APOLOGIES

My apologies to you and to police chief Bill Blair.Where the name Boyd came from I have no idea. I regret the mistake.

REVISITING DIALECTICAL MATERIALSM

“I have done nothing wrong so I have nothing to hide.” I shudder when I heard a man on TV say it. It was in response to the purchase of surveillance cameras in troublesome areas of the city to keep an eye on citizens’ behaviour and misbehaviour. My civil libertarian instincts outweigh my sense of pragmatism when I hear a citizen proclaim willingness to be watched. I am always prompted to ask: “Does that include tapping your phones? Opening your mail?” Nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Awful stuff.

Dialectical Materialism was at the heart of Marxist theory. Translated into action it would come to mean: “The end justifies the means,” or sometimes “The greatest good for the greatest number.” It was, in a way, the ultimate pragmatism. It was also an idea under which dictators could rule and people could be deprived of their rights. It was the essence of revolution. It still is.

Pardon me for my undergraduate zeal and pursuit of the reason why we will accept cameras on every street corner. That may not by what Police Chief Blair wants for Toronto, but he is trying to get the surveillance systems used for the G20 to use for police surveillance of many of our troubled streets.

It’s old news by now, replaced, as news always is, by the avalanche of events that we are deluged by on a daily basis. The furor seems to have died down, except perhaps in the two opposing camps: the civil libertarians who believed that our privacy is being violated, and the absolutists who believe that we should sacrifice ourselves in the interests of public safety. In other words: the end justifies the means. Or does it?

I happen to be enough of a pragmatist to believe that when the greater good is at stake, we willingly surrender our precious privacy. But the critics will say, and I don’t disagree, that it is a larger issue than the surrender of rights for the greater good: it is a question of the majority versus individual rights. John Stuart Mill was explicit in his work “The Tyranny of The Majority.” We must, at all costs, safeguard the rights of every citizen. The question has to be: at what point does the common good outweigh the rights of the individual? The debate has gone on for years. No one can be right. But it is not a case of ”right” or “wrong,” It is really case of what works in what we have learned to call a “civil society.” In Canada we recognize the group. We do not, like the Americans, enshrine the individual rights at the cost of social good. Working as a society, not a collection of individuals, there are principles of the group that often transcend the rights of the individual. In making a contract to live in a society, there are conditions.

I examine my defense of individual rights and I am prepared to take the step that seems to abrogate those r9ights. Because it is not again a question of right or wrong,. But one of whether a certain kind of behaviour or reaction is appropriate. Good and bad is a dualism. Life is not that simple. I regret that there are among us so many people who would deprive us of property or life and limb, that we must protect ourselves with those cameras. But take care. We must not open the door to a total loss of personal freedom.

The choice is tough.

GETTING IT RIGHT DOESN'T MATTER ANYMORE

Craig Claiborne, The greatest of all food writers, brought food criticism to a high point in his renowned New York Times column. His cookbooks were and still are masterpieces. Claiborne once said: "I despair of getting Americans to pronounce Vichysoisse properly.” He said that they though calling it “Vichy-swah” sounded more French. In fact – it is pronounced like it looks: Vichy-swaz. Ironically it is not French at all. It was an American concoction, based I suppose on the original leek and potato soup. But the point is: pronunciation didn’t matter. What Claiborne thought didn’t matter.

It’s a fact of life. My wife keeps telling me to “get over it.” One of my favourites is ”bruschetta.” The Italian pronunciation is brus-ketta, not as is our custom – brew-Shetta. Visiting in Austin Texas with my kids I asked the proprietor of one of that city’s great restaurants about the pronunciation. I had just been served by a wait-person who said, of course – brew-shetta. When I asked him how it should be pronounced he got it right. He also admitted that the common pronunciation, even if it was wrong, was in common use.

When I think about “Looking Ahead” I have to be careful not to groan over today's language. It’s kind of old-fashioned. You have to sound like “today”
so you mispronounce like everyone else does.

