IT was James, a thickset American interrogator nicknamed “the Elephant,” who first told Lakhdar Boumediene
that investigators were certain of his innocence, that two years of
questioning had shown he was no terrorist, but that it did not matter,
Mr. Boumediene says.
The interrogations would continue through what ended up being seven
years, three months, three weeks and four days at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. . . [SCOTT SAYARE, NY Times May 26, 2012]
The United States claims to be a different kind of country. A democracy that values freedom. Our government was angry when three young American hikers were arrested in Iran after having crossed the border. They were arrested in Iran, and it wouldn't be completely irrational for the Iranian government to wonder if they had had any contact with the CIA before entering Iran. Our government demanded their release. Boumediene was arrested far from US shores - in Sarajevo where he worked with orphans for the Green Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross.
Our moral high ground has been obliterated by Bush's reaction to 9/11 and the conversion of Guantanamo Bay into a 'terrorist' torture camp. Despite campaign promises Obama has not closed Guantanamo.
American citizens are responsible for this, because we are a democracy. We are the Board of Directors, so to speak. And while in the private sector, such directors have found ways to avoid responsibility for their companies' misdeeds, that moral responsibility does lie squarely on them, and in this case, on us.
I've tried to pick out parts of the story that point to all the times he was declared innocent or that there was no evidence. The rest of his story you can read in the article.
The United States government has never acknowledged any error in
detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release,
for lack of evidence, in 2008. The government did not appeal, a Defense
Department spokesman noted, though he declined to answer further
questions about Mr. Boumediene’s case. A State Department representative
declined to discuss the case as well, except to point to a Justice
Department statement announcing Mr. Boumediene’s transfer to France, in
2009.
A human being's life isn't worth anything if he can be used by a politician as a symbol of his prowess. How many times does this have to happen before we (more than the skeptical 20 or 30%) challenge presidents who do this?
In time, those accusations disappeared, Mr. Boumediene says, replaced by
questions about his work with Muslim aid groups and suggestions that
those groups financed Islamic terrorism. According to a classified
detainee assessment from April 2008, published by WikiLeaks,
investigators believed that he was a member of Al Qaeda and the Armed
Islamic Group of Algeria. Those charges, too, later vanished.
In a landmark case that bears Mr. Boumediene’s name, the Supreme Court in
2008 affirmed the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their
imprisonment in court.
[T]he government’s sole claim was that Mr. Boumediene had intended to
travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against the United States. A
federal judge rejected that charge as unsubstantiated, noting that it
had come from a single unnamed informer.
The terms of his release have not been made public or revealed even to him.
If this article is accurate, Boumediene wasn't given an apology nor even told the terms of his release. He's living in France, but without a passport.
Mr. Boumediene, as an American, I am ashamed at how you were treated and I offer you my sincerest apologies. I know that isn't much, but it's something. I understand when law enforcement, at any level, arrest someone because they have some evidence of criminal involvement. But when they know they've made a mistake, there should be an apology, and in egregious cases like this one, some sort of compensation and assistance. (The article says that he's getting a monthly stipend but he does not know from whom. I'd like to think the US government is giving it, but I know that's probably wishful thinking.)
And if anyone reading this has a problem with my apology, I'd just ask how you would react if an Iranian apologized just like this to the three American hikers his country imprisoned.
And to my American readers, we all have a responsibility for getting the US back on the right track. If you aren't registered to vote, do it this week. If you are, get ten others to register. We also need to let Obama know that we aren't pleased with some of the policies that he has continued from the Bush administration. I understand he's not dealing with a friendly Congress, but let's let him know that we want him to stand up strong for what he believes. The majority of the American people don't need to agree with you 100%, Mr. President, they just need to know that your core values are good and that you stand firmly behind them.
We can read the newspapers (watch tv) and take each new story as an isolated story and then go on to the next. Or we can take each story and try to figure out how this story adds to everything else we already know and whether it tends to confirm or raise doubts for our beliefs. But we have to be careful that those beliefs don't cause us to accept the facts that support what we believe and to reject those that don't. Extricating 'the truth' is rarely easy. That reality helps liars greatly.
This story about Ryan Braun's positive drug test and subsequent overturning of the results on appeal offers us potential lessons for a lot more than just other stories about drugs.
It also offers us lessons for evaluating politicians and car salespeople. And friends.
And it also provides lessons for the whole endeavor of figuring out 'the truth' in general, or even pondering what 'the truth' even means.
The drug test said his testosterone level was higher than any other baseball player tested, ever.
He denies taking drugs, claiming something went wrong with the testing. And the appeal board agreed that the delay in sending in the sample for testing violated protocol and his 50 game suspension was overturned.
The New York Times had a long article which goes into details about the testing process.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Laurenzi
[the tester] denied tampering with Braun’s urine sample and said that he acted
professionally when he took the sample home for the weekend instead of
sending it immediately to a laboratory.
“I followed the same procedure in collecting Mr. Braun’s sample as I did
in the hundreds of other samples I collected under the program,”
Laurenzi said. “At no point did I tamper in any way with the samples.”
Laurenzi also said that in taking Braun’s sample, along with those of
two other players, to his home for safekeeping, he was again following
standard procedure. That procedure was in place because it had been
determined that it was better to keep the samples in a secure location
rather than leave them in a FedEx office where they could have been
tampered with or not properly stored.
“The protocol has been in place since 2005 when I started with CDT and
there have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my
home for at least one day, all without incident,” Laurenzi said.
Many collections are done at night because that is when most games are
played, although when Laurenzi collected Braun’s sample on Oct. 1, a
playoff game between the Brewers and the Diamondbacks began just after 1
p.m. Laurenzi said he completed his collections at Miller Park in
Milwaukee at about 5 p.m., which is also the deadline for giving FedEx
shipments to stores in the Milwaukee area that could be flown out that
night.
Laurenzi said that after arriving home, he put the samples in a
Rubbermaid container in his basement office that, he said, “is
sufficiently cool to store urine samples.” No one other than his wife
had access to the samples during that time. All three samples were kept
in the same sealed, tamper-proof package.
Braun has never asserted, either in his case before the arbitrator or in
his news conference last Friday, that the samples tested in a lab in
Montreal bore any evidence of having been compromised. One person with
knowledge of the Braun case said a union representative on Braun’s
behalf was present in Montreal for a critical moment in the testing
process, and never raised any concerns about the sample.
Kent Covington at Braveswire - what appears to be an Atlanta Braves website - lists pros and cons for believing Braun and adds information I haven't seen elsewhere:
Beyond the sincere tone, Braun made a compelling case for his innocence. Here are the key points of that case: 1) He was 27 years old, entering the prime years of
his career with a long-term guaranteed contract, and even if he were
inclined to use PED’s, he would not have had sufficient motivation to
take such a risk. 2) Braun had passed 24 prior drug tests, including multiple tests during the 2011 season. 3) The fact that MLB said his testosterone levels
were three times greater than any other test result since testing began
made those results far less believable.
