Hard Times In Argentina Reflected In Book Titles At One Giant, Beautiful Book Store

In the week we’ve been here, I’ve heard a lot about the terrible Argentine economy these days, About how corruption has badly hurt every day Argentinians.  How the Peso has dropped drastically in value.  I’ve tried to include pictures of people in the posts I’ve done so that you can see that this is a population that doesn’t look that different from people in the states.  Men in public are wearing jeans and tennis shoes.  Women are dressed in a range from casual to chic.  

There are lots of coffee shops with people sitting inside and out with coffee and pastries and more substantial snacks.  There was a strong middle class.  

I keep hearing that Argentina was once one of the richest countries in the world, per capita..  Here’s the beginning of an article on that by an Argentinian.  

In the textbook “Economics”, written by the Nobel Prize in Economics Paul Krugman together with his wife Robin Wells, in the chapter on introduction to macroeconomics, they make a small comparison between the evolution of Canada and Argentina. With the title “A story of two countries”.  “One of the most informative contrasts is between Canada and Argentina, two countries that, at the beginning of the 20th century, seemed to be in a good economic position. From today’s point of view, it is surprising to realize that Canada and Argentina looked pretty much alike before the First World War. (…) Economic historians believe that the average level of per capita income was almost the same in the two countries until the 1930s.”[1]

The Peso was down 52% in 2018 (the most of any country listed in the article)    The link provides five other factors leading to Argentina’s economic crisis.  

People were limited to taking only $200 (in US currency in one case I heard about) per day.

People jog, go to the gym, ride bikes, go to the university, and all things Americans and Europeans do, but they are also feeling the pinch.  Homeless are sleeping on the streets and in the subway walkways - but not as bad as I’ve seen in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and even Anchorage.  But then I’ve not seen a lot of the city, so maybe there are more.  

People look weary and our host and teachers and people we meet tell us the same story.  Life is getting harder and harder.  On the other hand, university is free, and we met a man waiting for the bus today who was born in Buenos Aires, but grew up in Miami.  He’s back here going to the university.  

All this is prelude to the book store we went to yesterday - the biggest one in Argentina.  

Tucked away in Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires is a beautiful shop that every bookworm would love to visit, called El Ateneo Grand Splendid. It is built within the almost 100-year-old Grand Splendid Theater, which opened in 1919. The premises were later converted into a movie theater and eventually, in 2000, it was transformed into the El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore, which currently welcomes over one million book lovers each year.

Below is my picture, but go to the link to see much better pictures of the building than I have.  And to learn more about the history of this giant bookstore.  https://www.boredpanda.com/buenos-aires-bookstore-theatre-el-ateneo-grand-splendid/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic 

I’m going to focus mostly on the Argentine politics section of the store which is a relatively small part of the whole bookstore.  So I’ll add just a couple of pictures of other nearby titles.

I don’t recall ever seeing a section on Military Dictatorships in a book store before.  

I Do Not Forgive:  The Testimony of Erika Lederer, Daughter of a Genocial Obsterician.

Google isn’t giving me anything in English - even though I’m asking for English - on Erika Lederer.  Here’s a translation from google.  There are some oddly gendered pronouns.  Is this book available in English?  I’m guessing not:

The Spanish version was from Planeta de Libros.  

She is the first daughter of medical captain Ricardo Lederer, second chief of clandestine maternity in Campo de Mayo during the period of State terrorism. Raised in a professional middle class family, she attended a private school in the German community of Villa Ballester, where she began to read her first philosophy books. His father was an obstetrician doctor, a commando soldier and part of the carapintada uprising of the La Tablada barracks, in 1987. The union is also called, in the book Nunca más, as "the madman with pretensions to purge the race."She is a lawyer from the University of Buenos Aires, specializing in Family Mediation. Works in family mediation in confinement contexts. As she defines it, this is "doing magic; Provide tools to build an alternative story, that is habitable for the person. "He practiced swimming, running and today pole dance; disciplines in which are the metaphors that mark his life in different stages.He joined the founding group of "Disobedient Stories" and, later, "Former children and former daughters of genocide for Truth, Memory and Justice".

Perished::  Who wins the America Cup of orruption?  

[While writing this post, the screen here went blank.  I was able to post it - and what I’d done was still there, but I wasn’t finished.  So now I’m finiahing.]

Another book in that section.  

Google translates this as Under the Water, but I’m guessing that it might mean Under Water.  I suspect any English speaker can decipher the subtitle.

Here’s one book that appears to look at how the world’s torments impact the River of Silver (the area around Buenos Aires.). And another that seems to look the other way around - how the torments of Argentina affect the world.  

And as promised, a couple of books from different sections.

Our Spanish classes ended today.  I learned a lot, but I’m still tongue tied when I get out of class.  I have a sense of how my two year old granddaughter feels as she gets more words and sentences out effectively.  Actually, she’s advancing much faster than I am.  Both of us had excellent teachers.   

And J got her stitches out today.  If I posted pictures of the doctor stitching her up and the nurse taking them out today, the surroundings look pretty much the same.  Here it was the German Hospital of Buenos Aires.  Looks a lot like Providence Anchorage, but more patients, and better places to eat in the neighborhood.  

And I finally broke down and went to the travel agent recommended by the language school, to plan out the rest of the trip.  We aren’t tour people, but for the national park - Iguasu - it just seems a lot easier and they did some more planning until the rest of the family is here for the eclipse.  Then we have more time to plan out.  

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Two Reading Tips - EPA Climate Change Report And William Barr's History Misleading Congress With A Summary

This post offers an introduction to two articles that I think are worth reading.  One is about an EPA report on economic impacts of Climate Change and how we can reduce them.  The other gives some background on William Barr and how he mischaracterized to Congress an internal Justice Department memo in 1989.

The Climate Change one isn't news to people immersed in the topic, but adds the weight of Trump's EPA giving the warning. And it's something to pass on to skeptics.   The Barr piece is important context ( that I haven't seen elsewhere)  for his summary of the Mueller Report

Part 1:  Climate Change

Even when the fire is raging and police and firefighters issue mandatory evacuation orders, there are people who refuse to leave their homes.   Climate change happens more gradually than raging wildfires, but the devastation is more extensive and the damage will continue to increase if we don't slow things down.   Here's an LA Times article* about a recent EPA report on the future economic impact of climate change and how a carbon pricing scheme could reduce the future impacts by half.

