US Justice and Personal Responsibility: Three Fatal Events, Three Outcomes

Here are three cases that have gotten some publicity in the last month.



Case 1: Mine operators ignore safety regulations,  two mine cave-ins kill nine miners.  No individuals responsible.  (See Washington Post article for details.)

Nine people die in mine collapse.  Company had various violations of safety issues and including not carrying out required actions.  Company pleads guilty to two misdemeanors and was fined $500,000.  No officers of the company face any charges.


There were some other settlements to the families.  The article has all the details.  I'm looking at a broader idea in this post.


Case 2: Rutgers student who secretly videotaped his roommate having gay sex and broadcast it to others, leading his roommate to commit suicide, faces up to ten years in prison. (Boston Globe)





Case 3:  Architect who intentionally put outdoor fire places inside mansion after building, against regulations and after inspectors checked the site, which led to a fire in which two firefighters died, faces involuntary manslaughter charges. (Los Angeles Times)




No cases is simple and there are lots of details that the links offer to the cases.  But common to them all is that people died due to someone else's actions (or inactions.)  In the mine and fire cases, the responsible parties appear to have knowingly violated a law they were responsible to uphold.  They were also people in positions of professional responsibility who stood to profit from their illegal actions, ignoring the danger they were causing others. 


In the student case, it's unclear that the videotaper knew he was violating the law, but he surely was pushing the limits of interpersonal decency and privacy. 


There are lots of questions around these cases:

• How have lobbyists for the mining industry helped to shape laws that shield owners and officers of mining companies from personal liability?
• Are there factors we use to evaluate unintentional death due to another's carelessness?  
• How much could someone, because of education/training, position, legal obligations, should be aware of his actions put others in risk?
• Whether someone has done something (or not done something) against legal orders that caused the death (or injuries)?
• Whether someone has taken action which a 'reasonable' person would assume could lead to serious consequences including death or (in the case of the students) could lead the victim to respond drastically?  
• To what extent can we be responsible for how people 
  
•  How do we deal with the way that modern technology to magnify what in prior times would have had less drastic consequences?  (As in the student's ability to broadcast live his roommate's tryst.)
• How does the political notion of personal responsibility - often bandied about by politicians talking about poor people and petty criminals - actually play out when people's lives are seriously disrupted or ended by carelessness and/or callousness?

Life is complicated.  Laws are written incrementally, without all of them being compared for fairness against all other laws.  And even if there were a commission charged to review all laws relating to people who cause death, the  imbalance  of political and economic power in the US would probably mean those with power would make sure their interests were looked after. 


And how do we deal with structural causes of death - such as when soldiers are sent to war despite their mental instability?  Or medical errors in hospitals?  Or when one nation's economy benefits from another's misery - such as rich countries getting cheap goods from weak labor and environmental laws in poor countries?   When does collective culpability become individual responsibility and vice versa?


Or from people ignoring all these issues because they can?  Until it affects them?  Like the architect and the mine owners and the Rutgers student who suddenly find themselves in the spotlight?  Though the brightness of the spotlights vary greatly. 

Kelly Williams, the Frosting on Superior Donuts

Kelly Williams, II (Franco) after the play

We decided to head down to Cyrano's to catch Superior Donuts before it was gone.  We knew nothing about it.   What a treat it was.  All the acting was good.  But when Kelly Williams, II walked through the door in the role of Franco Wicks, the whole place lit up.   Or, as the actor who played Franco at the Steppenwolf in Chicago says in the video below, "He breathes new life into the neighborhood."

The script was crisp and funny and I found myself totally pulled into the play.  This is the end of the run.  You've got Friday and Saturday evenings at 7 and then Sunday afternoon to see it.  At Cyrano's. 

The playwright, Tracy Letts, won the Pulitzer and a Tony with his previous play August: Osage County, and he had plenty of talent left for Donuts.

Here's a video from the Chicago production at the Steppenwolf including playwright Tracy Letts.   

Schuelke's Ted Stevens Trial Report - Summary and Full Report Here

The Ted Stevens Trial Misconduct Report was made public today.  It's 500 and some pages.  It's the report on the prosecutors conduct in the Ted Stevens trial which led to Obama's attorney general to dismiss the case and verdict shortly after Obama took office.


The report was ordered  April 2009 by the  Emmet G. Sullivan who was the judge in the case.    The report, dated November 14, 2011, was written by Henry F. Schuelke III and William Shields and was released today, despite an appeal by one of the prosecutors investigated, Edward Sullivan, to not release it.

I have had enough time to scan the table of contents - 16 pages worth - and and the Summary of Findings, but not much more.   Here is the Summary of Findings and below  I've uploaded the whole report to Scribd so that I could make it more easily readable here for anyone with time on their hands and/or a burning interest.  I'll try to go through it in the next few days.