I must say, this is a persuasive point. Of all the juicers MLB has
tested in recent years, with hundreds of positive results… Ryan Braun’s
testosterone levels were THREE TIMES higher than anyone they had ever tested? That is a bit hard to believe. Especially given the following point. 4) He did not gain muscle mass, a single pound of
weight or so much as a tenth of a second on his run time on the
basepaths (which is routinely measured and documented by team officials)
between his last negative test and the test in question.
Another compelling point. 5) There was an improper 44 hour delay in the
delivery of the sample to a FedEx drop-off location. Braun suggested
this was a window of time in which someone could have tampered with the
sample.
From a legal standpoint, this is likely the argument that resulted in
the dismissal of MLB’s case against him. This part of Braun’s argument
will be less compelling to fans, however, most of whom remember OJ
Simpson getting away with murder (figuratively speaking, of course)
based on a technicality.
Overall, Braun was convincing and believable in his self defense.
Then again… a compelling case can be made on MLB’s behalf as well: 1) The league certainly has zero motivation to
falsely accuse one of its MVP superstars–with a squeaky clean image–of
being a juicer. 2) The sample in question was triple-sealed and its packaging showed no signs of tampering. 3) Perhaps the reason why Braun had not gained any
weight or apparent performance advantage was that he had just started
using PED’s when the test was administered. This is also the simple
counterpoint to all of Braun’s prior clean tests.
When all is said and done, I believe we all have an ethical
responsibility to assume Braun’s innocence. The 44-hour delay in the
delivery of the sample is more than a small technicality. It is unlikely
that anyone would have had both motive and opportunity to fabricate
Braun’s positive results or that an egregious error could have been
responsible for a false positive. But “unlikely” is a long way from impossible.
Covington adds several interesting pieces of information
24 previous tests with no positive results,
three times higher than any other test
no noticeable muscle mass or weight gain
So, if he had 24 other negative tests, does that mean that this is the first time he's taken something, or just that he took things now and then and was lucky he wasn't tested. Can a random fix give you power for a day?
Nowhere have I seen the actual testosterone levels.
A report at medicinenet
says the average testosterone level for men is in the range of 270 to
1,070 nanograms per deciliter. (This report also talks about the effects
- both positive and negative of heightened testosterone levels in men.)
USDoctor has a long post on the many ways to enhance testosterone and benefits and problems of each and how long they last, though it doesn't get into detection of drugs.
So while many, myself included, tend to lean toward assuming Braun probably feels that he can just deny in the face of it being difficult to prove he took something, there are some other possibilities that I haven't found discussed that could be out there.
1. Someone put something into his food. According to the USdoctor site,
"Oral testosterone may dramatically raise the testosterone level, only to have it drop a few hours later."
This would be consistent with the very high level and subsequent negative test. But then again, he could have done this himself. It would have made it easier to evade detection in the earlier tests.
2. There also could be problems with the testing equipment or the person reading the test. There is no evidence provided for this and usually such equipment is calibrated regularly. I don't know what procedures there are to document all this and how reliable they are.
What truths even exist and how can they be known?
Facts are things that potentially can be proven true or false. Here are some key ones from this story:
Braun either did or didn't have higher testosterone levels
Braun did something or not to cause this
Someone else did something or not to cause this
There was tampering or not of the sample
The sample was unintentionally or not contaminated
The testing equipment was or was not functioning properly
Is Braun telling the truth?
He could be knowingly lying
He could be deluding himself into believing
he did something but it was ok to do it
what he took was legal
since everyone else does it, it's ok
he really has lost connection with reality on this and believes he did nothing
There are a lot of ways one could push this story along. Why do we even care if sports figures take drugs? Why are records important? Why are we spending time on this story (and others like it) instead of reading more about Iranian and US relations and whether Iran is truly a threat or whether this is another push by war profiteers to get us into another war?
Or we could pursue the whole idea of truth and how we prove it and why it's important. But this is only a blog post and I have other things to do today. I only have enough time to raise questions, not answer them.
What is it about humans that we find ambiguity and uncertainty so troubling? Brainy Quotes credits Bertrand Russell with this thought:
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
And they also credit Russell with this:
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Experience is a good thing. But it's better if one learns from experience. This is just a story about a ball player whose drug test came out positive. For some, it's just another interesting story to be pulled out and laughed over. For others, it's one more piece of the giant puzzle that helps us understand life.
If you listened to the foreign policy debate of the Republican candidates, you might want to read something with real meat. The source article is by, according to the blurb in the Asian Times, Indian career diplomat Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar whose assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
The heart of the matter is that the Pakistani citadel has pulled back the bridges leading to it from across the surrounding crocodile-infested moat. This hunkering down is going to be Obama's key problem. Pakistan is boycotting the Bonn Conference II on December 2. This hunkering down should worry the US more than any Pakistani military response to the NATO strike.
The US would know from the Iranian experience that it has no answer for the sort of strategic defiance that an unfriendly nation resolute in its will to resist can put up against an 'enemy' it genuinely considers 'satanic'.
The Pakistani military leadership is traditionally cautious and it is not going to give a military response to the US's provocation. (Indeed, the Taliban are always there to keep bleeding the US and NATO troops.)
This is an Indian talking about US-Pakistani relations. Someone in a position to know a lot more about this sort of thing than most Americans, including most members of Congress and presidential candidates. He's also someone with skin in the game. It does provide a lot of information to use to help assess other information (or lack of information) you read on this topic. In discussing the Pakistani response to the NATO air raid which killed 28 Pakistani forces, Bhadrakumar writes:
Exactly what happened in the fateful night of Friday - whether the NATO blundered into a mindless retaliatory (or pre-emptive) act or ventured into a calculated act of high provocation - will remain a mystery. Maybe it is no more important to know, since blood has been drawn and innocence lost, which now becomes the central point.
At any rate, the DDC [Pakistan's Defence Committee of the Cabinet] simply proceeded on the basis that this was a calculated air strike - and by no means an accidental occurrence. Again, the DDC statement implies that in the Pakistan military's estimation, the NATO attack emanated from a US decision. Pakistan lodged a strong protest at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels but that was more for purpose of 'record', while the "operative" part is directed at Washington.
The GHQ in Rawalpindi would have made the assessment within hours of the Salala incident that the US is directly culpable. The GHQ obviously advised the DDC accordingly and recommended the range of measures Pakistan should take by way of what Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani publicly called an "effective response."
The DDC took the following decisions: a) to close NATO's transit routes through Pakistani territory with immediate effect; b) to ask the US to vacate Shamsi airbase within 15 days; c) to "revisit and undertake a complete review" of all "programs, activities and cooperative arrangements" with US, NATO and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), including in "diplomatic, political and intelligence" areas; d) to announce shortly a whole range of further measures apropos Pakistan's future cooperation with US, NATO and ISAF. [Read it all in the Asian Times.]
It makes me think of the advice Vaclav Havel gives in Power of the Powerless. I wrote about it earlier in the context of TSA. Here it fits in the relation of one nation to another. Of course, it's a form of civil disobedience as well. Just say no. Those who have power say everyone should fight like they do. That's because they have all the weapons in that sort of battle. But disobedience is the main tool of those without power. There is immense power in simply refusing to cooperate. Ask the Occupiers. Ask the Republicans in Congress.