"By the end of the century, the manifold consequences of unchecked climate change will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Those costs will come in multiple forms, including water shortages, crippled infrastructure and polluted air that shortens lives, according to the study in Monday’s edition of Nature Climate Change. No part of the country will be untouched, the EPA researchers warned.
However, they also found that cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and proactively adapting to a warming world, would prevent a lot of the damage, reducing the annual economic toll in some sectors by more than half."

This is from the Trump administration's EPA!!!!!  (Do I need more than the exclamation points, each of which represent another outrageous decision by the EPA to loosen standards that help individual companies and compromise the future for the rest of us?)

Who could sit around, unconcerned about climate change?  I ask that question daily.  Here's my current version of the answer:

• people who don't know - they only know what's on the news and the media's 'balanced' coverage which gives the 1% deniers equal time with the 99% of scientists who know that climate change is real, gives them a false sense that it's still up for debate
• people who have a vested interest in not knowing - they have corporations or jobs or investments in those corporations that are maintaining their current lifestyle  (this includes politicians who get significant funding from those oil and coal interests)
• people who don't care - they think that they will be gone before the real impacts hit and they don't have kids or grandkids who will be affected; or they, for whatever reasons, can't concern themselves with the fate of others

I'm convinced that Climate Change is the most serious challenge to human existence (both in terms of surviving, and for those who survive, living in a world with a regular life with access to food, housing,  and safety.)   That's why I belong to Citizens Climate Lobby and why our local chapter was pleased that we got the Anchorage Assembly to pass a resolution endorsing the current Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.  It's true, the Assembly's resolution, by itself, does little.  But as part of the CCL's webpage of all the other endorsers, it's like a signature on a petition with many, many others.  It's telling legislators who are concerned about the politics of Climate Change, that there are many people and organizations out there that have their backs.

In any case, I'd recommend reading the LA Times article so when you talk to deniers or avoiders you have data to push them closer to understanding why we can't dawdle on this.

*Note:  There are two LA Times articles.  One was a last week in something called LA Times Science Now and it includes a useful chart.  The other is a shortened version in today's regular LA Times.

As if that weren't enough for one post, here's another piece to help people understand William Barr and his history of writing summaries for Congress.


2.  William Barr's Past Summarizing For Congress

Just Security  has an article on a 1989 situation where then Attorney General William Barr misled Congress with a summary of a Justice Department document that, when finally made public, showed Barr's deception. An excerpt:

"Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.
When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.
What’s different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out."

It got Barr off the hook in the short term and he was no longer Attorney General when it was finally made public.  My experience is that people tend to use the same strategies that served them in the past.  If Barr can keep the Mueller Report hidden until after the 2020 election, he'll have done his job.  Compare this good-old-boys-protecting-their-own behavior with the tell-it-like-it-is language of people like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

We need to see the Mueller Report!  

Remember, you're not helpless.  You have power.  You can let your Congressional Rep and your Senators see these documents and let them know how you feel.  No, your one contact (phone, email, or mail) won't change things, but along with thousands of others, it will.  (The links help you connect with your members of Congress.)

How Social Media Allow Fringe Candidate To Get An Audience - Andrew Yang In San Francisco

I don't even know who Andrew Yang is.  I'll look him up in a second.  But below is a video of him giving a talk on the street with a Twitter transcript/commentary.  (Double click on the Tweet to see the whole thread.)

By popular demand, #YangGang #Yang2020 event in SF https://t.co/0r41OkGF3N

— 🤖 Sonya Mann 🎀 (@sonyaellenmann) March 16, 2019

Here's a long interview with Yang which he begins by talking about universal basic income and cites Alaska as an example of it working. I hope our current fight over the PFD doesn't "prove" to people that this idea won't work. Though it sure shows us that some people only think immediate, short term, and 'that's my money, not the state's." But that's another discussion.







What I like about all these young Democratic presidential candidates is that they are bringing to the table important ideas that the older, politically conservative (and by that I don't mean ideologically, but rather people not willing to take risks, people who only back ideas after they look at the polls) have kept off the agenda.

[As I listen to the rest of this two hour video, he talks about the places Trump won are the places that jobs got replaced by robots.  Then he said he went to Washington and started talking to politicians about this and they said, "We can't talk about that."  about 49 minutes in.]

Elizabeth Warren's pushing breaking up the tech industry.  Kamala Harris is talking about reparations for African-Americans in the sense of help dealing with generational trauma.  Beto O'Rourke champions immigrants as necessary to the prosperity and vibrance of the US  ("El Paso has been the safest city in America, not despite immigrants, but because of immigrants.").  Jay Inslee is focused on Climate Change.   You get the point.   Let's get these issues out there so the American people start seriously talking about other options.

And let's hope the candidates continue to care more about making this a much better country and world, than they care about who is ultimately in the White House.  Let's hope they stay positive and see themselves as a team, and may the best candidate be their leader from the White House.

One last note:  This is not an endorsement of Yang or any other candidate.  I like the ideas they are all raising.  As we get to know them better, we'll find out more about their strengths and weaknesses.  But I'm pushing them to all work together as a team.

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them THEY now can decide priorities of the budget. My administration is agnostic on this."

A short one today, I hope.  Some reactions to the governor's letter to the university community.

"The previous administration burned through nearly every dollar in the state's savings account."

Actually, he wanted to increase revenues with appropriate taxes but the Republican controlled Senate banned the word taxes.  And he did cut the budget each year.  But rather than destroying the state, the way your budget will, he got some money from the PFD account (lowering the checks) and from savings accounts.  You, governor, also refuse to consider increasing revenues.  That's a serious problem.

 "While some wish to ignore Alaskans and propose billion-dollar taxes and PFD grabs, I've made clear that this is out of line with the core beliefs of most Alaskans."