Executive Summary

The investigation and prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’s defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness. Months after the trial, when a new team of prosecutors discovered, in short order, some of the exculpatory information that had been withheld, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) moved to set aside the verdict and to dismiss the indictment with prejudice.

The Government recently discovered that a witness interview of Bill Allen took place on April 15, 2008. While no memorandum of interview or agent notes exist for this interview, notes taken by two prosecutors who participated in the April 15 interview reflect that Bill Allen was asked about a note dated October 6, 2002, that was sent from the defendant to Bill Allen. The note was introduced at trial as Government Exhibit 495 and was referred to as the "Torricelli note." The notes of the April 15 interview indicate that Bill Allen said, among other things, in substance and in part, that he (Bill Allen) did not recall talking to Bob Persons regarding giving a bill to the defendant. This statement by Allen during the April 15 interview was inconsistent with Allen's recollection at trial, where he described a conversation with Persons about the Torricelli note. In addition, the April 15 interview notes indicate that Allen estimated that if his workers had performed efficiently, the fair market value of the work his corporation performed on defendant's Girdwood chalet would have been $80,000. Upon the discovery of the interview notes last week, the Government immediately provided a copy to defense counsel.

Defendant Stevens was not informed prior to or during trial of the statements by Bill Allen on April 15, 2008. This information could have been used by the defendant to cross-examine Bill Allen and in arguments to the jury. The Government also acknowledges that the Government's Opposition to Defendant's Motion for a New Trial provided an account of the Government's interviews of Bill Allen that is inaccurate. See Opposition at 42-43 (Dkt. No. 269).

37

Case 1:09-mc-00198-EGS    Document 84    Filed 03/15/12    Page 49 of 525

Stevens, Motion of the United States to Set Aside the Verdict and Dismiss the Indictment with Prejudice, April 1, 2009, at 1-2 (Dkt. No. 324).

Our investigation revealed that, in addition to the failure to disclose Mr. Allen’s statements on April 15, 2008, that he did not recall speaking with Mr. Persons about Senator Stevens’s requests for bills and that the value of VECO’s work on Senator Steven’s home in Alaska was $80,000 (and not $250,000 as alleged in the indictment), other, significant Brady/Giglio information was intentionally withheld, including the following:

•    Mr. Bottini and Mr. Goeke withheld and concealed significant exculpatory information which they obtained from Robert “Rocky” Williams, a prospective government witness, during pre-trial witness preparation interviews in August and September 2008;

•    Mr. Bottini and Mr. Goeke withheld and concealed significant impeachment information regarding Mr. Allen, their key witness against Senator Stevens, which was obtained from Bambi Tyree by another federal prosecutor during an unrelated prosecution in July 2004; and

•    Mr. Bottini failed to correct materially false testimony given by Mr. Allen during his cross-examination in Stevens which Mr. Bottini knew at the time was false.

The information withheld from the defense would have significantly corroborated the trial testimony of Senator Stevens and Catherine Stevens, his wife, on the central issue in the case, supported defense attempts to expose Mr. Allen’s CYA testimony as a recent fabrication, and provided additional grounds to impeach his credibility and to question the integrity of the prosecution itself. See United States v. Boyd, 55 F.3d 239, 241 (7th Cir. 1995)(“The gravity of the prosecutors' misconduct . . . may support, but it can never compel, an inference that the prosecutors resorted to improper tactics because they were justifiably fearful that without such tactics the defendants might be acquitted.” (citations omitted); United States v. Remington, 191 F.2d 246, 251 (2d Cir. 1951)(“Evidence of efforts to suppress testimony of evidence in any form like the spoilation of documents is affirmative evidence of the weakness of the prosecution's case.”)(footnote omitted).

Sen Ted Stevens Trial Misconduct Report

Since I sat through most of the three trials in Anchorage that led up to the Stevens trial in DC, I have some thoughts about the four prosecutors I witnessed here who are the subject of the report -  Joseph W. Bottini,  James A. Goeke, Nicholas A. Marsh, and Edward P. Sullivan.   The other two, Brenda K. Morris and  William M. Welch III, were not involved in the Anchorage cases.  I am getting more than the normal number of hits today for my post on Nicholas Marsh's death and also for observations on Mary Beth Kepner, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.

Alaska Supreme Court Sends Redistricting Plan Back To Board

The most significant consequence of the decision, as I read through it, is that the Alaska Redistricting Board must go back and redraw the redistricting plan starting with the requirements of the Alaska Constitution AND THEN make any necessary adjustments to also make it comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

The Board's strategy was to start with the Voting Rights Act requirements (because they believed, probably correctly, that this was the hardest part) and the resulting plan - acknowledged by the Board - did not comply totally with the Alaska State Constitution.