Thanks to my friend who alerted me to this article.
Patrick Gamble and the University got married less than a year ago. And here he's gone out and bought a '56 Corvette from a buddy who gave him a good deal, without consulting his spouse who had a new Subaru in mind. Is this going to be the pattern in this marriage or is he going to talk things out next time before he makes what should be a family decision? This spouse isn't like his first two. She expects to be a full partner in this marriage she was pressured into. Is he going to have to be firm until she shapes up or can he learn to enjoy life with an equal partner?
Is the appointment of Tom Case as UAA Chancellor by his fellow retired Air Force general an example of cronyism? (An aside raises the same question about Craig Campbell's appointment as Case's replacement at the Alaska Aerospace Corporation.)
Why is this worth blogging about?
[This is a long post, so here's a brief SYNOPSIS: Case's appointment fits three of the four criteria of cronyism and may well fit part of the fourth. President Gamble's decision to by-pass a normal participatory search process and to ignore unanimous Faculty Senate recommendations makes the case for cronyism more plausible. This suspicion is exacerbated by Case's same day replacement as head of the Alaska Aerospace Corporation. With that said, Case is clearly qualified to head UAA, but not necessarily the best qualified. The faculty and students and rest of the campus community have to determine whether Gamble has knowingly abused his power to hire a friend or truly didn't understand the academic culture. If the latter, he has demonstrated why bringing in another leader from outside the academic culture is problematic to many. The UAA community will also have to assess whether Gamble is willing and capable of respecting and adopting the culture.]
1. What is CRONYISM?
Cronyism: partiality to cronies especially as evidenced in the appointment of political hangers-on to office without regard to their qualifications (Merriam Webster online)
[Noun] An intimate companion; an associate; a familiar friend. To oblige your crony Swift, bring our dame a new years gift. Hence, an old crony is an intimate friend of long standing.. Source: Webster's 1828 American Dictionary.
Crony A familiar friend. An old crony is an intimate of times gone by. Probably crone with the diminutive ie for endearment, and equivalent to "dear old fellow," "dear old boy." (See Crone.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
The act of showing partiality to one's close friends, typically by appointing them to a position in a company or organization despite the individual not necessarily being the best person for the position. Although this is [sic] favoritism is frowned upon in many cases, it is often hard to determine what is or is not cronyism. In general it is not wrong to hire or appoint someone you know, as long as they are well qualified, so the boundary between the two scenarios is very unclear. Although accusations of cronyism are prevalent, they very rarely amount to any disciplinary action or removals from power. See also nepotism.
doing favors for friends: special treatment and preference given to friends or colleagues, especially in politics ( disapproving)
Most of the definitions I found were close variations of these. So from these definitions we can pull out the common factors:
Partiality or favoritism
Towards a good friend
Usually through an appointment to a position for which the friend is
Unqualified OR not the best qualified
Wikipedia's discussion of cronyism gives more nuance to the term showing why it happens and how it relates to other terms we know such as networking or good old boys system:
Governments are particularly susceptible to accusations of cronyism, as they spend public money. Many democratic governments are encouraged to practice administrative transparency in accounting and contracting, however, there often is no clear delineation of when an appointment to government office is "cronyism".
It is not unusual for a politician to surround him- or herself with highly-qualified subordinates, and to develop social, business, or political friendships leading to the appointment to office of friends, likewise in granting government contracts. In fact, the counsel of such friends is why the officeholder successfully obtained his or her powerful position — therefore, cronyism usually is easier to perceive than to demonstrate and prove.
In the private sector, cronyism exists in organizations, often termed 'the old boys club' or 'the golden circle', again the boundary between cronyism and 'networking' is difficult to delineate.
Moreover, cronyism describes relationships existing among mutual acquaintances in private organizations where business, business information, and social interaction are exchanged among influential personnel. This is termed crony capitalism, and is an ethical breach of the principles of the market economy; in advanced economies, crony capitalism is a breach of market regulations, e.g., the Enron fraud is an extreme example of crony capitalism.
2. Is the appointment of Tom Case by his fellow retired Air Force general an example of cronyism?
Cronyism, like most things, isn't either/or, isn't black or white. There are situations which are clearly not and situations which clearly are, and more ambiguous ones in the middle. But let's go through these four factors:
Partiality or favoritism
We know that UA President Gamble knew there would be a vacancy for the UAA Chancellorship even before he took the job. It was ten months after Chancellor Ulmer announced she would retire, before Gamble began the search process late November 2010.
We know that the UAA Faculty Senate - on notice that Gamble was considering skipping a national search - unanimously recommended their Provost as the candidate they could live with should he choose to NOT have a national search.
We know the next public step was that Gamble appointed Tom Case to be Chancellor.
Towards a good friend (All Air Force career information comes from the Air Force webpages for Gamble and Case.)
Gamble graduated from Texas A&M and became a student, undergraduate pilot training, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas in 1967.
Case graduated from the Air Force Academy and became a student in the Undergraduate Pilot Training, Laughlin AFB, Texas in 1969.
I'm not sure when they met, but both careers included assignments in Vietnam, Korea, Europe, and Washington DC.
Gamble (August 1996 - November 1997) and Case (October 1998 - September 2000) were both commander, Alaskan Command, Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, 11th Air Force and Joint Task Force Alaska, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska.
And they served together in Hawaii when Gamble (July 1998 - May 2001) was commander, Pacific Air Forces, Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, and Case (September 2000 - July 2002) was Deputy Commander in Chief and Chief of Staff, U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii.
Commander, U.S. Pacific Command (CDRUSPACOM) is the senior U.S. military authority in the Pacific Command AOR. CDRUSPACOM reports to the President of the United States through the Secretary of Defense and is supported by four component commands: U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Pacific Air Forces, U.S. Army Pacific, and U.S. Marine Forces, Pacific. These commands are headquartered in Hawai’i and have forces stationed and deployed throughout the region.
Both men retired to Anchorage where Gamble became head of the Alaska Railroad and Case became, first, Dean of the UAA College of Business and Public Affairs (where he was my boss) and then COO of the Alaska Aerospace Corporation.
Usually through an appointment to a position for which the friend is
Search committees are the norm for faculty and high level administrative positions at the University of Alaska Anchorage - usually national searches. The previous Chancellors at UAA and UAF were not selected through nationwide searches, but faculty and community members were involved and approved of the selections. See previous post footnote beginning at "*I'd point out" for how those searches were conducted.
In this case,
Nov. 23, 2010: the President announced the beginning of the search and hinted at skipping a national search because there were good Alaskan candidates.
Dec. 6, 2010: The faculty responded by proposing the current UAA Provost for Chancellor. If not him, then they wanted a national search.
Jan 18, 2011: The President brought together a committee and asked them to come up with characteristics of a good Chancellor.
Jan 31, 2011: The President announced Tom Case as the new Chancellor
The President skipped the normal search process, rejected the faculty's proposed candidate without consultation, did not consult with the faculty or other normal constituents about possible specific candidates, and simply selected someone he'd known in his previous career who was also a personal friend.