Whether it's out of line with people's core beliefs, I can't say. If that's true, you're saying the core beliefs of most Alaskans are:  we want our services and our free oil money, but we refuse to pay for any of it.   Taxes are certainly NOT against the core beliefs of most educated Alaskans who understand the numbers and the impacts these proposed cuts will have and who understand that there are some things - like roads, police, schools, public health - that are a much better bargain for a society if the public pools their money (as in taxes) to buy collectively.  Yeah, some with lots of money can buy private security guards and send their kids to private schools, but society as a whole needs everyone to get a decent education.  Only con artists benefit from an uneducated public.

And those who believed Dunleavy's campaign promises that he'd balance the budget and pay out the old PFD cuts and keep the state running - they desperately need  good education and mental health systems.

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them  THEY now can decide priorities of the budget.  My administration is agnostic on this."  

As strategy, I guess this is a good move on the governor's part.  He's basically saying, I've balanced the budget and the legislature can decide on where to cut.  They'll get the blame, he hopes.  But really, to tell the university they can work out with the legislature where to cut is like telling your kids, "Hey, here's 50 cents, go buy yourself dinner.  I'm agnostic about what you eat, but just keep it within our budget."  You can't buy dinner for 50 cents and you can't run a university on 40% of last year's budget.  It's a disaster for years to come.   (Dermot Cole has already addressed the governor's claim that it's only 17%.)

I don't know who's helping the governor do all this.  Well aside from Donna Arduin.  Or if he really thinks - "the sky won't fall" because government is bloated.  This is like not believing in gravity.

I once asked my students - as we discussed ontology - if the University was real?  They all agreed it was.  I argued it was just something that people made up. And they could make it up into something entirely different.   That the state could decide to sell all the buildings to some company and they could call it whatever they wanted and the university simply wouldn't exist any more.

But that was a philosophical argument to make a point about the nature of reality.  It seems our governor is trying to prove my point.   Some people will die.  Others will suffer needlessly because of the cuts this budget requires.  Even if the legislature restores half the cuts.

In a letter to the editor the other day, someone wrote this was simply the governor's opening gambit of a chess game.  There is no opening gambit in chess that compares to this.  Well, there's one - knocking over the board and all the pieces.

What the governor does have going for him is that his letter is in good English, it's polite, and if you don't know anything about the situation, it might sound reasonable.

Working Conditions of Some Folks Who Feed Your Electronic Media Habits

Some pieces on the less visible side of our rapid adoption of electronic media.

Computer Games - From Real Life

"During a quarterly earnings call on February 11, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard — one of the biggest companies in video games, publicly traded with a market cap of about $35 billion — announced excellent news for investors: His company had just completed a “record year” of revenue. But then he had even better news for them: Activision Blizzard was set to lay off 8 percent of their workforce, to further increase shareholder margins, meaning 800 employees would be losing their jobs.
The cycles of extreme crunch and job churn have meant that game employees often burn out after a few years in games: In 2017, the industry had the highest turnover rate of any in the country. Games companies are not troubled by this, because they bank on the aura that their products and their fan communities give them. The idealism and passion of the young people who come to games hoping to work in a field that inspires them and brings them joy end up making them ripe for exploitation, a pattern many young writers, actors, and musicians might recognize. At so-called triple-A studios like Rockstar or Ubisoft, they get chewed up and spit out in the name of creating an expensive few hours of pleasure for middle-class consumers."

Casey Newton's The Trauma Floor:  The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America, tells the story of contract workers who screen FB posts to eliminate inappropriate posts.  It starts of at a training session:

"For this portion of her education, Chloe will have to moderate a Facebook post in front of her fellow trainees. When it’s her turn, she walks to the front of the room, where a monitor displays a video that has been posted to the world’s largest social network. None of the trainees have seen it before, Chloe included. She presses play.
The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking." 

The piece goes on to talk about how these employees are NOT really FB employees and their pay and working conditions are much different from those in Menlo Park. Interviews with a number of former and current employees reveals high mental health problems, with sex and drugs a common way to cope.  While there are counselors, they aren't there all the time.   A long section in the middle discusses the difficulty of interpreting the rules for what is allowable and what isn't.  As you can imagine there is a fine balancing act between not offending people and not being overly protective.

"In some cases, the company has been criticized for not doing enough — as when United Nations investigators found that it had been complicit in spreading hate speech during the genocide of the Rohingya community in Myanmar. In others, it has been criticized for overreach — as when a moderator removed a post that excerpted the Declaration of Independence. (Thomas Jefferson was ultimately granted a posthumous exemption to Facebook’s speech guidelines, which prohibit the use of the phrase 'Indian savages.')"

The scores employees get keeps track of their accuracy.

Eventually gets to tour the Phoenix workplace under controlled conditions where employees say things aren't as bad as he's been led to believe.


And finally (for this post anyway) (and a slightly different focus)  "AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld" in Wired, by Kevin Kelly.  This begins with a description of AR as experienced by Mythbusters' Adam Savage:

“I turned it on and I could hear a whale,” he says, “but I couldn’t see it. I’m looking around my office for it. And then it swims by my windows—on the outside of my building! So the glasses scanned my room and it knew that my windows were portals and it rendered the whale as if it were swimming down my street. I actually got choked up.” 

Kelly gives an overview.  (Wired assumes everyone knows what AR means and doesn't define it.  But I suspect not all my readers do.  It stands for Augmented Reality.)

"The first big technology platform was the web, which digitized information, subjecting knowledge to the power of algorithms; it came to be dominated by Google. The second great platform was social media, running primarily on mobile phones. It digitized people and subjected human behavior and relationships to the power of algorithms, and it is ruled by Facebook and WeChat.
We are now at the dawn of the third platform, which will digitize the rest of the world. On this platform, all things and places will be machine-­readable, subject to the power of algorithms. Whoever dominates this grand third platform will become among the wealthiest and most powerful people and companies in history, just as those who now dominate the first two platforms have. Also, like its predecessors, this new platform will unleash the prosperity of thousands more companies in its ecosystem, and a million new ideas—and problems—that weren’t possible before machines could read the world."

So what?

Every new technology inherently brings change to the society that adopts it.  I remember reading about an indigenous group of people's first contact with foreigners, who gave metal hatchets to people in the group.  The possession of tools like these had been restricted by tradition to village leaders.  Now everyone had such a tool and the whole social order of the community fell apart.

