Alan Elsner on 3/9/05, U.S. roads, bridges, sewers and dams are crumbling. They need a $1.6 trillion overhaul but prospects for improvement are grim. "The group's first report since 2001 looked at 15 categories of public infrastructure, assigning each a letter grade. Overall, the nation's infrastructure received a D, down from a D+ four years ago." According to the report, since 1998, the number of unsafe dams in the country rose by 33 percent to more than 3,500, and as of 2003, 27 percent of the nation's bridges were structurally deficient or obsolete. Donald Plusquellic, Democratic mayor of Akron, Ohio, and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, blamed a lack of political will over many years compounded by the policy of tax cuts pursued by President Bush.
"I don't know of a single tax cut that's replaced a bridge. When that bridge fails killing people, nobody's going to care whether those people were Republicans or Democrats," he said.
A tax cheat is someone who owes taxes but cheats his way out of paying them. But what is the name of a tax wimp: someone who chooses to enrich himself by favoring tax cuts, at the cost of the nation's safety and security? Perhaps we could call them Canterville Republicans. And Canterville Democrats too, of course: no party has a monopoly on these free riders.
At a dinner party two years ago, as a hot-tempered debate was cooling down, a conservative friend agreed to read a book setting out some of my liberal thinking if I agreed to read a book from him setting out some of his conservative ideals. I agreed, without realizing what I'd gotten myself in for. He was faster on the draw than I, delivering to my office the next day a book by Frederic Bastiat, called The Law, first published in 1850. An innocent enough title for a lawyer to read, you'd think, but not so much: the book is anything but innocent. The book essentially argues that taxes are solely for the common defense, and that taxation for anything else is plunder.
From the Republicans in Congress, I hear a lot of talk about how we are overtaxed, and we need to cut taxes. Republicans even now are trying (once again) to eliminate or dramatically reduce the Estate Tax. (See my article dated 8/31/05 "Finally, the Return of the Duke of Earl.") But the taxes getting cut are those for the rich. (For example, President Bush would personally save up to $6 million; Vice President Cheney would save up to $60.7 million. See House Committee on Democratic Reform Fact Sheet: Estimated Tax Savings of Bush Cabinet if the Repeal of the Estate Tax Is Made Permanent, Updated May 2006.) While the rich would benefit from the tax cut, the programs getting cut are those for the middle class and the poor. All the while, the nation's infrastructure decays.
Inspired by the never-ending mantra of the Republican party asserting governmental waste justifies tax cuts, we're becoming a nation of free riders. We're coasting on the taxes paid by our forebears for infrastructure improvements. Meanwhile, we're letting the infrastructure they paid for crumble, even as we are electing lying politicians that promise us they'll cut our taxes even more, pain-free. And in a sense, these politicians are right. The tax cuts indeed are pain-free for now since we are passing on the costs (together with a massive federal debt) to our children. (See the U.S. National Debt Clock at http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ , which is at $8,402,933,819,208 as I write this article.)
Some warn me to expect a storm of criticism for opposing tax cuts and for advocating higher taxes if needed. I stand by my beliefs: a society that pays together stays together. So let us undo the ill-conceived Bush tax cuts (which benefited mainly the rich), resist the temptation to eliminate or cut estate taxes for the 2% of the nation that pays them (which would benefit only the rich), and then see where we are. The question isn't how much we want to pay. None of us want to pay any taxes. Rather, the question is how much does the nation need?
Unfortunately, when people die because we are unwilling to pay our share to maintain the infrastructure that our forefathers built, we won't have any drafty Canterville Castle for the free riders to haunt. Rather, it is we who will be haunted, by the consequences of the tax policies pushed by Canterville voters and the politicians they elect.
Want to express your opinion about cutting estate taxes for the rich? Call Senator Cantwell (202-224-3441). A vote is expected in the Senate within the next week or so.
Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean Nobody Is Out To Get You
The crickets are chirping loudly in the fading light of dusk. An old grizzled farmer, a hitch in his step, walks down a deserted, narrow dirt road. A raven squawks loudly as it flutters into a bush. Suddenly the crickets cease their calls. The birds fall silent. No sound breaks the swiftly falling night. A strange light shines off in the woods, where the farmer knows no light should be. As the movie soundtrack's music builds, the farmer squints in the dim light, and then, his heart beating a little faster, ducks into the brush to investigate the strange light. We call out to him not to go, fearing for him but -- on the other side of the movie screen -- he doesn't answer.
So why did the farmer head off the safe pathway toward the forbidden light? We're alerted by strangeness. Whether from childhood training or genetic impulse, strange events make us curious. And nervous.
Strange events in San Juan County have me curious. And nervous. In my case, I wonder about something as prosaic as the appointment of the new Hearing Examiner. For San Juan County's new Hearing Examiner, the County Council has selected Bill Nielsen. Mr. Nielsen was the chair of the Growth Management Act Hearings Board during the period when the Board repeatedly ruled against the County's position on guest houses. On two or perhaps three occasions since his retirement from the Board (when I spoke with him, Mr. Nielsen didn't recall offhand whether the Friends or the County paid his salary on one occasion), Mr. Nielsen represented the Friends of the San Juans as its attorney, or was employed on behalf of the Friends in some other capacity.
The appointment of anyone to a position in which they may be called upon to rule against or in favor of a group with whom they have prior ties always merits a close look. See, for example, USA Today's recent reporting on the appointment of George Mitchell to investigate steroid use in major league baseball:
Mitchell is on the board of directors of the Boston Red Sox. He is also chairman of the board of Walt Disney Co. parent of ESPN, which has an eight-year, $2.4 billion contract to televise MLB games and is currently producing a reality show with Barry Bonds, one of the focuses of the probe.
"I side with those who would think it's questionable," said professor Deborah L. Rhode, director of the Stanford Center on Ethics at Stanford University, adding it's important to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest in investigations of this nature.
"Is this somebody that has sufficient distance from the individuals and the institution being investigated? Can we count on him to lead an impartial investigation?" she said. "The more ties, the harder that becomes."
The former prosecutor said the conflict of interest questions would be a "burden" for Mitchell. "I don't think it's healthy. Everything you do is not going to be trusted."
Sen. Jim Bunning, R.Ky., a baseball Hall of Famer, also questioned the appointment.
"While George Mitchell is certainly a man of great integrity, I believe that baseball would have been wiser to pick someone who is not as close to the game and may be able to take a more objective look into the facts."
USA Today, 3/31/06, page 15C.
The actual impartiality of Mr. Nielsen isn't the question: I presume he will in fact be impartial. The questions are these: when he rules in favor of the position advocated by the Friends of the San Juans (as he certainly must at some point), will the losing party distrust his impartiality, knowing of his former employment by the Friends? Very likely his impartiality will be questioned by some. And why, with perceived impartiality of the Hearing Examiner so important, would the Council nonetheless appoint him to that position?
Of course, any Hearing Examiner applicant may have potential conflicts of interest, actual or perceived. And certainly, Mr. Nielsen himself, in my recent discussion with him in preparation for this column, discounts potential concerns about his impartiality. "I have represented a lot of clients over the years," he said. "I understand some people might be uneasy, but I don't think it will be a problem." He pointed out that the issues on which he had represented the Friends are entirely different than issues he will be asked to decide as a Hearing Examiner. "I would be very surprised," he added, "if anything comes up on which someone doesn't think I could be impartial." He said he would of course give no special treatment to the Friends because they had hired him on a few occasions, and suggested that people should read his decisions while sitting on the Growth Management Board to get an opinion as to whether he is the right man for the job, rather than being concerned about whether he might favor the Friends for having paid him a few hundred dollars for something that will never come before him as a Hearing Examiner in the same context.
