Ann-Marie Slaughter's Accidental Insight

Ann-Marie Slaughter has an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post today about her new position as President and Chief Executive at the "New America Foundation."  Her main point seems to be that our democracy is based on community, and that we need to do more for caregivers, teachers, etc., and give everybody a decent wage.  In other words, she's a democrat.  I don't really disagree with any of that (except to the extent it is an argument for raising the minimum wage -- as logical as that sounds, I've never heard an economist defend it), but it's hard to imagine how it will be done through government programs.  The basic problem is that our government is so corrupt and inefficient, there's not much it can do to implement policies like these.  Like ObamaCare.  Try to help people, and the result is that the taxpayers and consumers are simply giving more money to corporations.  But then, almost as an afterthought, she says:

"Elevating care alongside competition would have implications for our foreign policy as well. It would underpin a new era of U.S. leadership, affecting where and how we work with other nations on issues of water, food, climate, poverty and the violence that rips apart everyday lives. When we looked at Syria, Egypt or any country menaced by government violence and government failure, we would see not only that government’s political allegiances and its place on the global chessboard. We would also see human beings who want the same things we do: jobs, education, a better life for their children. An uncaring foreign policy will haunt us — through the global ties of our own citizens and through the channels that transmit crime, disease, recession and other ills across borders."

Although her primary agenda is domestic and essentially un-implementable, this paragraph makes perfect sense.  On a domestic level, the kind of "compassion" she preaches costs money and nobody has figured out a way to implement it without distorting everything else (see, e.g., welfare, ObamaCare).  But on the international plane, everything is different.  There, we really should be guided by compassion.  Instead, we tend to be guided by corporate greed.   

I'm not talking about simply giving money to other countries to help them solve their problems -- that's never worked in the past; the money never gets to the people who need it and the problems just get worse.   I'm talking about stuff that won't cost the U.S. taxpayer any money at all.  Just become a better world citizen.  Stop letting corporations decide when we go to war and for how long.  Stop letting corporations impose our idea of protectionist capitalism (e.g., our intellectual property policies) on countries that absolutely don't need it.  

Right now, nobody views us as a good world citizen.  We are a rich, arrogant, bumbling nation, that doesn't care one whit if tens of thousands of innocent people are killed as we level a country (Iraq) that we are going to pay our corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel -- not the corporations of the "host" country) to rebuild.   Our drones and other airstrikes routinely kill innocents.  All of this will continue to create generation after generation of terrorists, and we will never be safe, domestically or internationally.

This is not a short-term approach.  I don't know the answer to the Syria question.  Maybe that's a question we should ask the Syrian people -- yes, they've been gassed, but how do they feel about getting bombed by the U.S. as well?  If we were to become a better world citizen -- e.g. share our technology, free from state-created intellectual property restrictions, with countries that need it most -- maybe people would come to see a new American-style compassionate capitalism as the best way to run a country, and would stop allowing dictators and other strong-men to run their countries to the ground.  Maybe the dictators themselves would start treating their citizens better; there's nothing wrong with a dictatorship if the right person is in charge.  And again, maybe it would help prevent so many places on this earth from becoming breeding grounds for anti-American terrorists.

Warning:  Slaughter's piece is hard to get through, even though it's been condensed from an even longer article published in the Weekly Wonk.  The first page is all self-congratulatory; she clearly thinks that she and other professors are smarter than the rest of us, and could solve all of our problems if only given the chance.  The second page is merely a vague recitation of a democratic-progressive agenda.  It's only on the third page that the international point appears, and she only seems to view it as a byproduct of the rest of her vision, as opposed to an end in itself. It's unfortunate that she spent her time in the State Department before having this idea, and it's also unfortunate that she doesn't recognize her own idea for what it's worth.

Update 09/16/13:  Recently, the DC City Council voted to require large retailers like WalMart to pay $12.50 an hour to employees, $4.25 more than the minimum wage.  And even more recently, DC Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed the bill, since it became pretty clear that WalMart would not open any DC stores under those conditions.  I'm not taking sides in this; I'm just trying to make the point that it's much more complex than Slaughter seems to think.  Yes, we can all agree that everyone SHOULD have a wage that's enough to live on.  But simply trying to legislate it will have consequences -- in this case, the really poor people of DC won't get the benefit of the lower prices that WalMart offers, and nobody will get the opportunity to work for Walmart (which many currently unemployed people would otherwise have done, even at the minimum wage).