We've been on an incredible technology ride as we adopt one new technology after another with very little concern for how these technologies have and will impact us.  Digital imagery manipulation has destroyed the idea of photos and videos as reliable evidence of truth.  And the internet is currently being used to further destroy any notion of a provable truth.  Democracy requires a level of agreement on what is true.

But aside from the content of the internet and how it influences our world views, there is also the impact of how the technology is produced - the materials, the work settings, wealth redistribution.  And capitalism itself makes it hard to control the impacts of new technology.  Cloning and genetic modification of humans will happen (have happened?) despite strong ethical concerns.  Capitalists supply what they think they can profit from.  We know, for example, the free market plays a key role in the extinction of species - either because some part of them is valued like rhinoceros horns, or because their habitat is destroyed as a side-effect (externality) of resource development and the unregulated dumping of waste.

Before you give up because you think the problems are too great to solve, remember your own consumption and waste management strategies.  Talk about the side effects of computer games with your friends and relatives who made Activision Blizzard a $35 billion! company.

So, What Exactly Is The Green New Deal? Here's A Copy Of The Resolution

Like a lot of people, I suspect, I liked the idea of a Green New Deal, but didn't really know much about the details.  So I looked online to find the document that spells it out.  What I got was the resolution that was introduced in Congress.  You can scroll down to find it all below.

Some thoughts:
1.  It's more a set of goals and priorities than a plan of things to do.  Though it does have some specific targets, like reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40-60% from 2010 levels by 2030
2.  It pulls together a whole range of issues that are normally dealt with (if at all) separately, and by the grouping of them here, makes the point that they are all related and must all be considered jointly.
3.  It sets out lots of important social/economic values - like protecting marginalized folks (a long list that goes from indigenous folks, to depopulated rural communities, low-income workers) - as needing to be protected from negative consequences of the changes.

The Right Wing Nay-Sayers have already begun attacking it for all sorts of reasons that boil down to demonizing it among the Right and splitting support on the Left.   I hope people are learning to see through such tricks.

FDR's New Deal was a series of bills all tied together by a common concept of getting people jobs, food, hope.  This could be the same.

I hope that a carbon fee and dividend bill - one has already been introduced in the House - will be one of the first successes of the Green New Deal.  All the analysis I've seen shows a Carbon Free and Dividend Bill is the most politically feasible and most effective way to quickly start reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.

I wanted to break it down and make it more consumable, but to do that right is going to take some time and creativity.  In the meantime, here's a copy of the resolution.

Green New Deal Resolution by on Scribd

Genesis 2.0 - Mammoth Hunters Of Siberia

We just got back from a strange documentary film about Siberian native men who go searching for ancient  mammoth tusks in islands in the arctic and sell them to Chinese.  They find a whole mammoth - it bleeds when they accidentally hit the flesh with an ax -  and eventually parts of it go to the South Korean genetics lab of Woo Suk Hwang that clones dogs for $100,000 a pup for those who can't bear their dogs' death.  Woo Suk Hwang hopes to find a living cell in the ancient mammoth flesh so he can clone it.

At the end we watch  interspersed shots of the native men trudging across the tundra on ancient - and very smoky - off road vehicles  and shots of visits to super new genetics labs in Korea and China.

My gut reaction to what was going on - raking the mostly untouched tundra for ancient bones, then the Korean cloning factory - seemed at odds with the film's apparent support for the activities it was portraying, but eventually the film seemed to twist in my moral direction.  There was an early hint as traditional poems were read that warned the local people not to dig in the earth and not to be seduced by the spirits that tempt them there. There was mention of native taboos for touching the bones and flesh of the buried mammoths.  Later, after seeing the Korean cloning king showing off his prowess, even watching a Caesarean birth of cloned puppies, the film briefly mentions that Woo Suk Hwang had been shown to have committed fraud in past scientific journal articles,  Then, during the visit to BGI, a giant Chinese genome sequencing lab, a Swedish scientist in the party raises ethical questions after the guide talks about using sequencing to prevent Downs Syndrome babies (our cash cow she says).  Toward the end we once again hear the traditional warnings against digging into the earth and tempting sprites and spirits who live there.  Finally the men get their tusks back to the Siberian mainland where a Chinese buyer inspects them - not very good quality - and we're told that 20-30,000 tons of mammoth tusks are undug every year!  The film ends when the camera man is told to stop filming while the native men are selling their tusks.   It was called Genesis-2.0.  

Global warming is unearthing artifacts frozen in the perma-frost for tens of thousands of years.  This film offers us a glimpse of what that actually means. The people involved, and the stark contrast between the rough wilderness conditions where the bones are found, and the super-modern genome factories.  Lots to digest.  (Yes, one of the native men who found the ancient flesh mentioned that eating raw meat was part of his culture, as he tasted the flesh.)

About Pulling Out Of Syria

[I'm thinking out loud here, trying to bring disparate thoughts together.  Bear with me.]

It's not at all clear to me the costs and benefits of the US having troops in Syria.  I think finding ways to pull out of places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ending support of the Saudi war in Yemen are important goals.

Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of congress from California, in this Washington Post piece,  supports President Trump's instinct to pull out of Syria, though he argues we need to do it in a way better coordinated with our allies, and in a way that uses leverage over Turkey's Erdogan that keeps him from massacring Kurds in the area.

He also mentions,

"We have spent more money in Afghanistan than we did in the Marshall Plan and continue to spend more than $40 billion each year."

The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe rebuild after the destruction of WW II.  It help lift their economy so Western Europe could help us defend against the Soviet Union as the Cold War ramped up and so they could buy American products, which helped repay what we spent.

Imagine $40 billion a year.  What could the US have spent that money on?  Helping with education and economic development in Central America so that the people there could make a living and build safe lives, so they wouldn't feel the need to flee over the US border.

Think of the US veterans who wouldn't be suffering from PTSD and other serious ailments, not to mention missing body parts.  War is only good for people who make money selling guns, planes, tanks, technology, and all the support items needed for soldiers to live and fight and die.

Think about all the fossil fuel that would not have been used. And how global warming would have been a little bit slower.   The Union of Concerned Scientists write:

"The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg."

According to Wired, $40 billion a year is only 2/3 of what's needed to rebuild our infrastructure.