Wick Dufford, our former Hearing Examiner, was a man of unquestioned integrity. The Council had the opportunity to retain him as Hearing Examiner, under his proposal in which he would have shared his Hearing-Examiner duties with another attorney. Instead, the Council chose Mr. Nielsen, a man with ties however tenuous to a group which arouses strong passions on both sides of the isle, so to speak. I find that strange.
From my brief conversation with Mr. Nielsen, I was impressed by his openness, frankness and sense of humor. Hopefully, Mr. Nielsen will have the ability to rise above the concerns I've expressed and demonstrate that he is the right man for the job. In following Wick Dufford, he has big shoes to fill.
But regardless of the qualifications of Mr. Nielsen, I'm left with that sense of strangeness. I don't know Mr. Nielsen. While I spoke to him briefly in preparation for this article, I have neither met him, nor reviewed his opinions, nor reviewed the merits of the cases which the County repeatedly presented to him, and on which he repeatedly ruled against the County. If I had been sitting on the Growth Management Board, I don't know whether I would have voted with him or against him.
But the point is not whether he was right or wrong in his opinions. He was chair of the Growth Management Board when it ruled against San Juan County on more than one occasion on the guest house issue. Maybe he was right. But almost 74% of the County voted in the advisory ballot to support detached guest houses. And Mr. Nielsen and the other Board members nixed the County's proposed version of detached guest houses. When 74% of the County was on the other side of the issue, what does it say about the County Council Bob Myhr, Kevin Ranker and Alan Lichter and their respect for the opinions of their constituents, when they give Mr. Nielsen a kind of a high-five, an "atta boy!", for his opinions which were adverse to San Juan County by awarding him the position of Hearing Examiner for San Juan County?
The three Council members are members of the Friends of the San Juans (at least, so I have been told) at the same time they are proposing to settle the guest house litigation with the Friends of the San Juans, over the advice of the County's Prosecuting Attorney. At the same time, some members of the public have repeatedly questioned the extent of their relationship with the Friends of the San Juans.
The Friends of the San Juans serve an important role in defending the county's environment. But why would the Council throw more wood on this particular fire by appointing a Hearing Examiner with ties to the Friends of the San Juans? Most recently, two Council members have continued to feed the fire's flames, this time by a casual meeting on the ferry between the two Council members (Mr. Lichter and Mr. Myhr), the Vice President of the Friends of the San Juans, Lynn Bahrych, and the Secretary of the Friends of the San Juans, Roger Collier.
The less interesting question is whether the two Council members took "action" in the meeting, which would have made it illegal. After all, it is easy enough to meet in secret if they wanted to conduct illicit business. The more interesting question is whether they had met together enough times previously that all the participants in the meeting were desensitized to the dangers of the public's perception. It is strange that we have these questions.
I'm left without answers. And, like the farmer looking toward a strange light in the dark woods, I'm feeling a little concerned. My deepest fear isn't about the strange Hearing Examiner appointment, but that the public's perceptions of the County Council's strange positions may cause a conservative backlash within the County which could have unfortunate, and broader, impacts reaching beyond the County. This isn't a trivial fear. Last election, San Juan County could have swung the Governorship to the Republican party. What will happen next time around if these strange goings-on continue?
Bob Dylan sang "There's somethin' happenin' here, What it is ain't exactly clear." He suggested we stop, look around, find out what's going down. In the same song, he also said "Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep." But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that nobody's out to get you.
Post Script. I miss John Evans. I typically prefer a Democratic majority on the Council. But a loyal opposition with enough power to be troublesome is important. We've seen it on the national scene, where a corrupt, cruel and calculating Republican majority has been able to act as it will because the number of seats they control makes Democratic opposition meaningless. I'd rather not see the same shoe (but this time on the Democratic party's foot) in San Juan County. Had John Evans still been on the Council, I am convinced that a lot these questions would never have arisen, because Mr. Evans would have raised such a ruckus.