So just today I am lying on my bed watching Discovery channel. There is a wonderful documentary about the end of the age of the dinosaur. It is all about the cataclysmic and earth-changing explosion when a huge meteor stuck the earth in the Gulf of Mexico. The narrator, deep-voiced, sonorous, plenty of scientific gravitas said “it was the coup de grace.” He referred to the collision of the asteroid. He pronounced it ‘coo-de-graw.” He’s not alone. It’s a common mispronunciation, defended, in at least one case I know of, by someone who should know better. People get confused. Pate de foie gras is pronounced “graw.” Grace is pronounced “grass.” The phrase is “coo-de-grass.”

It simply doesn’t matter anymore. When a CBC news person talking about the recent horrible chemical spill in Hungary he referred to the leaking of toxic chemicals into nearby rivers and – are you ready – even the Danube. But he pronounced it “Da-noob” with the emphasis on the second syllable.

So does it matter? Can we look ahead to language distortions that pretend to be the evolution of language? Do we accuse the public of being completely “dumbed down?”
Maybe. But maybe it just doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter like young men not removing their peaked caps when they are in a restaurant, or staying seated on a crowded street car while a pregnant woman stands holding desperately on to a handhold. I was brought up in a world of grace. Part of it was that even if it didn’t really matter, it was good to treat language with some respect.

But maybe “getting it right” doesn’t matter any more.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION?

This is one of several items that I have had to push to the back burner for personal health reasons, but even weeks after the event, the awful reality of it is pervasive. The issue has to do with the acquittal, on all but one charge, of a “suspected" terrorist. The word is in quotes because the public has decided that he is guilty and that his trial was just a formality. Democracy prevailed. The people who believe they have the best and fairest justice system in the world has been stunned by the reality: he is, by legal definition innocent until proved guilty. The burden of proof is not on the defendant

The Republicans are up in arms. Obama has broken out in a cold sweat. The American Justice system has “failed.” Yes failed – all because it did not render the verdict that would have been the only fair verdict: guilty on all counts. The Republicans of course, are in a tizzy because they warned Obama that civilian courts wouldn’t do what the military courts at Guantanamo would do: send the bastard to the chair! The response reminds me of hearing a policeman declare: “We seldom arrest anyone who is not guilty.” Presumption of innocence is merely an idea, to be set aside when it is obvious that the defendant is guilty – a decision made not by the classic blindfolded angel of justice, but by the all-knowing public. We shriek for blood with no less fervour than the fans at a bullfight.

Everyone knew this guy was guilty as hell, He killed Americans. Luckily for the Obama administration, they were able to sentence him to twenty years for the only charge they could grab him on: conspiracy. I’ll be damned if I can see the American justice in that. He was guilty. The military court would not have been squeamish about convicting him.

Of course he may be guilty. The verdict may have been a miscarriage of justice. It’s like the fighter’s manager declaring, after his boy was KOed: “We wuz robbed!”

The Washington Post in an article titled “Close call for Obama” writes this: “Republican lawmakers said the verdict should force the administration to abandon the civilian trials."I am disgusted at the total miscarriage of justice today in Manhattan's federal civilian court," said Rep. Peter T. King (N.Y.), the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. "This tragic verdict demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama administration's decision to try al-Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts."

The lynch mob mentality is not dead. We want “justice” which in so many cases adds up to: “String ‘em up and to hell with formalities.”

I despair. If you believe in the system you cannot believe only in the part that assures the guilty are punished, but that a democracy, if it is any kind of democracy, cannot indulge in “show trials.” You know – where the candidate for execution is brought before a judge who has decided the case in advance.

There is one final sour note. It is one played often on TV shows where somehow the law never seems to be wrong. The examining police officer “knows” the suspect is guilty because he starts “lawyering up.” That’s the expression. It is disdainful of any attempt to have the suspect’s rights protected by law and legal counsel.

We either believe that justice is blind, or we return to the Star Chamber approach where the innocent is always guilty because the king wants him to be guilty.

I thought that was all gone. Sadly it is not.

AND THE POLICE CAN DO NOTHING???

A column by David Lazarus in the Los Angeles Times begins with the warning: “if you get call or an e-mail from someone who claims to be a close friend or a loved one in trouble it often causes people to ignore their natural suspicions.” He documents some horror stories that have resulted in money being sent to a scammer. I am suddenly aware of this because someone in my family was nearly the victim.