" $1 trillion sounds great, but it ain't enough, not if the country wants to keeping fixing roads ten years down the line. According a US Department of Transportation report, just maintaining current highways and bridges through 2030 will cost a cool $65.3 billion—per year. That’s being conservative."

You get the point.  If the Soviet Union, which borders Afghanistan could take control, how can the US do it from half-way around the world away?

Unfortunately, few people, and I know this includes many members of congress, don't have a comprehensive understanding of the factors involved in wars like the ones we're involved in.  We originally went to Afghanistan to punish those who killed 2,955 people on 9/11, 2605 of whom were American citizens.

Brown University's Cost of War study offers this summary of what we've unleashed* in return:

SUMMARY

• Over 480,000 have died due to direct war violence, and several times as many indirectly

• Over 244,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting

• 21 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons

• The US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $5.9 trillion dollars

• The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 76 countries

• The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad

READ ALL FINDINGS

*I say 'unleashed' because the US forces didn't kill all these civilians, but the wars we've engaged in have.

Saddam Hussein was a ruthless leader.  Getting actual figures of the number of people his regime killed - civilians and and conscripted soldiers - is not easy.  As I look, numbers range in the hundreds of thousands - at least 300,000 and probably significantly more than that.  Some sources:

• State Department Summary
• The Scotsman
• Wikipedia

Surely, there are people alive who wouldn't be if we hadn't invaded Iraq.  But there are also people who are dead, who wouldn't be if we hadn't invaded Iraq.

I'd note this Brookings Institute (a liberal leaning think tank) prediction from 2002 about the costs of getting into a war with Iraq which I found while getting data for this post:

An invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein would likely cost the United States about $50 billion, though it could plausibly range from $25 billion to $75 billion or so, with likely annual U.S. costs of maintaining order in Iraq ranging from $5 billion to $20 billion for a number of years thereafter. The latter costs of winning the peace, and associated wear and tear on American military personnel, may actually turn out to be a greater concern than the one-time cost of winning the war.

If only it had been so 'cheap.'

My point is, again, that the number of people who actually have looked closely at all the costs and benefits - economic, human, political, opportunity costs - is relatively few.  I'm not in that group.

It's clear to me though, that the money spent "fighting terrorism" could have been better spent creating opportunities for human beings - education, health care, economic development.  These kinds of initiatives would have created positive changes in people's lives and put the United States and the world in a much better place than it is now.

It's time people went back and read some of the old stories we were supposed to learn simple truths from.  For instance the story of B'rer Rabbit and the Tar Baby might be an apt story for the United States' war on terrorism.





I'd note that many such old stories are seen today as sexist or racist.  I suspected people hadfound reason to question the Uncle Remus stories.  So  I checked and they have.  But it's hard not to be racist if you grow up in the United States even today.  Joel Chandler Harris was born just before the Civil War in the South, so surely he had lots of racist tendencies.  But all that considering, it seems he was pretty progressive for his times, and the Uncle Remus stories seem to be a tribute to an old black slave Harris looked up to.  See this Pittsburgh Gazette article on Harris' life.

In The Unbelievably Racist World of Classic Children's Lit,   Malcolm Jones writes:

"The case of Joel Chandler Harris is particularly relevant in this regard. A lifelong southerner and an Atlanta newspaper editor (and incidentally a friend of Twain’s), Harris was probably as enlightened as a white person could be in his time and place. If you read his Uncle Remus stories, you’ll see that to Harris, Uncle Remus was a hero. He’s certainly the smartest and kindest person, black or white, in the narrative that frames the folk tales collected by the author from former slaves.
More important, had Harris not collected those folktales, we almost surely would have missed much of a vast trove of oral storytelling (“our most precious piece of stolen goods,” Twain called them—so that’s what we were getting away with!), because before Harris, no one else had the sense to realize how wonderful those stories were, much less that they should be recorded for posterity. Whatever sins he may have been guilty of, Harris knew at least that much. James Weldon Johnson called the 185 stories published by Harris 'the greatest body of folklore America has produced.'”  

He's not as kind to Disney's Song of the South, from which this clip was taken.

None of this changes my belief that the sooner we get Trump out of the presidency the better for the world and the United States.  And the Republicans who have had control of both houses of Congress since Trump became president, share the blame, because they haven't done their job as a check on the criminal* who is in the White House.

*I think that anyone who looks at the Trump organization and Trump objectively has to acknowledge that he has abused our laws repeatedly.

Henry v MOA - Slogging Through Details - Finish Hazelaar, Peck, Foster (Economist), and Eric Smith [Updated]

Again, working here to take the deluge of words, objections, muffled sidebars and figure out how to present something that makes more sense.

The Plaintiff is finishing his case.  There were five witnesses today (Annie Kirklund finished before I got there and I don't know if there was anything new and critical.)

Basically, they were working on undercutting the reasons Henry was terminated.  I'm not sure I mentioned Lt. Kevin Vandegriff.  He questioned a number of folks and fed that information to Rick Brown.  Thursday and Friday included folks who were interviewed by Vandegriff who are testifying that either

• they didn't say the things that he attributed to them or
• he distorted what they said to give it a different meaning

We may get to see Vandegriff on Monday.  Hazelaar (Thursday) spent a lot of time denying how Vandegriff characterized what he said and then eventually got into the Brown Report.

I'm going to make subtitles for the rest of this and just describe points that caught my attention as well as try to convey what points I noticed (note my wording, I'm not claiming to have noticed everything important.)  And I'll try, as I do that, talk about how these things support their arguments.  And I haven't talked about the defense argument yet.  So far they have only cross examined and I haven't tried to spell it all out.  And since I've seen the plaintiff's argument so far, there's some bias in that direction.

Overall, the APD, in my opinion, would have been much better off if they could have worked this out internally, and the fact that they couldn't, is a problem for everyone in Anchorage.  It shows a lack of good administrative leadership, petty rivalries, and it's costing taxpayers a fortune, even if they win.  And I think it shows a lack of well trained officers.  I suspect that the things they consider 'police work' they are trained well in.  Shooting guns for instance.  But there are lots of other softer skills - interpersonal communications, knowledge of other administrative issues, like ethics, things like discrimination and how to build and work with a diverse set of employees, including some that are disabled.  And a lot of these people seem personally dysfunctional.  While they may do some things reasonably well, they have personal baggage that seems to come out when they are under stress.  I don't think what I'm saying about APD here is different from other organizations.  But you don't need more than a high school education to become a police officer.  A good college education teaches you how to think critically, how break out of your narrow world view and see other people's perspectives, puts our modern world into a larger perspective, to name a few things.  Plus this is a particularly stressful job.  And I'm focused on APD here because that's what this case is about.