Aaron Hirsh on On-Line vs. In-Person Education: A Compromise

Aaron Hirsh's op-ed piece in today's NYT is worth reading - he makes the point that on-line education -- for all its advantages -- offers merely a binary relationship between student and teacher, whereas traditional education is triangular -- the student, the professor, and the subject matter.  He points out that underprivileged kids working only on on-line courses are more likely to drop out than such kids who actually attend classes.  His solution:  allow the on-line component to go forward, but also include sessions with the professor where the students interact directly with the professor, perhaps in a museum or on a field trip, where students can apply and further explore what they learned on-line, with the professor.

I like that idea.  One of the "disadvantages" of the "triangular" relationship is that students often have to suffer through all of the tangents and blind alleys that other students tend to lead the professor down.  While I am for class participation -- and I think it can be an essential part of the learning process for the participant -- it often slows things down for everyone else.  On-line, the student can get his or her questions answered (by google if nothing else), and not disrupt the experience for everyone else.  And theoretically at least, watching a professor on-line can be a much more interactive experience than sitting in your seat watching the professor speak.  I.e. you have the ability to rewind for the parts where you were day-dreaming, you have the ability to pause and google around and get your questions answered in real time without disturbing everyone else.

On-line also helps with the perennial dilemma that students face in deciding how to prepare for a class.  Yes, reading and understanding and absorbing 100 pages of material is often rewarding and certainly comes in handy in a class where the professor might cold call on you.  But in some cases, seeing the lecture first will help give you the background to attack the reading material more productively and efficiently.

Similarly, Hirsh's idea addresses the "unprepared student" problem, i.e. the problem that students who haven't really absorbed (or done) the reading just don't get as much out of the class.  If the meetings with teachers are only relatively few and far between, and occur AFTER the student has had many on-line experiences (and presumably has read the corresponding material), then the student is much better able to make the most out of the occasional interactive experience with the professor.

The Success Fallacy

One of the most annoying kind of self-help books is the kind where the author has sought out "successful" people and asks them what made them successful.

Often, the advice is harmless enough, because the "successful people" relate back stories that show how their success was related to hard work, persistence, integrity, creativity, willingness to take on new responsibilities, etc. etc.  There are problems with that -- if you know any truly successful people (and I consider all elected politicians to be successful people), you know that many of them got there as a result of nepotism, connections, conniving and backstabbing -- or at least benefited from those techniques along the way.  Certainly not all of them -- there are many great and successful entrepreneurs who did not need to do any of that, since they had the right product at the right time. But even in that case, there is often a pretty sizeable "luck" element along with everything else.  As I said though, it's harmless, because there's nothing wrong with telling people to work hard, treat people right, etc. etc., and certainly sometimes that does lead to a measure of success.

But in some cases, they also say they just found and followed their passion, and now look -- they're successful.  That's what I want to focus on here, because that may well be harmful.

I haven't read one word of Sir Ken Robinson's book "The Element -- How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything" (Amazon reviews here) but based on the reviews, it looks like it fits the latter mold -- a bunch of successful creative people, spouting anecdotes about how they became successful by doing what they liked to do.  As many of the reviewers note, the problem with this is that there are tons of creative, artistic people who simply can't make much of a living (much less contribute significantly to supporting a family) doing what they love to do.  The market is just not right for it, at least not quite yet.  The market for creative people is essentially that there are a relatively small number of people who manage to do one or two things that are quite impressive, and that these things come to the attention of the right people at the right time, and the people are from then on deemed "creative geniuses."  These people then can sell whatever they produce next, no matter how mediocre it is in fact.  And then there are a lot of other creative people who for whatever reason never come to the attention of the right people at the right time.