The Lazarus article says that his own mother was “used.” An Email from her to him said she had been mugged and robbed in London and needed $1800 to pay her hotel bill. He was able to contact her and discover that it never happened. He documents other stories of people who were not so lucky and sent the money to a relative stranded in a foreign country.

My relative nearly got stung. A cousin of hers received an urgent Email saying she was stranded in London and needed money. The cousin had the good sense to check and of course, the story was bogus. In fact, the absurdity was the she was not in London.

What I cannot understand is that we seem to be powerless to apprehend the scammer. In my relative’s case, the Email gave an address to forward the money to. It would seem to me that it would not be difficult to trace the sender and close down the fraud. Not so apparently. She made a call to her Email service provider, a large and reputable company, and the person she spoke to could only advise her to change her password. Not a word about informing the authorities, not a word about getting to the root of the problem. Makes me wonder how good our hi-tech people really are.

My relative’s email address was compromised. Someone hacked into her list of contacts and sent S.O.S. emails to all of them. She is flabbergasted at the apparent inability (or unwillingness?) of the service provider to attack the problem with more than a “change your password” solution.

We have all received email scams. We have all been winners of huge amounts of money along with a request about our own banking so the money could be forwarded. Or the “I have inherited a large sum of money but…” and you are supposed to act as a kind of agent to help the person get at the money, for which you will be rewarded. But first….

Hackers are everywhere. Some are just playful whiz kids who like the idea of upsetting a major corporation. Other of course, are in it for profit. I wonder what the statistics are. If you are the scammer and you send out ten thousand emails and get half of one percent return – you’re way ahead.

Are the police on top of this? Why do I continue to read and hear about internet fraud?

HUMAN TRAFFICKING OR RESCUING THE FUTURE?

I recommend that you log on to the New York Times and watch the video about baseball “academies” in the Dominican Republic. You will ask yourself, as I have, are these for the benefit of greedy Americans trafficking in human beings, or are they benevolent investors looking to improve the lot of young boys in a backward economy? (It is the kind of story I am sure will end up on Sixty Minutes.)

I would ask you to watch and judge for yourself. For me, I felt a kind of clammy discomfort watching the process. In the beginning we learn that investment in a baseball academy is just that: an investment. Like any investment you expect a return. It seems that you get it, but at what cost? How many young kids from the Dominican will end up like the remarkable closer for the Texas Rangers, Neftali Feliz. How many others will endure a few months perhaps a season, of what we see as substandard living conditions, on the possible chance of success in America’s national game? (It is clear that even though the living conditions are far from perfect, they are far ahead, for many of the kids, of what they were living in at home.)

In Toronto, we used to be a haven for youngsters from the Dominican. We had superb scouting there, and every kid wanted to play for the Blue Jays. And they did, giving us great shortstops from San Pedro de Macaris – Tony Fernandez among them, and sluggers like George Bell. We got guys like Junior Felix whose manager seems to have lied about his age to make him look like a juvenile prodigy when in fact he was a seasoned pro. But that’s not the issue.

The Dominican today is what the inner city ghettos were, and in many ways, continue to be. Historically all the great boxers seemed to come from underprivileged classes, whichever the current group happened to be. When the Irish were at the economic bottom we had Irish fighters. When the black kids strove to escape their misery, the highway to success was through the local gym. The inner cities bred basketball players, and if you remember the movie “Hoop Dreams” you get an idea of how intense the craving was, and how the odds were stacked against you. The same could be said of the kids who want to be Rap stars. They have idols. Those idols are rich and famous.

In the Dominican the idols were the famous little pitching terror Pedro Martinez a Cy Young award winner with the Montreal Expos, The New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox, plus a great parade of shortstops. The youngsters have idols and they see future success in baseball. It is that imperative that the exploiters look for. They need hungry kids and they’ll pay to get them.

When asked about education, the Dominican who seems to be one of the major players in managing the academies admits that most of these boys can neither read nor write. The entrepreneurs who pay for the academies want only a percentage of the hopeful star’s signing bonus. They make words about including education in their programs; I’m not holding my breath.

Professional sports is a hungry monster that feeds on ambitious young men. Sometimes they come from colleges, where even there, the hopeful talent has been recruited by athletic headhunters. Whatever the end result, the great majority will fall by the wayside, returning to their poor life after the little bit of baseball they enjoyed, the word is still “trafficking.”