Overview of things that seemed important that the plaintiffs want the jury to believe

• Witnesses testify they never told Lt Kevin Vandegriff things that ended up in Brown Report (they didn't even know why they were being interviewed.)  This all to undercut Brown Report
• Continue to 'prove' there was only one investigation into the National Guard, to undercut Jack Carson
• Disproving claims against the Guard such as there was widespread drug use among recruiters at National Guard, so that Henry's telling General Katkus about one Guard member using drugs didn't jeopardize any investigations..
• Members of the SAU (Special Assignments Unit) weren’t covering up Whetsell’s illness, because it wasn't a problem, undercutting the claim that they were hiding Whetsell's MS diagnosis from Command so he wouldn't be terminated
• Showing motives for why APD wrongly terminated Henry - 'Command' was Angry at Whetsell for filing OEO complaint and for Henry’s EEOC complaint as well as a developing anti-Command attitude at SAU (Special Assignments Unit)

These are some general themes to keep in mind.  I also have a couple of additional observations about things.

• Use of names of confidential informants
• Did they really look into drug use at the National Guard?

Use of names of confidential informants

The Brown Report has lots of redactions of names.  We see lots of initials - E.P, D.O., K.B., J.N., E.J., etc.  But in trial, the names are now being used.  Thursday, Hazelaar told a story with all the names.  Including how these informants led him to a meeting with a representative of a major Mexican drug cartel, who talked about his AK47 in the car and flashed large quantities of drugs.

The question that hit me was, "OK, all these names came out in court; who informed on whom.  What consequences might some of these people have if the people they informed on find out?"  I asked Hazelaar that during a break.  He said, "Good question."  When I asked if some of the players were in prison, he said he couldn't talk about that.

I asked one of the attorneys who said, "They were just initials in court documents, but that's too hard to do for the jury to keep track, and even for the attorneys to keep track."

I suspect that most cases are not covered by the media and as long as the media don't publish the names and connections, google isn't going to reveal any of this.  But that leads to my next thought, which does involve how I handle the redacted names that were used unredacted in testimony.  I'm just going to give aliases for my short example.

Did they really look into drug use at the National Guard?

Hazelaar assured the plaintiff's counsel, Ray Brown, that drug use at the National Guard was restricted to one person, who I'll call Eliot   But when the MOA cross examined Hazelaar, attorney Parker pressed him about whether he actually investigated any one else at the Guard.  Hazelaar's response was no.  There was no reason to proceed with an investigation.  Basically the informants insisted there was just the one person - Jonathan.  Parker asked if he believed everything informants told him?  He said no

OK, let me relate a bit more.

There was a jumpout in the Costco parking lot.  (A jumpout, as I understand it, is when a bunch of police cars (in this case unmarked cars) pull up and undercover cops jump out to catch a drug dealer.)  I'll call the guy in the car David.  He quickly agrees to become an informant, though we didn't learn what he got in exchange.  He informs on  Eliot, who's in the National Guard.  And when they check on the car he's caught in - and he has a pretty good inventory of drugs and money - it turns out to belong to Esther, who also works at the National Guard.

So Doug Parker, the MOA attorney asks if anyone else at the Guard used drugs.  No.  Did you investigate anyone else?  No.  Why not?  Because David and Eliot assured us no one did.  So in the Redirect, plaintiff attorney Ray Brown (RB) follows up on this to make sure the jury gets the message that there was no one else at the Guard using drugs.  He's questioning Hazelaar (H).

Ray Brown:  Counsel [Parker] said yesterday you gave a free pass to Esther and the
other National Guard recruiters.  [Telling Hazelaar to look at transcript of the debriefing of Eliot by Hazelaar.  Exhibit 151] See it?  Tell us what is this exhibit?
H:  Transcription, debriefing of Eliot.
RB:  Who was present?
H:  Sgt. Carson.
H:  [reading transcript] Trooper H:  “anybody you deal with, even personal use, anyone else at military?   Who all knows what you’re doing, your wife?
RB:  You asked about [someone else’s] wife.  His girlfriend Esther?
H:  Eliot says no.  If she knows, then she’ll tell my wife.  NO No, she works in recruiting with me.  Her head is on straight, no way.  Maybe I’m sentimental, I see an attractive woman, Esther, she has her money saved, good head on her shoulders, David is nice guy, accepts her.  Son. [Probably should be “accepts her son.’]
RB:  Did Carson tell you later he has additional info on Esther?  [If I have all my facts straight, Sgt. Carson's wife also worked at the National Guard]
H:  No
RB:  Did you ever have any actionable info that Esther was involved?
H:  NO  

So after this exchange I start to wonder.  Did Esther ever find out that Eliot was caught with the drugs?  In the Costco parking lot, using her car?  Can a drug dealer really hide the fact that he's selling fairly large amounts of cocaine and marijuana and Meth Amphetamines from his girlfriend?  He never gives her weed (it wasn't yet legal in Alaska at the time) or cocaine?

Is it possible that part of the deal with Eliot was to keep Esther out of this?  To not take her car or even tell her?  But the MOA attorneys never asked Hazelaar  these questions.

Maybe she didn't use drugs and didn't know about her boyfriend's job.  But it seems worth a few more questions.  But if it would piss off Eliot and he'd stop informing, then maybe they looked the other way.