So there's a huge selection bias that goes with finding successful creative people and trying to learn life lessons from them, and using THAT to encourage others to (e.g.) drop out of school and dance.  Or play baseball or basketball.  Any major league baseball or NBA basketball player will be happy to tell you about all the work that he put in as a kid to become that good.  But that sure doesn't mean that every kid could do it.  Just look around a playground -- any number of the kids there would probably love to play basketball for a living, and many of them are pretty darn good.   But hoping to follow that dream just because it's what you like to do isn't going to put food on the table, except for the lucky (and usually extremely talented) few.

In a TED Talk a few years back -- the most popular TED talk ever, by the way -- Robinson gave a bit of a preview of his book (which came out in 2009), and explained that the problem with education today is that the whole thing is geared into churning out people who will be university professors, who, he implied, are generally useless.  But that's simply not true.  Yes, the people with the best grades often do go on to become professors, and that's because their high grades reflect the fact that their passion happens to be some particular body of knowledge, or maybe just learning generally.  They enjoy school so they do well in it.  The next tier are the more impressive ones -- the ones who don't particularly enjoy school (at least not with the same passion as the professors-to-be), but do well at it nonetheless.  These are the people that employers will want to hire -- people who are willing to do work that they don't always enjoy doing.

The people who don't like school and as a result don't study and don't do well very rarely make good employees -- unless, at some point in their life, they learn the lessons that the people in the second tier have already learned -- that sometimes, to get ahead, you need to do things you don't enjoy doing.  Yes, some of these people are in the best position to risk everything (since they have so little to lose) to pursue a creative career (or even an entrepreneurial career), but given how many of them there are -- and how many of those end up in unsatisfying lives -- it's simply unreasonable to point to the successes, and suggest this (neglect of school) as a legitimate way to approach life.  Interestingly, people in general understand this when they think of pro basketball -- i.e. that pro basketball is a very longshot option for most kids and therefore shouldn't be one's only plan -- but some of them (e.g. Robinson) seem to think a different rule might apply to dancers.

You can read this and simply decide that you're never going to be anyone's employee.  Good for you.  That's a decision shared by a lot of great artists and entrepreneurs, and a lot of successful people generally.  But it's also shared by a lot of losers.

Petula Dvorak Non-Sequiturs Rape, Sex, and Alcoholic Blackouts

Yes, I am using "non-sequitur" as a verb.  I think some situations call for it.

I'm as much against rape (in all of its ugly forms) as anybody, and I am disturbed to hear that the military court hearing the Naval Academy Rape Case allows lines of questioning of the alleged victim that would not be permitted in a civilian rape case.  That's one of Petula Dvorak's points in her column in today's Washington Post. But her main point comes through in her concluding words:

"It's about America still not understanding the difference between consensual sex and rape.

"The woman at the Naval Academy is not pretending to be a prude. She described for attorneys times in the past when she did want to have sex and consented to it. But the stuff those football players bragged about online — she didn’t even remember it. At that point, it’s rape.

"Consensual sex happens between two adults who both want it.

"Rape is about violence, domination and power.

"It shouldn’t be that hard."

Must be nice to get paid for writing those one-sentence paragraphs.  And must also be nice to get paid for spouting that kind of stupidity.  I bolded the problem, and put the rest there for context.  Just because she "didn't even remember it," it's rape????

That's the whole problem with alcoholic blackouts.  The person will seem perfectly normal and will be able to hold conversations, etc.  They will presumably also be able to say "yes" or "no" to sex.  But because of the alcohol, something is happening within the brain that is preventing long-term memories from forming.  The person wakes up the next morning and (e.g.) doesn't remember how they got home the previous evening.  A large percentage of people who drink have experienced that kind of blackout, usually back when they were in college.

Yes, a woman who is "in a blackout" (I hate that terminology, because one can only say there was a blackout the next day, when the person doesn't remember anything), may well seem drunk, since blackouts are linked to excessive drinking (although interestingly, the correlation is not perfect, according to a rather boring article on wikipedia about blackouts).  But Dvorak's conclusion -- essentially, because she was in a blackout, it's rape -- is just so wrong that it hurts.

Her view seems to be based on the notion that when someone is drunk, they can never have consensual sex, and no matter how willing they seem to be, sex with them is rape.  But that rule is completely unworkable, since (for one thing), it requires the man to make the judgment that the woman's "yes" is not really a "yes." And more importantly, it's not the law now, and probably never will be.