Dissing the Marquess of Queensberry
I believe in good sportsmanship. The Marquess of Queensberry rules. That sort of thing. The Marquess of Queensberry rules constitute a code of popularly accepted rules in the sport of boxing. They boil down to fair play. Now in my own profession lawyering I believe in fair play not just as a matter of good ethics, but also as a good business practice. Attorneys who walk the wrong side of the line never do well in the long run. The old saying "The wheels of justice grind slowly, but ever so finely," turns out to be true, in law as in life. But even in 5th grade I believed all this Marquess of Queensberry stuff. In one of those embarrassing moments that stalks you for life, in my 5th grade play, my part (at least, what I remember of it) was to get stabbed to death. When the killing moment came, I was in a sword battle with another classmate when my friend Dave Owens, having already dispatched his foe, joined the fray against me. Two against one: I was outraged! "One at a time, Owens," I called out at the top of my voice, "one at a time!" To the audience, that was the funniest line in the play: I can still hear the laughter. So I believe in fair play. And as part of that, I hate piling on which was also prohibited by the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Which brings me, as do most of my prefaces, to current events.
Over the past months the Island Guardian has carried a long series of editorials, articles and columns critiquing the Commissioners for their position on guest houses or as they are sometimes referred to, ADUs, for accessory dwelling units. Critiques in the articles seem an almost-daily event (see for example 3/28/06 article, "CC May Ask For Vote On Iraq War:" in which the article states that "The last time the voters went to the polls to vote an advisory ballot was on the Guest House issue, which passed with a nearly 74% majority in favor. The current Council has so far chosen to ignore the results of that election, which had been supported by the previous BOCC"). John Evans has written a long series of columns on the topic: 03/24/2006: The Planning Commission Made Me Do It!; 03/05/2006: Individuals Are Defined By The Choices They Make; 12/27/2005: If It Isn't Broken, Don't Fix It; 09/14/2005: A Perfect Storm Is About to Sink The Good Ship "Friends" On The Guesthouse Issue; 08/19/2005: Prosecutor and Commissioner Torpedo an Island Tradition; 05/14/2005: The "Friends of the San Juans" Grand Strategy; 05/11/2005: The "Friends of the San Juans" are no Friends of Guesthouses; 04/29/2005: The "Perfect Storm" For Driving Up Land Prices.
And lately Gordy Petersen has joined the fray: 02/25/2006: Friends Don't Let Friends become "Friends". And those are only the highlights. So enough has been said, right?
No. I'm piling on. The County Council-members are wrong to vote in a new guest house ordinance now. Here is why.
This is a lame-duck Council. The citizens by a large margin voted in the new County Charter, which dramatically changes the way business is done. One of the biggest changes is adding three new Commissioners. Those new Commissioners will take office on January, 2007. At that point, we'll have six County Councilors, and the current three would be able to pass nothing without a fourth member's concurrence.
Put a different way, the three current Council members will have a veto over any potential changes to whatever legislation they pass now. Why? Because to get any change passed, four votes are needed, and that would require the concurrence of one of the three current Council members.
This is important legislation. It should await the full Council.
This is a lame-duck Council proposing to act against the will of the people. A majority of nearly 74% of the County's voters, voted for guest houses. Not the pallid, pretend guest houses which must be attached to the main house that the Planning Commission recently recommended to the County Council, but detached guest houses. (By the way, beware changes in vocabulary; by calling them "accessory dwelling units" the Council could plausibly say that they must be attached to the main house; that could never be the case with a "guest house", a "house" is by definition detached.
If the Council wants to act against the will of the people it should do so only with the full six member Council sitting.
This is a lame-duck Council proposing to act against the will of the people over the advice of its Prosecuting Attorney. Randy Gaylord has advised the Council repeatedly that it should release the stay on the Court of Appeals, and let it decide the case. Mr. Gaylord believes that it would be in the County's interest to know, once and for all, what the rules are, rather than facing repeal after repeal on what the GMA allows or doesn't allow. And even if the Court rules against the County, the ultimate result would be no worse than the guest-house ordinance that the Council is proposing to adopt.