By the way, the Dominican government does not have any rules to control these academies. It is a capitalist’s dream: profits without interference and conditions without regulation.

Watch the piece. Decide for yourself.

Gimme a Gee!!

I promise to show you why deficits "work." First though a thought: I think you can reduce international politics to a kind of competitive sport. The title suggests the cry of the cheerleader. Gimme a “G," Let’s hear it for the Gee-Seven!

The last meeting is best remembered for the near-riots, vandalism, and police brutishness. But it should be remembered for the repetition of the most orthodox of economic orthodoxy: “Fight the deficits!” Yeah team.

Aside from disenchantment with the Obama failure to make jobs appear out of thin air, or the pathetic rambling of the politically Neanderthal Tea Party – there were people of good faith who honestly believed that deficit fighting was number one on the must-do list. It swept the Republicans back into control of The House. Pious comments about saddling our grandchildren with our debts; about digging a hole and it being time to stop digging. In Canada, we believe almost as devoutly in deficit reduction. Remember Paul Martin’s time as Finance Minister when we were all told to pull in our belts and defeat the deficit. It is one of those “truths” that only the Left seems to object to. In fact, if I proceed now to dignify deficits I will be accused of being a knee-jerk Lefty. Here goes.

I am not an economist although I have some definite ideas about commerce and trade and banking and borrowing. I hope I can explain to all the rest of us layman, myself included, the simple reason why deficits are not the thief hiding under the bed.

Any advocate for the “Dismal Science” could put together figures and graphs and pie charts that would justify deficits. Contrarily the same people are flexible enough to show figures that justify the fight against deficits. I have one simple word: multiplier. It’s a word we use to describe the cascade of events that follows an initial move.

If a government decides that jobs are more important than deficits; if it decides that private business is not hiring; if it decides that it can spend money that will benefit the community at large: then deficits make sense.

I shall try to create a hypothetical model. The government decides it will spend – say – 50 billion dollars to build something that will benefit many people: say a series of well-managed small airports or a new transcontinental high speed rail line. One of the reasons governments can do it but private business can not, is that the government can afford to spend money without hope of corporate profit. Not quite. The real “ profit” will be for the thousands of people who will be put to work.

How does the “multiplier” work? Simple. First the salaries that are paid by the subsidy create wages that are taxable. So the government gets back some of its investment. But there are many other multipliers. For railroads there are thousands of miles of steel rails to be fabricated. Work for steel mills that will then have to hire labour which will in turn generate two kinds of tax revenues: salaries of the workers and profits of the steel company. There will be cement companies. There will be companies that make rolling stock. Every one of those will start hiring and again the double tax benefit occurs. Of course there is the most important multiplier of all: the newly hired workers will be able to start spending money again. Bingo – retailers, car dealerships, restaurants, everyone suddenly has a bigger customer base. The government is not “wasting” it is “investing.”

By the way, the supply-side denizens believe that tax relief will be the great multiplier. Maybe it is and maybe it proves my point: increased tax relief causes deeper deficits, but the money will trickle down into the economy. That theory has been disgraced, but don’t tell it to John Boehmer, Mitch McConnell, or even Jim Flaherty.

THE IMPORTANCE OF "LOOKING AHEAD."

When you reach into your 80s there is often a kind of physical and emotional curtain drawn over your life. Perhaps the most important words of advice (however gratuitous they may seem to be) to others reaching deeply into “golden” years: you want to wake up one morning feeling fit, spry and thirty-five years old again. Forget it!

I am prompted to write this piece because of this from “Mark’s Musings”: "You cannot bring value to your partnership in life if you are not, first, and always, be whole, vital and alive yourself. Be strong. Be true, to yourself. Be those things for yourself, but also for your partner.”

Shirley and I are both in chronic discomfort verging on real pain. A couple of nights ago, lying in bed together, indulging in our usual reflective pillow talk and review of the day’s events I said: “You know, we are both at an age when there will be more physical things go wrong. There will be more pain and less vigour. But we can’t put our lives “on hold” waiting for the doctor to prescribe something that will make it all go away. If we don’t get on with our lives, we’ll simply moulder away quietly groaning about our aches and pains.” (I find myself thinking about Stockholm next summer.)