The Board did this on the advice of their attorney who early on said that the federal Voting Rights Act took precedence over the state Constitution.  While this is true, the Supreme Court pointed out that in Hickel v. Southeast Conference, a 1992 decision following the redistricting process in 1990 Census, the Court set out a procedure for redistricting boards to follow which began with a plan that was in compliance with the Alaska Constitution.

Specifically, the Court ordered:

1. "The Board must first design a plan focusing on compliance with the article VI, section 6 [of the Alaska Constitution] requirements of contiguity, compactness, and relative socioeconomic integration; it may consider local government boundaries and should use drainage and other geographic features in describing boundaries wherever possible."  [emphasis added]
2.  "Once such a plan is drawn, the Board must determine whether it complies with the Voting Rights Act and, to the extent it is noncompliant, make revisions that deviate from the Alaska Constitution when deviation is "the only means available to satisfy Voting Rights Act requirements."

I'm posting this - what I think is the most significant immediate impact of the decision - now to get it out and I will follow up with a post the goes through the whole decision later today. 

[UPDATE 9:08am:  I should have mentioned that the court did allow for the possibility of using the Board's proclamation plan (the one the court wants redrawn) to stand for the 2012 election if the Board cannot get a new plan redrawn in time.]

I would note that  both parties told me they thought the decision would be back within ten days.  The oral arguments were heard Tuesday, March 13.  The decision is dated Wednesday,  March 14!
 

Three of the five sitting justices had been on the last redistricting case, one had been on the last two, so they were familiar with the legal issues.

The whole decision is here.  It's only seven pages.

[I'd also note that the report on the prosecutorial misconduct in the Stevens case came out today, so  I'll be busy.]

Niveolian Art

Aside from the aesthetics, there has to be something useful here, some story embedded in the layers of snow and dirt, some story about the winter of 2011-2012.  Like the story embedded in the rings of trees and, perhaps more obviously, the layers of a glacier. This is the exposed face of the pile of (plowed from the road, I assume) snow left exposed after the sidewalk was cleared.

Here you can see the path I walked, protected from cars by this wall of snow and grit.  

On the other side, it was almost as though the snow were trying to escape from its cage.  Some amorphous creature oozing through the bars. 





Some new words I learned for this post:


dendrochronology

niveolian 

Keller's Privatize Our Schools Bill - No! No! No! No!

Rep Keller at ALEC Presentation Feb 2011

[Reader Alert:  This is a topic I feel strongly about and sometimes that affects how I present the content.  Also there is a lot of background I don't have time to put in here.  So, if you have a problem with anything, comment or email and we can continue the discussion.]



The Alaska Dispatch has an article today on Wes Keller's HB 145 to create "scholarships" for parents to use state money to send their kids to private (including religious) schools in Alaska.

Keller's from the same part of Alaska that gave us Vic Kohring and Bill Stoltz (who most recently has refused to release a bill from committee for a house vote - already passed by the Senate - to give state funding for school meals for the low income kids).

Keller is also a member of ALEC - the Koch brothers sponsored organization that prepares model legislation for state legislators and whose agenda is basically to make government as marginal and ineffective as possible.  Here's an early (2005) piece of model legislation called Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act posted at Heartland Institute (an organization similar to ALEC which champions free enterprise and believes global climate change "is basically irrational, ideological, and profoundly anti-science" - if you want to learn more, contact Rep. Gatto, he goes to their meetings) which cites "ALEC staff."

I posted about an ALEC meeting in Juneau last year - Keller was one of four legislators who sponsored ALEC and attended.  The others were Rep.Carl Gatto (Wasilla), Rep.Tammie Wilson (North Pole), and Sen. Fred Dyson (Eagle River.)

ALEC Materials at Juneau Presentation

From a Nation article posted at Susan Ohanian.org

"Public schools,” ALEC wrote in its 1985 Education Source Book, “meet all of the needs of all of the people without pleasing anyone.” A better system, the organization argued, would “foster educational freedom and quality” through various forms of privatization: vouchers, tax incentives for sending children to private schools and unregulated private charter schools. Today ALEC calls this "choice"--and vouchers "scholarships"--but it amounts to an ideological mission to defund and redesign public schools.








There's lots that's been written exposing ALEC's agenda.  Basically it seems to be set on making government as ineffective as possible so that businesses can do whatever they want - gut labor laws, environmental regulations - and to give government assets and infrastructure over to the private sector.  This bill is a case in point.


Sec. 14.31.030 of  HB 0145B gives schools that lose students to the 'scholarships' and fall under the required 10 students [UPDATE: an issue in many of Alaska's small communities] to keep a school open, two years to operate.  Then, as I read this, the private school can petition to take over the school. 