So not only has Dvorak misunderstood the science of alcoholic blackouts, but she's also misunderstood the law of rape.  Yes, rape is a horrible crime, but a false accusation of rape can have devastating consequences.  According to wikipedia, the average sentence for a rape conviction is over 11 years, and convicted rapists spend over 5 years in prison on average.  That's the reason it's not as "simple" as Dvorak seems to think it is -- society needs to be pretty darn sure ("beyond a reasonable doubt") it was rape before convicting someone.  The mere fact that the victim was in a blackout cannot be the basis for a conviction.

Update 080915:  Just saw the following piece on CNN about a book that may be worth reading if you're interested in alcoholic blackouts:  Sarah Hepola's "Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget."  The CNN piece contains the following line, which (if true, which I'm sure it is) refutes Petula Dvorak's faulty reasoning:

"The man Hepola was having sex with most likely had no idea she was in a blackout . . . ."

The article and presumably the book confirm what I've said above -- that people in blackouts can function perfectly well, and that people encountering them have no idea that they are not forming permanent memories (how could they tell, anyway?).  To suggest that anyone who has sex with someone who is later found to have been in a blackout is a rapist (as Dvorak does) is both stupid and dangerous.

I495 Admin Fee Scam Part II

IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE MANY THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO ARE BEING HOUNDED BY TRANSURBAN FOR HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, OR IF THEY'VE ALREADY GOTTEN A JUDGMENT AGAINST YOU -- or if you are just mad because they are asking you to pay a $12.50 administration fee for an obvious mistaken entry --  please read through the comments below, and email Lisa Marie Comras (lmsdigiulio@gmail.com), who is organizing a class action against Transurban.  Her attorneys will contact you and then you'll be able to decide for yourself whether you want to be part of the move to hold Transurban accountable.

According to Emily Miller of Fox 5 DC, Transurban filed 26,000 lawsuits against drivers in 2014 alone.  Maybe you're one of those drivers.  If you're facing an immediate court date, you might find some good ideas here or here, courtesy of attorney David Bernhard, via Fox 5 DC's Emily Miller.  But when that's over, you should still strongly consider joining the class action.

Original Post:

This was meant to be a reply to a comment by Delilah Johnson on my I495 Admin Fee Scam post but for some reason the reply isn't working.  So for now I'll just post it here:

Wow. Mark and Delilah, sorry to hear about this.  Mark's right -- for them to sit back for three months without telling you that you're doing something wrong, and then to charge you an administrative fee for every single instance, is outrageous.  Administratively, it shouldn't cost them any more to send a letter for one offense than for 20.  And $12.50 is still too big for one lousy computer-generated letter.

The real problem is that if you end up fighting them on your own, chances are your credit rating will take a hit, because they'll turn it over to collections.  But if you're mad and are willing to take them on -- and willing to monitor your credit rating and let the reporting bureaus know that any mark against you is "in dispute," then here's something you might try:

Write a letter, via registered mail, to them at their US Headquarters (they are an Australian outfit) and enclose a check for about $45.55, made out to Transurban Group.  On the "memo" line of the check write "Payment in Full", and refer to any number that they gave you in their letter to you (I threw mine out so I don't remember what the letter looks like), or say:  "toll plus admin fee dispute" or something like that.

Your letter can say the following:

Via Registered Mail
Transurban Group
6440 General Green Way
Alexandria, Virginia 22312

[this is the address for their headquarters -- if the bill they sent you has another address, just use it]

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have received a letter from you informing me that I owe you $33.05 in missed tolls, and $725.00 in "administration fees," for a total of $758.05, for a number of short trips taken on I-495.  I dispute this charge for several reasons.  First, assuming your information is correct, I was completely unaware of the fact that I was driving on a toll lane; your lanes are poorly marked and you have done little to educate the public about your system.  Second, you provided me no notice whatsoever that you would be charging me more than $12 per trip.  Third, it is unconscionable that you charge $725 in "administration fees" for the administrative task of notifying me of $33.05 in missed tolls.  Fourth, it's particularly unconscionable for you to let the administration fees accumulate, at $12.50 a pop, without notifying me that they were accumulating.