Unqualified OR not the best qualified
Unqualified? - The Chancellor has a leadership position which requires good management skills and an ability to work well in the community for university support and partnerships and for fund raising. Generally, someone from inside the academic profession with the highest academic credentials (a doctorate) is chosen because they know the culture and norms of the institution they will lead. This is occasionally waived if the candidate has other remarkable qualities.
Tom Case does not have a doctorate, but he has a masters in systems management and a great deal of education and training in the Air Force plus experience leading large organizations. He also spent five years as Dean of UAA's College of Business and Public Affairs. In that position he expanded his widespread contacts in Anchorage and Alaska developed earlier as Commandant of Elmendorf Air Force Base.
There is no question in my mind that Tom Case is qualified for this position.
Best Qualified? - This is a question that might still be debated if there were a national search and there were several candidates. There might never be absolute unanimity. There are factors to criticize with his candidacy.
He doesn't have an academic background so he doesn't understand the culture of people he will be leading. But this isn't enough to make him unacceptable. Sometimes an outsider can bring in new ideas. Another factor arises if we take the macro view. Not just how this decision affects the one campus - UAA - but the impact on the University of Alaska system. As I've pointed out in a previous post.
There will now be four white males over 60 without terminal degrees in the four top posts of the university. While these four men are each unique individuals and have their own perspectives and experiences,
having other perspectives is both symbolically and substantively important. The fact that this wasn't considered too important by the President is also troubling. Also, as I've said,
having outsiders in academia is not necessarily a bad thing. But two retired Air Force generals in the top four positions seems redundant. We've wasted an opportunity to have a different perspective among the top four positions. Why? Simply because Gamble is more comfortable with an old Air Force colleague? That's not good enough unless he brings in other qualities so special they make him clearly better than other candidates.
But we can't even consider whether he is the best candidate because there are no other candidates.
So, is this cronyism? Pat Gamble hasn't told us his motives (other than saving money by not having a national search). It is clear that it meets at least three and possibly four of the standard benchmarks of cronyism.
He used partiality or favoritism - he chose someone he already knew and was partial to without letting any other applicants into the process. He chose another academic cultural immigrant from the Air Force. While he may think he has simply chosen the best possible person for the position, in fact he picked a friend without considering others. He didn't even discuss with the faculty the person they recommended and why they supported him and why he (Gamble) didn't.
But he clearly decided that despite coming from a different organizational culture - two actually if we include his time with the Alaska Railroad which seems to be a particularly 'good old boy' system - that he knew better than the faculty, without even having to talk to them about their candidate and his. Or any other possible candidates a nationwide search would produce.
The person he chose is a personal friend and professional colleague.
He did this through an appointment that was a deviation from the standard process. While there had been some deviation in past appointments, this one was extreme by totally excluding the faculty and others in the university community. The past searches for UAA and UAF chancellors deviated by not having a national search, but the conditions were different and shared governance wasn't abandoned in those cases. One major concern, I understand, for the faculty is fear that the exceptions will become the new norm and this appointment will set a precedent for skipping national searches and search committees altogether.
Tom Case is clearly qualified, but not necessarily the best qualified. We don't know whether he is the best qualified because Gamble's process excluded competition against which to measure Case.
How hard is it to imagine Gamble and Case and Campbell at a party discussing what Campbell would do after his term was over? "You know, there's an opening for Chancellor coming up. I can appoint Tom to that - he was a dean there already - and then Craig, you can take Tom's spot." Actually, I do have trouble imagining Tom Case in that meeting, but somebody must have discussed this for it all to happen so quickly and smoothly. Too quickly. Too smoothly.
The University of Alaska is a state organization and the Aerospace Corporation is state created and largely state funded. These are positions with serious salaries. The Chancellor gets about $250,000 plus benefits.
3. Why is this worth blogging about?
I've learned over the years that cronyism, like other ethical infractions, is "something that other people do, but not me." While working with Municipal Assembly members, for example, on rewriting the Municipal Code of Ethics, I had assembly members defend their right to have lobbyists pay for their lunches with reactions like, "Are you suggesting I could be bribed for a $20 lunch?" I had two responses: 1) How expensive a lunch would it take? and 2) If $20 is trivial, then why don't you pay for the lunch yourself? But I got the point. Other people were unethical, but even hinting they might be was insulting.
Most people, particularly those who have dressed themselves in society's symbols of legitimacy, rarely recognize when they do something wrong. Tom Delay, for example, is still protesting his innocence. If Gamble reads this, while he might acknowledge some of the points theoretically, he'd probably say that, practically, he'd made the right decision and he'd do it again. And that's why I'm covering this in such detail. He shouldn't do something like this again. And if he does, it won't be out of ignorance.
Broader Issues
1. The University of Alaska is a large public organization with a budget over $1 billion. The FY2012 operating budget alone is $884,983.300. The capital budget is another $212,525,500. (To put this in context, the Governor's proposed total operating budget for the State of Alaska is $5.45 billion. To be fair here, only $350 million of the UA budget comes from the State. But the total operating budget is 1/5 the State's operating budget.) How the University is run should be of concern to Alaskans.
2. The University of Alaska is the main institution for higher education in the state of Alaska. How it operates, its emphases on one approach to education or another, will greatly affect the future of the state. Nationally, great changes have been going on in higher education as university budgets have almost matched health care for significant increases. Legislators have reacted with calls for more efficiency. A business metaphor has replaced the idea of education. Students have been changed into customers and education has become preparation for a job rather than for life. "How?" is replacing "Why?" as the basic question for college students. There are legitimate questions about what universities do and how they do it. But there are also many simplistic answers floating around.
Facing these changes requires people who both understand education and who understand what parts of traditional education are essential to keep and how to move into the future taking advantage of new technology to make education better, but without making it superficial. So Alaskans, even those not involved in the University, have a huge stake in what happens in the administration of the University.
Specific Issues - Consequences of Skipping a Search
1. Credibility of the President's Commitment to Shared Governance
The President, in his November letter announcing the beginning of the search, said the new chancellor should have "an unwavering belief in the efficacy of shared governance." Either the President
doesn't have such a belief himself,
doesn't understand this the same way it's understood by faculty and staff and students, or
didn't want to risk not getting his preferred candidate.
There was no shared governance in this decision. Gamble muffed an opportunity to be a University President and instead acted as the University CEO. Chancellor Case was appointed by the President with no meaningful participation of the UAA community. Not only did Gamble choose someone against the Faculty Senate's unanimous recommendation, but he did not bother to discuss his reasons why before he made the appointment or why he scrapped any semblance of a search.
When push comes to shove, this new Chancellor will be clearly and unequivocally representing the President in Anchorage rather than representing the UAA community to the President. This is not shared governance.