I know, it sounds like a kind of obvious homily. Nothing is more evident in the state of aging that the overt symptoms of it. Our lives are temporarily on hold. She is waiting for a minor heart procedure which she must have before they will replace her totally worn-out hip. I am waiting to hear, if I ever do, about a persistent lower body pain that I’ve been dealing with for the better part of a year. Enough! I am not a fan of exchanging maladies, aches, pains and operations, one of the staples of conversation among people of a certain age group. There is still too much to do.

Do we sit quietly and wait for the pains to be remedied? Certainly not. It is far too easy to wallow. It is a characteristic of aging – for some people. We are planning ahead. Once they get a handle on my pain (and if they don’t I’ll have to carry on anyway) and Shirley gets a date for her hip replacement, we can plan to take a trip to Austin. We don’t go there only to be comforted by our grandchildren, who have their own lives to contend with, we go to experience the milder weather, the great barbecue, the superb galleries and the music. There is more music in Austin, Texas than any other place in America. Jazz, country, classical – you get it all. And in between there can be a visit to a wonderful art glass maker.

Meanwhile. I keep writing. At the urging of my French friend Henri, I sent off a sample of “Letters from Paris” to Le Monde to see if they would like to publish. No word yet. I’ll send them next to “Le Figaro,” and if not there – we’ll see.

I continue to believe that I can be a better pianist. My teacher agrees. He actually has me doing a series of exercises (for the music students who understand I mean Biehl and Hanon) to improve my “chops.” I have no illusions that I can become a virtuoso. But just getting all the exquisite chords for Victor Young’s “Stella by Starlight” is a bounty.

Thanks to Mark Kolke for reminding me. Thanks to whoever cheers us on and wishes us well – because there are still many tomorrows.

A WORLD OF POLITICAL CONTRADICTIONS

George Bush said something like” Get over it. We won the election.” It was his response to the anger from the Democratic opposition to his policies. He made it clear that the issues had been resolved “by the American people” and that the Dems could just shut up until the next election. It is salient to my comment that we remember that comment.

Fast forward to yesterday and the avalanche of self-congratulating press conferences by the resurgent Republicans. House speaker-in-waiting John Boehner making it clear that “the people of America have spoken. We are only responding to their wishes." They want: and this is the clever Boehner speaking, to create jobs and to cut costs. This was the most reasonable, however inane and contradictory, comment. Others are much more direct (and foolish) the Obama-Care program has to be rescinded. We have to continue with the Bush tax cuts even if it means many billions to the top 2% of the people.

But the irony is that from the minute Obama was inaugurated, the Republicans behaved as if they did not believe that “the American people had spoken.” Loudly and clearly the voters were in favour of the Health Care plan, especially in favour of Single Pay. They wanted curbs put on the banking monopoly. They wanted money spent to create jobs and save the country from Depression. Why on earth, I ask, does the “people’s will” expressed in the return of the Republicans resonate any more than the people’s will to elect Obama and pack both the Senate and House with Democrats? I see no difference.

But in the old and wacky way that politics U.S.-style seem to work, it depends on whose ox is being gored. At the heart of the problem, to my everlasting regret, is the President’s fruitless pursuit of bi-partisan harmony. In the months he spent trying to get the Republicans in line he squandered the political capital he had earned during the election. He threw away his chance to make a real difference.

Therein also lies a dilemma and a contradiction. The American people voted for change, but the Republicans were politically smart enough to realize that Americans are not so secure that they really crave change. They are, in a way, like the frightened horse that will flee by going back into the burning barn. The power of billions spent, especially by third parties where no one who knew who the donors were, convincing America that the Democrats had gone too. That tactic hit at the centre of their fear: there was going to be too much change. What would their lives be like under a whole new set of value? However tough things were, it was better the devil you know.…etc.

I think the Republicans understood. I think the Democrats failed to exercise the power the voters gave them. They deserted the truly liberal voters, the young, the ethnically disparate, the sexually compromised, the millions who had no health care and the millions who were insured but not really, the millions who lost and ares till losing their homes. Voters could, intellectually at least, accept a transformative president. But could they accept someone who wanted to turn their reality upside down. Government sponsored health care good for you?? Controls on the banks?