Kevin Ranker ran on a platform of supporting the advisory vote in favor of detached guest houses. If he votes against that position now, he would be violating a specific campaign promise. During his election campaign, Mr. Ranker attended a men's group monthly meeting, in the conference room at the Islander's Bank administrative building. He was asked a lot of questions, but many of them centered on the guest-house issue. I personally asked him whether, if elected, he would support the position of the citizens on guest houses as expressed in their advisory vote. He said he would.
I don't care about guest houses. I care about Democracy.
I currently don't want a guest house for myself. I am not writing this column because I care particularly about guest houses. I'm writing this column because it twists my fritters when democratically-elected office-holders act against the will of their electorate. I don't like it on the national scene, where Republicans continue to try to limit environmental rights including an impending vote to dismantle the Endangered Species Act even though 86% of the nation supports the Act. [See poll by Decision Research Illustrated cited at stopextinction.org.] And I hate it on the local scene when office holders ignore the public's advisory vote on guest houses.
Obviously, citizens don't have the luxury of insisting on passage of a guest house ordinance that doesn't pass legal muster. But the ordinance the Council is considering is far from pushing the legal boundaries of guest houses. If the Council wants to find out exactly what the legal limits are, it need only release the Court of Appeals from its stay, and then we'll all find out.
If the Council wants to eliminate guest houses and to substitute what I grew up calling "mother-in-law apartments," it should just say so. Mr. Lichter calls the proposal to allow only guest houses which are attached to the main house, a "simple, elegant solution." But since it would essentially eliminate all new guest houses (guest houses being in most people's minds by definition detached, which is why they are called guest "houses"), Mr. Lichter's "simple, elegant solution" is the same as what Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts might have had for a troublesome subject: "Off with his head!"
I appreciate Mr. Lichter's proposal for an advisory vote on the Iraq War, as I think our legislators ought to keep in mind the opinions of its citizenry. But what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: Mr. Lichter himself should keep in mind the citizenry's advisory vote in favor of detached guest houses.
The Ministry of Funny Walks
I used to love Monty Python. So when I heard that the each of the original Python cast members had put together compilations of their favorite Monty Python episodes, I was looking forward to seeing them. Sitting down to my first of them, I had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. And then it came on: my favorite, The Spanish Inquisition!
The episode starts simply enough: one man trying to explain to the other about problems at work. But when pressed for details, he exclaims "I don't know I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!"
[JARRING CHORD]
At once, through the door bursts Cardinal Ximinez and two junior Cardinals, scarlet robes swirling. Cardinal Ximinez declares boldly: "NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
And then of course, this being a comedy skit, they make fools of themselves. Cardinal Ximinez is unable to count: "Our chief weapon," he says, "is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again."
It degenerates from there, in a sequence I used to find very amusing, as the Cardinals exit to try again, and continue to bungle their lines.
The episode goes on. The Cardinals ask the men how they plead.
"We're innocent!" the men claim.
Ximinez: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
[DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER]
Junior Cardinal #1: "We'll soon change your mind about that!"
[DIABOLICAL ACTING]
Cardinal Ximinez calls for the rack! Now back in the days of the real Spanish Inquisition, the rack was a torture device. But on Monty Python, Junior Cardinal #2 has forgotten himself, and instead brought a dish-drying rack. They try to make do, but when turning an imaginary crank on the dish drying rack fails to inflict suffering, Ximinez calls instead for the Soft Cushions with which to torture them. And when that still doesn't work, he cruelly calls for a Comfy Chair!
In retrospect, this episode is funny only if you DON'T expect the Spanish Inquisition. And if one doesn't actually know our Nation has used torture as a strategic device even changing the definition of torture to allow practices that otherwise would have constituted torture as though a rose by any other name wouldn't smell as foul [See my column "Sex, Torture, and the Definition Game" dated June 14, 2005.] Which sadly brings us to current events.