2. Legitimacy
The odor of cronyism floats over this appointment. Even if Tom Case is the best possible chancellor - which we really can't judge given the lack of other candidates to compare him to - skipping over the process leaves a residue of suspicion and distrust. Had there been an open process with several candidates, the President may have risked that his preferred candidate was not recommended. He then would have had to make a decision - either to accept the search committee's recommendation or to still choose his preferred candidate. Gamble didn't take that gamble. The odds would have been in his favor. Usually such a committee identifies acceptable candidates and possibly a preferred candidate. Had Case made the acceptable list, his legitimacy would have been assured, and this would not have been seen as a possible case of cronyism. Odds are good this would have happened.
Instead the new Chancellor comes in under a cloud. And there is antagonism between the faculty and President.
3. Communication
The time that a search committee puts into developing criteria for a position is time where people have to articulate their values and their models of education and universities. There is a lot of give and take, people reveal themselves, and relationships are built. This would have been a great opportunity for the President, who comes from alien organizational cultures, to have gotten an intimate look at this new culture he now heads. That opportunity has been lost.
Conclusions
This is a post I wish I didn't have to write, but I feel strongly that if the President continues in this path the relationship between him and the faculty will get more and more strained. The faculty are in an awkward position. They don't want to spend their time taking on the President, they'd much rather work cooperatively with the head of the University system to make the university a better place. But a lot of them think they've been rolled by the President and don't want it to happen again.
My sense is that while they feel misused and are concerned about the future, they are willing to accept and support Tom Case. They also have to assess Gamble. Was this a willful decision to by-pass the process to make sure his Air Force colleague and friend would get the position or simply a cultural blunder? If the latter, is he willing and capable of respecting this new (for him) culture and concepts like shared governance? Did he know buying this Corvette behind her back was wrong, but did it quick before she could say no? Or is he just not used to having to check with the spouse? And how's he going to behave next time there's a family decision to be made?
This has been a long post because none of the other news media are covering the story, except the UAA student newspaper, Northern Light, and I want to document the complexities of this situation as best as I can for the record.
I expect that Tom Case will be a good Chancellor at UAA. I worked with him in the College of Business and Public Affairs and respect him as an honorable and sensitive man of considerable ability.
But in a democracy, the ends don't justify the means. Prisoners get released when the police or courts have violated procedures set up to protect their rights. The President had more than enough lead time to fill this vacancy properly. And as one of his first major acts of significance, it behooved him to do it right. He didn't. Wednesday he's coming to Anchorage to talk to the UAA faculty. Whether the future will be rocky or smooth will depend on how that meeting goes.
The university can be a frustrating place because democracy can be frustrating. Democracy allows time for people to have their say and be listened to. And I myself could point out to ways I would streamline things - but not at the expense of serious shared governance.
One needs to remember, "It's not WHAT you do, but the WAY you do it."
[This is a long post. Most of you won't read it all. It's long though, because it shows step-by-step how a rightwing website neutralizes truth, in this case how they make bogus claims against the movie Fair Game - the name is so apt - to neutralize some of the most shocking known behavior of the Bush Administration. This is probably longer than it need be, but finding the truth, despite what people say, doesn't come in bumper-sticker brevity.]
We saw the movie Fair Game last week. It tells a story* about the active undercover CIA Agent Valerie Plame who was outed by the White House in July 2003. Her husband, former US Ambassador Joe Wilson, had been hired to determine if Niger had really supplied yellow-cake uranium to the Iraqi government to be delivered in those now infamous aluminum tubes. (*I think we have to stop using "the" story for anything, because even without the ideological split in the US, it is ever clearer that different people relate different stories about the same events)
In 1974, Kanawha County, West Virginia was the first battleground in the American culture wars. Controversy erupted over newly-adopted school textbooks. School buildings were hit by dynamite and Molotov cocktails, buses were riddled with... [The full article is at WNYC]
This piece had interviews with the people who began the boycott against the new textbooks which included a more modern and diverse group of authors and ideas than the previous texts had. A couple of people cited their 1974 protest as the beginning of the Tea Party movement. From the piece I gathered that the protesters were generally not well educated, their world view was dominated by religion, and they were not happy about the changes in their lives being brought about by integration - which was reflected in the textbook changes. We also heard from teachers who said they needed a curriculum which better reflected their students, that discussed more than just dead white males in literature and history and science. BUT, it was also clear that the catalyst for the protesters was a feeling of being disrespected. They felt these changes were being forced on them without any input from them and they weren't going to take it any more. Perhaps they couldn't stop the national civil rights legislation of the 60s, but they could stop their local schools from imposing new texts which raised questions they didn't want their kids exposed to.
Yikes, I'm trying to explain the link between textbook wars and Fair Game without making this too lengthy. Much of this has been sitting for a week as I let the ideas naturally rise. I don't think I used enough yeast. But I need to get this done. Let's just say the textbook wars reminded me once again that people do things for reasons and when people get pushed too far, emotion blocks out any chance for reason to triumph.
Even without the textbook story in my head, my tendency is to play the devil's advocate and think about other interpretations of the story. I can't watch anything - even something I agree with - without thinking about how someone with a different perspective would react.
As I watched Fair Game, with the radio show fresh in my mind, I could hear the Tea Party supporters of Joe Miller shouting out "Lies, Lies!" throughout the movie. I did wonder what they would have said about a Joe Wilson talk to college students where he warned about government becoming a tyranny and how it would get worse if they didn't pay attention and stand up and protest.
We're in a period of American history - one that is not unique in this respect - where 'truth' is limited to facts that don't challenge 'my' world view. This affects those on all points of the political spectrum, though some are more prone to be ruled by raw emotion rather than hard facts and logic. The key is to find a path which blends both the passion that stirs us to do things with the rationality that gets us to do them effectively. We can't let emotion blind us to the 'truth.'
In Fair Game's portrayal of the Valerie Plame case, even recognizing that Hollywood leaves out much of the story and enhances it for dramatic effect (so do politicians and all of us, of course), a few facts can't be disputed.
President George W Bush used evidence - the aluminum tubes and the non-existent yellow-cake uranium - to justify going to war with Iraq, even though the CIA was telling them couldn't be true. In one scene Scooter Libby badgers a CIA analyst - Are you 100% sure? 99% sure? 96% sure? If you aren't 95% sure, are you willing to risk our security?
Even if we accept the notion that the White House was convinced this was true - and not simply a plausible ploy for getting the American public to go along - it turns out later that they were, in fact, wrong. There were no weapons of mass destruction. .
The White House exposed the identity of an active undercover CIA agent with open projects - and informants in different parts of the world whose lives were jeopardized and possibly lost because of the outing. Besides being a federal crime, this also forced the resignation of an experienced agent with active, needed knowledge, and endangered CIA contacts around the world. While the White House ran a misinformation campaign that suggested Plame was a third rate agent who didn't do anything, they do the same sort of campaign with anyone who is in their way - ie the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry.
Scooter Libby was tried and convicted. And his sentence was commuted by the White House
These 'truths' are all on the record. You can quibble about different details of the movie - it had 90 minutes or so to present its narrative - these three things are indisputable..
Or so I thought. While prepping this, I ran across the blog Newsbusters - a right wing blog set up to debunk liberal lies - which reviewed the movie Fair Game
Welcome to NewsBusters, a project of the Media Research Center (MRC), the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.