One of my favourite statements is the one made so often by the true free-market advocates in the U.S. and in Canada: government does not create jobs, business does. Those precise words have been uttered, not only by the Tea Party nitwits, but by Republicans who should, and I suspect do, know better.

Deficits in the service of job creation are no less valid than tax cuts in the same cause. The sad fact is that tax cuts simply allow those who have enough already to squirrel more away, and for companies who are too cautious to expand, to simply use the easy money to pay down their debt.

In short, America is held captive by an ideology that is not just the orthodox market economy, but psychologically the burning barn - which is better than nothing.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

What is really behind the flood of support for conservative ideas from the suburbs? It is all about disenfranchisement. It’s as simple as that. It is when the old Toronto suburbs vote for Rob Ford and his “Fairness for Taxpayers,” and when the Tea Party and fellow travelers vote against big government and spending. It’s all about the fear of being disenfranchised, pushed aside by more powerful players..

So we continue to agonize over the voting split between the “old city” and the “former suburbs. Their vote is what elects the demagogues, who promise comfort and “respect.”

But the election of Ford, just as the elections of all those Republicans is just a by-product of the persistent rift that exists in cities between the chic, the elite, the Chablis-sipping quiche eaters and the down-home-good-guys who eat burgers at a shopping mall. The people that Sarah Plain called “Joe Six-Pack.” I’m oversimplifying of course, but I am looking for a way to characterize the political and social rift that has been around for generations.

The shape of the rift is almost historic. In Canada it is obviously between the “two solitudes” – each with its own distinct identity and aspirations. In the U.S. even more marked. The South still detests the North and expresses it in the social and political schism that has existed since post-Civil War Reconstruction. It is exemplified in the American west and their suspicions of the eastern elite and the Wall Street tycoons. Everyone suspects The ones they think are the “haves” or worse, the ones who want to take things over.

Why does sloganeering about taxes and greedy “big” government resonate in the burbs?
The Tories always do better in outlying areas and parts of the country that feel neglected. It is not that they are really neglected. It just feels that way, especially since all the money and influence seems to be located in the centres of power – the big cities. Never mind that there is enormous political and financial power outside the big cities. It is the perception that makes dangerous politics.

Back to what happened in Toronto. The city core voted one way, the former suburbs votes the other way. The message that you have “Respect For Taxpayers” hits home because those beleaguered taxpayers in the suburbs believe they are being taxed to feed the appetites, political, artistic, and powerful, of the big city moguls. The poor benighted suburbanites pay all those taxes so the city can have its privileges. They pay taxes to keep welfare bums and subsidized housing properly fed. They pay taxes for frills like symphony orchestras and theatre and multi culturalism and everything else that smacks of “nannyism.” The suburbs are where the “real” people are. Look how far Sarah Palin went with her “real” Americans, the ones who live in small towns.

The suburbanites feel they don’t have the power so they vote for the guy who says he will give it to them. There is never any acceptance of some of the facts: the people in the suburbs could not exist without the careers they can have in the big city. The suburbanite is furious because, on account of the inner city elite, they have to spend so much time in traffic gridlock just trying to get into town to make an honest living.

Toronto has never recovered from the effect of the “shotgun marriage” the Mike Harris government used to make one big city. Before that time it may have been no better - certainly far less efficient, with five suburban governments, a city government, and a Metro government. But the people of our former suburbs feel disenfranchised. No one seems to be listening to what they want. The squeaky wheel that (or it seems to them) gets the oil is the inner city, where the big shots live side by side with the chronic poor.

There is seldom any recognition that the engine that drives the city is the strength of its major institutions: the banks, the financial institutions, the planners, the creators of urban success, the magnet for touism. In Toronto, and I daresay in most cities where the centre has not been “hollowed out” the bulk of the tax revenues come from the inner city – from businesses and residents. And when the suburbs want to go to a symphony concert or attend a big city dramatic product, or go to see big league sports – they have to come to the place they love to hate – the city.

The city draws its strength from the downtown organizations – the hotels, the subways, the department stores, and the kind of life that Mississauga can only dream of.

But I don’t want to start a city/suburb war. I just want some reality and a little common sense so that when someone claims to be “caring about you” they usually care only about getting elected.