Clinton Peck and protecting Whetsell, the opposing camps at APD, Retaliation for Going to OEO

Protecting Whetsell

Clinton Peck was an APD officer who worked under Anthony Henry at the SAU (Special Assignments Unit).  He's retired now.  He testified that this was a close knit group.  There were daily morning briefings where everyone could share what they were doing. What their informants were telling them.  This is a group that did a lot of drug busts, they were focused on small dealers who would be arrested and taken in on the spot.  Bigger busts, like the jumpout at Costco were for the Safe Streets Task Force that included APD, Troopers, DEA, and was run by the FBI.  Jason Whetsell had been transferred full time to SAU from Canine, with his dog Alex.  Whetsell got diagnosed as having MS, but at first he wasn't showing symptoms, but he was going to Seattle on some of his off-duty days for treatment and experimental drugs.  The drugs had various reactions that affected his performance on a few occasions.  When the command unit found out about Whetsell's diagnosis they got angry and accused SAU of covering it up to protect Whetsell, but endangering everyone else including Whetsell.  It was one of the charges in Herny's termination.  (A lot of this was covered the previous Friday when Whetsell testified.)

• Blood pressure and eyesight problems at shooting range
• Missed suspect in tracking (suspect went right past him but he was too weak to arrest him, but the team did get him)
• Hiking up the hill in Black Hawk training (he got tired going up a hill and just stopped, asked to go home.)
• Forgot to bring the dog (His car was in the shop and he had a different car.  Took it to the shop to get his own car, then drove to Eagle River for he exercise.  Then realized the dog was still in the other car.)

Peck excused all these with:

• These are just a few isolated incidents and generally he was fine
• He was sick and went home.  Everyone gets sick now and then.
• He was testing different drugs to find ones which didn’t have bad side effects - so his blood pressure and his sight problems were related to the drugs
• Whetsell wasn’t being protected by the group.  He basically kept up.  There were a few incidents where he didn’t.

Henry's other main attorney Meg Simonian went over this with Peck.

S:  Was he ever unable to do his job?
Peck:  No
S:  Was he mentally unable to do job?
Peck:  Not at all
S:  If he was, what would you have done?
P: Intervened.
S: But he’s your best friend?
P:  Doesn’t matter, it would be dangerous to all of us.  Whetsell wouldn’t put himself in that position - Objection

MOA Attorney Parker challenged him about climbing up the hill incident

Command was hearing rumors about Whetsell - Peck and others believed the rumors were coming from Jack Carson.  Some were interviewed about Whetsell by Marilyn Steward.  Later Peck was interviewed by someone else (I think Vandegriff) and was asked why he didn't tell Stewart about Black Hawk training on the Hillside where Whetsell couldn't make it up the hill.

In testimony Friday, Peck said he was sure that he hadn’t mentioned the helicopter training problem in the interview with Marilyn Stewart because it happened after the interview.   However the date on the Steward interview summary was after the helicopter training incident.   At the very end of the cross exam:

Parker:  Are you saying the date on this [Stewart’s summary of the interview] is wrong?
Peck:  My memory is different.
Parker:  Her records show different.

Other issues came up in this topic - like whether anyone at the APD knew anything about the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), if there was ADA training.  It sounded to me like the SAU were treating Whetsell with care and compassion.  But it also wasn't right not to inform Command of his condition and work out some ADA plans for how to deal with it.  But they were sure Command would break up their close-knit group and not treat Whetsell well.


[Let me mention that I've been writing 'Henry' or 'Anthony Henry,' but everyone calls Lt. Henry 'Tony.']

Tony Camp v Command Camp

Parker cross examines Peck and they talk about Carson being the source of the Internal Affairs (IA) investigation of Whetsel.  Parker is reading from an interview transcript I believe.

Parker:  July in gym you and Carson were together at the station.  You say, he says, Tony’s camp and Command camp.  He said, both sides are right and wrong.  He's tired of the fighting.  I’m sick of it, they sold me a bill of goods that didn’t come true.  But you don’t say what he’s talking about?  The two camps?
Peck:  People who worked with Tony were pretty much in the Tony camp?  Carson was alone in believing we had done something wrong.
Parker:  Carson seemed to be the source of who began the IA investigation of Whetsell?
Peck:  Yes
Parker:  But you didn’t really know did you?
Peck:  We were told.
Parker:  Once that was known, he was pretty much shunned?
Peck:  Not really, but not happy with him because it [Whetsell problem] wasn’t true.  I know I wasn’t.  I believe he had a part in that and many other things.
Parker:  You can understand when he says he’s tired of it?
Peck:  Yes
Parker:  SAU was a close knit group, you said it.
Peck:  When he said he’s sick of it, he meant they sold him something but they aren’t following through.
Parker  The continued friction is just bad for everyone?
Peck: Agree
Parker:  Talking about closeness of the group.  ??? and SAU being part of that.  Even continued after Tony left SAU?
Peck:  What do you mean? [I missed something here]
P:  I wouldn’t say camps, first time phrased like that.  Commanders saying we were trying to cover up and we weren’t.  

[If you're complaining about all these details, just remember the jury is getting this 8:30am - 4:30pm every day with just a few breaks.  I'm trying to give key points, but I think it's also useful to understand the grind of the testimony.  Sometimes it goes quickly.  But there's a lot of repetition too.]  

A few more things that came up in this feud between Tony Camp and Command Camp.

After Whetsell was removed, then Tony left too.  Tony Camp was upset about the removal of Tony.  Parker asked about a rumor they were all going to resign.  Peck denied it.  But Parker put up a picture of a sticker that said, "WWTD" and asked Peck what that meant.  "What Would Tony Do?"

Peck:  We thought it was funny.  Because Tony is always right, as irritating as it was, we thought it humorous.  Tony doesn’t lose many arguments.  99 times out of 100 he’s right.  We’re working for him and should think about it.  Mostly for fun.
Parker:  Tony likes to argue.  You just said that.
Peck:  That’s true, he likes to banter.
Parker:  He doesn’t like to lose?
Peck:  No one likes to lose

Did SAU need a full time canine officer?

Peck argued that they needed a canine because they were doing drugs so much. They had originally asked for Whetsell were delighted to get a full time canine officer.  So they were were upset because now he was being taken away.

Parker, at the end, asked Peck if he knew that Whetsell testified that SAU needed the dog about a third of the time.  He didn’t.



Why did Henry Leave SAU?

Parker:  You were upset he was leaving, but did you know he was planning that himself?
P- Date of Interview with Marilyn Stewart - Peck had told her there were no problems with Whetsell.  When asked later by V why he hadn’t mentioned the trouble getting up the hill, Peck said that the Interview happened first
Parker produced the summary of Peck’s interview with Stewart and it was dated after the Black Hawk incident on the hill.