In August of 2005, with the assistance of Matthew Sheffield of Dialog New Media, the MRC launched the NewsBusters blog to provide immediate exposure of liberal media bias, insightful analysis, constructive criticism and timely corrections to news media reporting. [emphasis added.]
You can read the Wikipedia post on NewsBusters which emphasizes the ideological stance (and was itself attacked by Newsbusters.) Even if you read NewsBusters itself, it is clear that this is a site set up to promote conservative Republican causes first, and not to expose the truth.
The trend I see is this:
Attack the opponent - lying is totally within the rules
If your opponent fights back you have a couple of choices
Attack again
Change the subject
Say that nobody can be trusted - raise questions about the honest folks so the dishonest folks look equal. This is what they mean by 'neutralizing'.
The point is to totally sully the water so that any sort of authentic discussion is impossible. Then the loudest and most persistent wins.
This works to the advantage of the conservatives because their reserve of funding is deeper. Sure, liberals can raise a lot of money too, but in part that's because the money people want everyone - people who agree with them and those who don't - to be indebted to them. They bet on all the horses - the only sure way to win no matter who's in office. The Republicans have also just done a much better job of spreading their message.
I go through all this because I'm pretty sure that Fair Game is reasonably accurate on the basics if not every cinematic detail. Newsbusters attacks Fair Game's validity by making bogus claims on minor issues and distracting the reader from the really serious issues the movie raised. Neutralizing them as Newsbusters says its goal is. Few people will check their out-of-context quotes.. This stirs up their partisans and sows seeds of doubt among those who don't know the background and who assume that no one could lie so shamelessly. In the end, the casual reader goes away thinking, "another biased movie. You can't believe anyone these days." Neutralization accomplished. But what if they are telling the truth? Then the truth has been neutralized and lies are equal to truth.
1. Liman [the movie's director] is being dishonest in order to push a left-wing agenda.
2. Liman is being dishonest because the factual story is far less interesting than the fictional account released Friday.
3. Liman is completely ignorant of the facts, and too lazy to do even a little research.
The message is: it's all lies, there's nothing there, they're stupid and lazy.
How did they reach these conclusions? They made them up. They took several ideas from the movie and declared them to be false with the help of out-of-context quotes from the Robb-Silbermann Report on WMD's.
The Daily Caller's Jamie Weinstein did the legwork in demonstrating just how far from the truth some of the film's central claims are. Chief among them, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and other White House officials exerted political pressure on intelligence officials to cherrypick intelligence favorable to claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, not only did Libby do no such thing, but according to the Robb-Silbermann Commission, which investigated the intelligence behind the Iraq war, "The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."
What??!! First, there is no contradiction. The Robb-Silbermann Report quote does NOT say there was no pressure exerted. It clearly says that the intelligence officials didn't "skew or alter any of their analytical judgments" because of political pressure that did exist.
They damn Liman because he didn't read the report:
Weinstein asked "Fair Game" director Doug Liman if he had read the Robb-Silbermann report. He had not.
Liman was the director. It was his job to take the script (not write the script) and make a movie from it. The report is 601 pages. Why should Liman read it? But I'm sure the author of the book the movie was based on read the report. Why do am I sure? Because the book was written by Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson assisted her. They had a huge stake in knowing every detail of this report and Wilson testified before the commission and is cited in the report. And probably the script-writer read a lot more of it than did anyone associated directly with the Newsbusters article.
Then Newsbusters proceeds with more obfuscation.
But other blatant falsehoods pervade the film that could be disproven with a simple Google search. For instance, it is near-common knowledge by now - except among politically interested Bush-bashers - that neither Libby nor then-White House advisor Karl Rove leaked Wilson's wife's name to the press. In fact, State Department official Richard Armitage dropped the name to the late columnist Robert Novak, setting off a political firestorm.
But according to Weinstein,
You wouldn’t know this by watching Liman’s “Fair Game,” since Armitage is nowhere to be found — except in script at the very end. The narrative that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby were nefarious behind-the-scenes players intent on destroying innocent reputations while pushing the nation into war on false pretenses fits too nicely into Liman and Hollywood’s leftwing vision. You can’t, after all, let facts spoil a cinematic anti-Bush diatribe.
OK, neither Rove nor Libby contacted the media and directly told them. And the movie doesn't say they did. But it is also 'near-common knowledge' that Armitage worked closely with them both and would never have leaked the information exposing the identity of an active undercover CIA agent on his own, without their assent. Newsbusters conveniently fails to mention that Libby was convicted and President Bush commuted his sentence because of his actions portrayed in this movie. Here's what Fox News wrote (yes, that Fox News) about the conviction:
I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby Guilty on Four of Five Counts in CIA Leak Trial
Libby was accused of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned about Valerie Plame's identity and whom he told. Plame is the CIA employee whose husband. Amb. Joe Wilson, was sent to Niger by the agency to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium.
The Newsbusters article continues with more twisted truth:
According to Weinstein, the fictional Wilson "suggests his report to the CIA definitively debunked the Iraq-Niger claim." In fact, Bush's statement was accurate: British intelligence had discovered just that. A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee found in 2004 that Wilson's report "did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium” and "did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal."
Wait, wait, wait. The movie didn't dispute that the British reported this. But the movie said that the British report was wrong. Which it was.
When the former ambassador [Joe Wilson] spoke to Committee staff, his description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA officials' accounts in some respects. First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rouge [sic] nations, and noted that Nigerien officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.
The movie didn't deny the possibility that Iraq might have approached Niger for uranium, only that if they did, Niger never sold or gave them any. And even if this allegation about the movie were true, it's a relatively minor point compared to the ones I listed above. It's like disputing that the man had dirty fingernails and skipping the fact that he murdered someone.
The second quote is also shown to NOT support Newsbusters contention:
(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
The three paragraphs before this conclusion are deleted, so we have to go from the little that is there. But it is clear if you read this, that analysts' assessments weren't changed because they already believed there was no uranium deal between Niger and Iraq. His report "lent more credibility to the original" CIA reports. The only way that could be true is if those reports said the deal didn't take place. And the quote clearly says the INR didn't think Niger would sell the uranium to Iraq.
So everything in these two quotes is consistent with what was in the movie. But not too many Newsbusters readers are likely to go to the original source to check on a narrative they already want to believe.
This attack on the Fair Game, in my mind, is the same as claiming Obama is a Kenyan citizen and a Muslim. The point is to raise questions about clear, factual events that you don't want people to believe. To destroy the good name and character of people who oppose you. To raise questions about their message. What don't the Newsbusters folks want people to believe?
1. People close to Karl Rove and VP Cheney, people who would not have acted without Rove's and probably VP Cheney's approval (of course it would be given with plausible deniability) exposed an active CIA agent, a serious violation of the law and breach of US Security. An action that the conservatives would have lynched a Democratic White House had it done the same thing.
2. That there was clear evidence that there was no uranium deal between Niger and Iraq and the aluminum tubes were not for rockets to launch nuclear weapons, yet President GW Bush used this as a key justification for going to war against Iraq. In fact, Secretary of State Colin Powell knew it was false and did not mention the Niger uranium in his speech to the United Nations. (See the Robb-Silbermann report, footnote 210 on page 213 - and no, I didn't read the whole report either, I just know how to use 'search.')