Yahoo! news reported on March 23rd that "Senior Muslim clerics in Afghanistan have demanded that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that "if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to pull him into pieces.' Cleric Abdul Raoulf said that Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die.'" And this from a cleric who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001. You can't get much more Spanish Inquisition-ish than executing someone for changing religions.
Of course, that is overseas. Granted it happened in a nation that I thought we had freed, but even so, it is overseas. If we are to be safe anywhere, it would be here, in the land of the free, right? On March 11th, the New York Times reported that a federal judge had issued a ruling denying a motion to dismiss a case against an alleged terrorist. "Because the ruling was classified, the defense lawyers were barred from reading why the judge decided that way. The classified order by Judge Thomas J. McAvoy of United States District Court for the Northern District of New York came only a few hours after the government filed its own classified documents to the judge. The prosecutors asked the judge to review their papers in his chambers without making them public or showing them to the defense." The judge agreed. In other words, the judge issued a "classified" ruling based upon evidence that the defense was forbidden from examining! Think about that for a second.
The defense speculated that the evidence that the defendant was not allowed to see related to the National Security Administration's warrantless wiretaps of telephone lines that was brought to light recently in a New York Times article. And yet, as we all know, the Fourth Amendment forbids warrantless searches: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Once they start trying someone else based upon evidence they won't reveal to the defendant, how much longer until they get to you, or your children? "Absurd!" you say. "They are just after the terrorists, not me!" But who decides who is, or possibly may be, a terrorist? The same people, one presumes, who get to order the wiretaps.
Perhaps you are not old enough to remember Nixon's enemies list? As quoted from Wikipedia, "The official purpose, as described by the White House Counsel's Office, was to screw' Nixon's political enemies, by means of tax audits from the IRS, and by manipulating grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc.'" If you trust the Bush Administration more than you trusted Nixon, you are a more trusting person than am I. And if they are wiretapping without a warrant, why not break-ins without a warrant? Why not seizures of property without compensation. Why not seizing people without arrest warrants, charges, or probable cause for arrest? Come now, you say, I'm being paranoid. Actually, it turns out we are doing just that.
Under a 22-year-old federal law, if an individual has information about another's crimes, the person may be held without charges for long enough to secure their testimony. Constitutional? I'm not so sure, but the March 22nd edition of the Seattle P.I. reports that this law is being badly abused. It quotes Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, as saying "individuals are being indefinitely detained who might be suspects. If that is the case, they need to be charged." Did you get that? Indefinitely detained. The P.I. reports that "lawyers for people detained as material witnesses say the law has been used to hold people who the government fears will commit terrorist acts in the future but whom it lacks probable cause to charge with a crime."
Take another moment to think about this: we're imprisoning United States citizens, indefinitely, not just without a trial but even without charges. Doesn't that sound to you just a bit Spanish Inquisition-ish to you?
I read in law school about the last time this happened. During World War II we locked up in internment camps anyone who was Japanese or of Japanese ancestry, without any proof that he or she was a security risk. I was taught in law school that the Court decisions authorizing those internments were an aberration. Apparently the Court system has (as Yogi Berra said) dj vu all over again.
I finished most of the work on this column on the two hundred and thirty-first anniversary of Patrick Henry's famous speech on March 23, 1775, at which he singlehandedly convinced the Virginia House of Burgesses to pass a resolution delivering the Virginia troops to the Revolutionary War. He is known best for his famous line from that speech: "Give me liberty or give me death." But liberty isn't like a diamond, which either you have or you don't. It is more like a salami, from which our government (if we let it!) can keep cutting slices as it gets smaller and smaller. Until one day, it is gone.
In that compilation of Monty Python episodes, I didn't get to see the Ministry of Funny Walks. Given the funny walks we've seen from this Administration, it might not have been funny any more either.
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