Retaliation for going to OEO?

A big issue here is what do you do with people who get disabled?  The Tony Camp was(and Peck testified to this) very close.  When Whetsell got his MS diagnosis, it appears from the testimony, that they pulled around him and made the kind of accommodations the ADA calls for.  But informally.
The command team was angry they hadn’t been told about Whetsell’s diagnosis, and rightfully so.  However, Command Team’s, starting with Carson, were not even thinking about the ADA or its implications.  In fact that were angry that he went to the OEO (and that Henry went to the OEO and EEOC.)  We haven’t heard why, only that they were.  My guess is they don’t believe much in OEO.  They don’t like anyone going outside the group (police department)

• It’s a breach of the brotherhood
• It makes them look bad
• It’s a form of challenging the command’s leadership - this is a uniformed highly hierarchical system

An example of this comes in this exchange.  Not only was Whetsell being transferred, but they made a point to take away Alex, the dog that he lived and worked with.  (It's true that Alex belonged to the APD, but it sounded like the breakup was intentionally harsh.

Simonian:  Remember Parker asked why it was unfair to Whetsell?
Peck:  Yes
S: What did Schmidt say about taking away Alex?
P:  I took Jason home.  It was pretty emotional.  [When I got back]  Schmidt asks how's Jason doing?  How do you think?  Schmidt says, Well he shouldn’t have gone to the EEOC.  He said it twice with a cussword the second time.  I went back to group and told them, you wouldn’t believe what he said.

Sounds like retaliation to me.




The Economist - Dr. Edward Foster

Foster was there to explain how he made the calculations of the cost to Henry of the termination.  While on the one hand this should be pretty routine - it’s done often and there are standard practices.  But, of course, the plaintiff is going to want a consultant who will interpret the procedures to the benefit of the plaintiff, and the defendant - MOA in this case - will want an economist who will low ball it.

 I have to admit I found it more interesting than I expected.  I wondered why they would hire someone from Minnesota, when there are plenty of competent economists in Alaska who would do the work for less.  But Dr. Foster was a good witness.  Full head of white hair, calm, clear explanations.  Given his bio, he must be in his 80’s.
  Here’s an example of the discussion. [I’ve added words here and there to make it flow better than my notes, but I don’t think I’ve changed the content.  In any case it gives you a sense of what the jury heard from 1:30pm to 3:30pm

Ray Brown (Henry’s attorney):  Did we provide you data?
Foster:  Yes
RB:  What provided?
Foster:  1st info I got was a cover letter with 19 itemized documents that came from Molly Brown from your office.  Pay stubs from APD, tax returns for Henry’s 2012 - 2017 excluding 2016.  After left police dept.  Further info from MOA, pay regulations.  Claims for retirement system.  Report from economist retained by defendant. [ I’m not sure about this]
RB:  His an accountant.  [Is this trying to make him seem less expert?]
F:  He’s doing report on economics.
RB:  Able to determine what his pay and benefits were historically?   How many hours he worked annually?  What is his pay and benefits at Triple Canopy.  How many hours he worked at MOA and Triple Canopy?
F:  Not sure I can determine how many hours, ten hour days, 8 hours.
RB:  Data for hours working at Triple Canopy?  Able to come to calculations about his economic loss?
F:  Yes.
RB:  Before get into his losses, can you tell me about assumptions to make?
F:  When calculating hours at APD to base just on the years 2010-2013, excluding 2014, claim of retaliation.  I did that.  You asked me to look at years through 2012 when he worked swing shift and getting paid more per hour for evening.  Assume that in the future he would get swing shift bonus.  Asked me to calculate losses in the future on the assumption he might have worked to age 70.  I assumed from date of retirement.
RB:  Did you give opinions on when he would retire?
F:  No.
RB:  Is that an economists job?
F:  Some would and look at stats on that.  I don’t do that.  I can give results of retiring at different years.
RB:  Did I ask about hiring and rehiring assumption?
F:  Yes, if he had continued at APD he would have an option now to retire, apply for rehire, and come back to work for APD but not be a member of the pension program.  Reason for that, after a certain age, the cost you put in to pension program, the money outstrips what you get back.  In his case that’s 2019.

Foster told the jury that he was costing Henry’s team about $40,000.  He also said that if Henry were still employed by APD, his annual salary would be $170,000.  No wonder Henry said the best job he could get in Anchorage would only pay 1/3 of that.

[UPDATE Oct. 28, 2018:  I should have also mentioned that Foster also talked about the pay Henry was getting from Triple Canopy, a company that supplies workers, including security guards in Iraq - the job Henry took after much lower paying jobs in Alaska.  The calculation of 'lost salary' included the difference between what Henry would have been making had he stayed in his police job and what he's making at Triple Canopy, but also considering that he has to work a lot more hours to make comparable pay.  As I tried to find out more about Triple Canopy, I found this article which says they paid $2.7 million to settle false claims for security guards that did not meet the required standards.]

The most interesting part to me happened before Dr. Foster took the witness stand.  The MOA attorneys argued something about a Supreme Court decision that required the facts - in this case the pay, benefits, etc. to be established already in the case, by the plaintiff.  This seemed an odd ploy to me.  Ray Brown, one of Henry’s attorneys, was shocked!  In all his many years as an attorney he’d never heard of this happening.  I couldn’t help thinking this was a little dramatic.  He talked about “all his many years”  in law before.  Was this a sneak attack by the MOA or was it a legitimate attack?  Or both?  The judge wasn’t buying it





Some extra notes:
There was one more witness - Eric Smith.  I had lost most of my ability to pay close attention by then.  He'll be back Monday and I'm sure anything he said important Friday will be repeated two or three times.

I used RB in my rough trial notes because there are three Browns:  Rick Brown who wrote the Brown Report, Ray Brown an attorney for the plaintiff Henry, and Molly Brown, another attorney for the plaintiff  .  But as I write this, I realize RB could be either Rick or Ray Brown (In my notes I wrote out the full first names when Ray was questioning Rick) and Molly really hasn’t done any official talking.  I hope by the end of the trial I’ll have figured out how to do this right.

You can get to an index of all posts on this trial at the Henry v MOA tab under the blog header at top.  Or click here.