3. The attack on Valerie Plame clearly came from the White House, most probably Rove and Cheney were involved, and was in retaliation for Plame's husband publicly refuting the lies the White House was using to justify going to war against Iraq.
4. Scooter Libby was convicted - presumably as the fall guy to protect Rove and probably Cheney - and then his sentence was commuted by President Bush.
The point of this post is NOT to have a pissing match over facts with people who don't care about seeking out truth. You can't win a game like that against people who have unlimited resources and no shame. The point is to illustrate where we are in the US today - nearing a dark age when truth is suppressed ruthlessly and the common good is trashed for private gain. Over and over again. In every sector from religion to oil to banking, and yes, even in academia.
The attack on the movie attempts to make readers think the movie is total fiction, but it doesn't acknowledge or refute these facts I've outlined that the movie clearly presents. Facts that should raise a hue and cry from anyone who believes our leaders should obey the law, be fiscally responsible, and that human life is sacred and should not be sacrificed needlessly. (The war in Iraq has killed about 100,000 Iraqi civilians.)
But we shouldn't be surprised they would attack the movie. If Rove and Cheney's people were willing to expose an active undercover CIA agent in retaliation for her husband telling the truth, there's probably little they wouldn't do to defeat their perceived enemies. Newsbusters behavior here isn't that different from what the movie is about - attack the messenger to suppress the truth.
Their tactics to replace 'truth' with their own version of reality is working. People who oppose them are attacked and have to 'prove' their innocence (a traditional American value, right?) and so much mud is thrown that most people throw up their hands and say, "They're all corrupt." And that's a victory for the corrupt. Because their corruption isn't as problematic if the voters think that the honest folks are corrupt too.
And lots of writers think twice before posting on something like this out of fear they will be attacked. This blog is off-the-radar enough I don't think I have to worry. I'm not pointing out the inconsistencies because I think anyone will change their mind. I'm doing it to illustrate how public discourse has been horribly polluted so that truth becomes totally indistinguishable - for many - from fiction.
Yes, Valerie Plame was declared by Karl Rove to be "Fair Game" for this sort of nasty, democracy destroying attack. But Plame, thanks to her husband, didn't fold. She did what President Obama needs to do. They fought back. So, put Fair Game on your movie list.
[Update, August 12]: An anonymous comment provided a link to the FTC guidelines covering endorsements and testimonials. You can see the relevant section for bloggers in the third comment at the end of this post. It sure looks to me that this totally violates those guidelines.]
BloggerBuzz had a post recently announcing a new way to 'monetize' one's blog:
. . . Any time you write about a product or service, you're connecting your audience to that product. If someone makes a purchase, the seller benefits from your written word—you influenced a purchase. There are thousands of websites that will pay you a fee for any business you bring them through a form of online advertising called affiliate marketing. With affiliate ads, web publishers are compensated for driving online actions.
VigLink is a content monetization company that makes affiliate marketing very easy for bloggers. We offer a simple snippet of code you can install in your blog that automatically and transparently does all the work for you. We've catalogued and signed up for more than 12,500 affiliate programs and we collect all the performance information and deliver you a single integrated payment. In return, VigLink takes 25% of the incremental revenue you earn. [emphasis added].
What's wrong here? Most might say, nothing at all. This is the American way of life. Nothing has value unless it has a price. Unless we can make a buck off of it. People who blog for free are losers. Well, here are the problems I have:
1. The reader doesn't know the blogger is being paid and thinks the endorsement is uninfluenced by a payoff.
When I was a cab driver in LA, a fare once wanted to go to a strip club. When I dropped him off, the club guy came to my window and gave me $5 and told me it was always $5 per person I dropped off. So if someone asked me if there were any good clubs around, you know where I'd take him.
This is the same sort of problem these unmarked links set up. The reader thinks it's a genuine endorsement uninfluenced by the promise of a payoff. Currently, there are ads in some blogs, but they are labeled as such. Readers suspect or know that the blogger gets a commission on these.
In their FAQ's, the company writes this about reader awareness:
Will my users notice?
Likely not. VigLink does not change the user experience one bit. No links are inserted or removed on the page, there are no double-underlines or pop-ups, and mousing over a link looks "clean."
But, it's really dirty is what they seem to be saying.
This is like tv shows and movies that pay film makers to embed their products in their shows. So buying Full Circle Farm produce no longer is an integral aspect of the character, but rather they wrote that in because FCF has paid them for this stealth ad.
I've gotten emails offering me payments if I plug a product on my blog and they will pay more if I don't say that I'm getting paid. The advertisers believe that if the readers don't know the bloggers are getting paid, they are more likely to believe.
In the FAQ's, they even tell merchants:
Additionally, VigLink increases confidence, click-through rates and conversions by making the links to your site appear to be "natural" links instead of obviously embedded affiliate codes. [Emphasis added]
They are selling the fact to merchants that they are deceiving viewers into thinking these are natural links.
As a viewer, YOU CAN OPT out. There's a page where if you click on the button, it says
If you'd like to disable VigLink on sites that you visit, click the button below.
I'm not sure what that means. I have no idea how the average viewer would ever find the page, or even know there is something to opt out of. Does it mean they won't collect data on you? Does it mean that the blogger doesn't get his payoff if you purchase something through his link? There's a link there to a long privacy policy which includes statements like:
We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not give us any personally identifiable information. [Emphasis added]
How many kids read privacy policies? How many adults read privacy policies? How many people even know this company exists?
2. The blogger starts pushing products, not because he really likes them, but because they will make him money.
Behavioralism is a school of psychology that tells us, among other things, that people repeat behaviors that are rewarded. So, if bloggers get paid for writing posts that get people to click on links and buy products, they will start writing more such posts. And eventually, some bloggers will recommend products they don't really believe in because they know they will get rewarded.
3. Trust in Blogs Will Turn to Suspicion
Before this new company arrived, readers knew that if they clicked on an ad, the blogger would get some small amount of reimbursement, but if they clicked on a link in the post, there was no compensation. They could reasonably assume that the blogger put in the link because he believed it was in the reader's interest to click on the link.
Now though, as surfers begin to understand this new system, they will become suspicious of all blogs and bloggers (and probably the websites of newspapers and everyone else will do this as well. Maybe they already do.)
Even if bloggers, like me, post announcements saying that we do not have paid links, there's nothing to stop people who DO have paid links from putting up the same announcements.
Note: People should be skeptical about what they read on blogs. But there has been a sense of innocence in many blogs that are written by people who just enjoy sharing their ideas and without the corrupting influence of money.
4. Bloggers are probably also being ripped off
So, if VigLinks is willing to hide from the viewer the fact that the blogger is getting paid, why should we be surprised that they are also snookering the blogger?