I am enclosing herewith a check for $45.55, which reflects the $33.05 in tolls you say I owe you, plus $12.50 to cover your administrative costs in this matter.  Please consider this check to be payment in full for resolution of this dispute.

Sincerely,

_________

---

If they cash the check, then the dispute is over -- they have accepted your settlement offer, and they can't sue you (or if they do, you'll win).  If they don't cash the check and turn the matter over to collections (or if they cash the check and turn it over to collections anyway), when the collections people call tell them the matter is in dispute, and that you're waiting to hear back on your settlement offer.  If they at some point reject your offer, just invite them to sue you.  They won't, because it's just not worth an attorney's time to do that, and it's also far from clear that they are legally justified in charging such a hefty "administration fee" without having given you (or the rest of us) any notice.  It's possible that the collections agency will report you to the credit reporting agencies even though you inform them the issue is in dispute.  If that happens, and you want to protect your credit rating, you need to contact the credit reporting agencies separately (you can google how to do that).

I note that you say they charged you $725 in administrative fees for 20 trips.  It's hard for me to figure out where that number comes from -- my best guess is that they are charging you for 29 trips, and they doubled the administrative fees because you haven't paid yet (since 29 * 12.50 * 2 = 725).  So maybe they've sent you two letters; that's why I left it vague with "administrative costs in this matter" at the end of the letter (instead of saying you're paying $12.50 for one letter).

You could also try sending them less money -- e.g. just the $33.05, or even less than that.  If they cash the "payment in full" check, you are again home free.  But I think it's more likely that they'll cash it if you make a reasonable offer that is tied to the facts of your situation.  $45.55 is reasonable because it includes not only the tolls, but a big fat $12.50 administrative fee.

Good luck with this -- whatever path you choose -- and let us know what happens!

Please don't consider this legal advice.  If you want that, consult a lawyer.  But it is practical advice; it's what I'd do myself in this situation.

Why Lobster Prices Don't Fall During Lobster Gluts

Interesting article in New Yorker this week: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/08/26/130826ta_talk_surowiecki

We're in a lobster glut right now -- lobstermen have too many to sell; apparently it's down to $2.20 a pound in some parts of Maine (we just saw it at $3.99 a pound in Portland).  So why don't restaurants lower their prices?

- Keeping them expensive makes other menu items look like better deals

- Customers often associate higher prices with better quality; if lobsters were cheaper they'd be suspicious.

- Restaurants can capitalize on falling prices by adding lobster-themed dishes without lowering prices of lobsters.

- Danger that people will get used to lower prices (and one time, lobster meat was food for lower classes, not upper).  It was only when it became scarce for a while that rich people realized it was a delicacy.

He ends the article by noting that commodity producers -- like lobstermen -- are at the mercy of the market, whereas businesses like restaurants try to insulate themselves from the market.

For me, it's one more reason not to eat lobster.  

Walmart sanctions 400% overcharge for gutter downspout extension

Need a downspout extension?

How about this one:



This is the Amerimax Home Products Brown Flex-a-Spout Downspout Extension, Model No. 85019, and by all accounts, it works great.

You can go to www.homedepot.com and order one for $8.97 plus $5.99 shipping (or free shipping if you order over $45, and of course you can also pick it up at the store for free too). Home Depot Link (select brown as your color, and the price stays the same).

or, if you prefer, you can go to www.walmart.com and get one for $40.64 (a nice Walmart-sounding price) plus $6.97 shipping (another Walmart-sounding price).  Walmart Link

The choice is yours.  Caveat emptor, as they say.

Of course, that's Walmart's Marketplace, and the outfit that will sell you the gutter is Toolking.  Still, I wouldn't have found it if Walmart had not lent its good (*cough*) name to this shabby enterprise.

Hopefully, this won't last.  But just to create a permanent record, here are the competing screen shots:

So Toolking, with Walmart's help, will sell you this $9 piece of plastic for over $47 (including shipping).  Walmart's current slogan is “Low prices. Every day. On everything.”  Well, not quite everything, I guess.  

It just goes to show -- the minute you turn your back on Corporate America, they find a new way to try to take your money.