Blogger pay is probably pretty tiny. One reason putting up ads is not even a temptation is that I know I would get so little revenue from the ads anyway. If I'm going to sell out it's going to be for a lot more than $50. I looked into google-ads when I first started blogging and learned that only blogs with at least thousands of daily hits are likely to make any real money. The ads for this company don't talk about how much a blogger would actually get. I looked through more of the links on the website. You get vague things like:
How does payment work?
VigLink will pay by check in the United States and PayPal anywhere it is available. We are expanding our payment options over time. VigLink will ask for payment information and pay publishers as soon as their balance reaches $25. VigLink typically takes 25% on commission earned by publishers. Often publishers still receive higher payouts due to collective bargaining and high volume commission levels. We will issue an IRS Form 1099 to any publisher who makes more than $400 in a fiscal year.
What percent of bloggers will even earn that $25? If they don't, what happens to the money? So, we don't really know how much you get per click. Actually, another FAQ says you get paid if someone makes purchase only. It doesn't say how much. Instead it says,
How does VigLink make money?
You earn a commission for every sale made on a linked site. VigLink takes a small fee from that commission and then passes on the rest to you.
Small fee? It's true it will be a small fee in absolute cents. But it is 25% of what the blogger earns. Gryphen at Immoral Minority said that Tank Jones and Rex Butler's commission from Levi Johnstons' earnings is only 20%. I don't know if that's true, but Gryph seemed to think that was a significant chunk. This company takes 25%.
But if the blogger doesn't make much money at all, what's 25% of nothing? Well, there's something called the salami technique:
Employee embezzles large amount of money by stealing small sums from many different accounts.
This linking scheme isn't stealing because they tell the blogger and the blogger agrees to it. Though they intentionally do not want the viewer to know what is happening. But, the vast majority of bloggers who might sign up for this probably wouldn't make much money. It's possible a lot won't even reach the $25 threshold necessary for them to write the first check. And as I asked earlier, what happens to this below threshold accumulation? Why don't I think they'll donate it to decrease our national budget?
I'm guessing, based on talking to people who have google ads, most people won't make more than, say, $50 a year, and that's probably high. A few of the very big blogs with thousands of hits a day, might do well. But if this company got a million blogs to sign up - and it's really easy to add the code - and they get 25%, and if that amounted to about $10 per blog, that would be $10 million per year. (Hatrickassociates claims there are 400 million active English-language blogs in 2010, so my estimate is probably way low.)
So a scheme like this would
pollute general trust in blogs with
minor benefit to most bloggers who sign up,
cause deception for readers, and
cause companies to pay a salami slice commission for links that they had in the past for free.
The main beneficiary would appear to be this new company, and, probably Blogspot, WordPress, and TypePad also get a cut. I couldn't find any mention of that.
It seems to me that blogs with stealth links like this should post a notice at the top of the blog:
"This blog may receive kickbacks from merchants if you click from here and our reviews of products may be biased because of that."
THIS IS MY VERY ROUGH NOTES. DON'T RELY ON THIS. I'LL POST THE AUDIO WHEN IT IS AVAILABLE.
1:35pm Senator French is walking the committee through SB110 on Perservation of Evidence/DNA ID System. The meeting opened with Chair Ramras warmly welcoming Sen. French and praising him and his office for being so easy to work with.
There are a number of people on the list to testify, but Rep. Ramras also wants as much time as possible for SB 284. This is not a bill I've prepared for.
Online testimony:
Mr. Oberly, Executive Director of the Innocence Project: The task force reviewing this will be helpful and police will hold up decisions until the task force does its study.
Jeffry Mittman, ACLU Alaska: We support this bill as well.
Gruenberg: Concern about length of time evidence is kept. His concerns were with who decides the crime is solved.
French: The concern that someone would peremptorily declaring crime solved, is covered.
Ramras: We know of Rep. Gruenberg's propensity for belts and suspenders.
French: These issues will be looked at by the task force.
Gruenberg: It looks like you are right relating to biological evidence. We're talking about non-biological evidence. The house bill had this on p. 3 beginning of line 7. The two bills seem to treat the non-biological evidence seperately.
Ramras: As I recall there was a focus on biological evidence.
Gruenberg: The bills themselves deal with both biological and non-biological evidence. Will we have any fall out between now and when the task force makes its report.
French: In the six years I was with the Prosecutors I am unaware of anyone disposing of evidence and I would be stunned if it happened in the next year.
Ramras: Chair is satisfied with the discussion.
Gruenberg: Is there anyone else concerned? I don't see it among other committee members.
Gatto: An agency ... may destroy biological evidence if .... - that's not a complete activity - mailing a notice - makes no requirement of the recipient ever receiving the letter.
French: I think the certified delivery implies that it was received. If you continue reading - no person notifies after 120 days after receiving the notice...
Gatto: Line 27 page 3. Key word is mailed. Doesn't matter they got the wrong address, or person can't read English. If you wanted to have a certainty the letter was received and failed to act is not something the agency can control.
Heron: We did amend that in other hearings and require a receipt.
French: Would a proof of receipt help? That seems reasonable.
For completeness. I appreciate your desire to move this down track.
Language requiring applicants to pay costs of evidence retrieval have been romoved. We've gotten approval/acceptance from department of law.
Timeliness provisions also changed. p. 15 - were three years. Not from this day forward, but looking back. People now in prison have ten years after we pass the bill. Otherwise people have unlimited amount of time.
Gruenberg: I'm still troubled by same issue. If they got the perpetrator and say the crime is solved and destroy the evidence. Now prosecution could say we are permitted to do this under this law.
French: I don't share your concern.
Ramras: Would you care to do a member swap from now to April 18?
French: [Something about the person not admitting guilt. I'm not sure what this is about.]
Deleting attorney affidavit. ????
Requiring evidence ???? deleted.
Page 8 lines 22-27 - right out of the federal bill. We leaned on the Fed bill which is called the Gold Standard. It was passed by Republican Congress and signed by Pres. GWB.
Gatto: Subsection C. Applicant did not admit or concede guilt under oath. Admission of guilt is not not acceptable as a plea for this bill?
French: What you'll hear from public defenders is that some people plead guilty with regularity. They take a fall for someone else, doesn't understand English, lots of reasons to plead guilty falsely.
Ramras: Two conceptual amendments = #1 page. 14. Anyone else who wants to testify?
Public testimony closed.
Conceptual Amendment #1 - add to duties of task force -
Gruenberg: think that should go in subsection D, lines 2?
Ramras: Withdraw #1
#2 standards for return of property added to duties of task force [changed where to add it]
#3 page 7 line 31-p. 8 line 3 - subparagraph D3 page 7 lines 10-14 should conform (I have no idea what this is about). Withdraw.
Holmes: CA #4 p. 7 line 31 delete 31-p. 8 line three and replace with applicant did not admit or guilt in ...except for the court in the interest of justice... nolo contendr plea is not an admission ... that is currently on p. 7 lines 14.
Passes.
Gatto: CA #5 - p. 3 line 27 - return receipt requested passes
Passes. Concurrent resolution adopted. At ease.
That's it for CSSB 110. At ease and then I'll be back for SB 284.
Here's the audio. You can get the exact words used. CSSB 110 is the first 42 minutes.