Sec. 14.31.030. Effect on districts. (a) A school that, as a result of the program, has an ADM of less than 10 but five or more shall be treated as if the school had 10 students for a two-year period following the date on which the ADM is reported to be less than 10 but five or more for purposes of calculating state aid under AS 14.17. In this subsection, "ADM" has the meaning given in AS 14.17.990.
(b) If requested by a participating school, a school district that receives a payment under AS 14.31.020(b)(1) shall enter into a lease agreement with the participating school for space controlled by the school district if
(1) the lease is offered with reasonable terms; (2) the space that is subject to the lease agreement is available; and (3) the agreement is consistent with applicable state law.

In Sec. 14.31.035  the Education Department is to pay the 'scholarship' directly to the private school.

Sec. 14.31.035. Departmental duties. (a) In implementing the parental choice scholarship program, the department shall (1) obtain from the participating school a count of the number of participating students in the program; (2) make scholarship payments directly to the school quarterly after receiving proof satisfactory to the department that the student claimed under a scholarship attends the school on a full-time basis;

I feel very strongly about public schools.  It's the place in the United States where people can become Americans, where they mingle with people whose beliefs are not totally like their own family's.  There is a lot wrong with American public schools and I can make lists of the problems just as well as anyone else, but the answers lie in fixing how we deliver public education, not destroying it.

People complain about the polarization of US politics.  I would argue much of that has to do with the balkanization of schools into more and more specialized private religious school programs where students are taught that their group's truth is the only one.

Sure, neighborhoods segregated by race and income also produce similar effects in public schools.  It's a problem.  The disparity between good and bad schools is a problem.  But private schools, that can refuse to serve the problem students - whether the 'problem' is behavioral, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, or cross-cultural differences - are NOT the answer.  Especially for-profit private schools whose top priority is profit.  (Remember those financial institutions we recently bailed out?)

No Child Left Behind is part of this attack on public schools.  The testing was set up to label public schools as "failing" to turn the public against public schools and susceptible to voucher programs that would let them take public money and spend it at private schools.

Well, now they are calling the vouchers "scholarships."

I call them subsidies to private businesses.

I did a post in December on how the right wing attack on public education is also happening at the higher ed level.

Alaska Supreme Court Hears Redistricting Board Petitions

This John Hoover otter, part of a larger carving, which greeted me  as I got off the elevator on the Fifth floor to go to the Supreme Court, looks a bit the way I feel as I try to figure out how to deal with all my notes from today.

I have lots of reactions, but I haven't had time to review the notes and organize my thoughts into more than rambling yet.

Some specific things I observed:

• Plaintiff Michael Walleri opened at 1:30 with a clear and polished delivery.
• Retired Supreme Court Justice Warren Matthews joined the four sitting justices (Justice Morgan Christian has departed to take a seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
• Both parties to the case said they didn't know Justice Matthews was going to be there until he walked out.  Some speculated he was there because of his experience with the 1990 and 2000 redistricting cases.
• The justices actively asked questions of both attorneys and to my untrained ears (this was my first time attending a Supreme Court case) they seemed to need more justification from the Redistricting Board's attorney, Michael White, than from Walleri.  



(l-r) Justices Winfree, Matthews, Carpeneti, Fabe, Stowers

• The justices seemed to have detailed knowledge of the legal precedents (three justices had been on previous redistricting cases) - particularly the Alaska Supreme Court cases - but I couldn't help but wonder how well they could assess from the record the attorneys' claims about possibility of meeting both the Voting Rights Act requirements and the Alaska Constitutional requirements.  
• While both sides were initially given 45 minutes, with questioning from the justices, things stretched out and the court was adjourned about 3:20. 
• Board's attorney White asked the Justices, should the not overturn the trial judge's ruling on districts 37 and 38 to give the board instructions because they were at a loss as to how to do that without making things worse.  
• Both sides seemed to believe there would be a decision in ten days or less and the case would be remanded to the trial court.  

Each side focused on the parts of Judge McConahy's decision that rejected their arguments.  The Board accepted the need to redraw districts 1 and 2 in Fairbanks, but vigorously objected to the finding that required redrawing districts 37 and 38.

Michael Walleri address the court

The plaintiffs argued that splitting the City of Fairbank's two districts into separate Senate seats violated the proportionality requirement.

Most of the focus, it seemed to me, was on house districts 37 and 38. 

A basic issue throughout the whole redistricting process has been whether it was possible to meet both the  federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements AND the Alaska Constitutional requirements. There was a lot of questioning about whether the board should have first made the plan comply with the Alaska Constitution and then, make variances (to the constitution) as necessary to comply with the VRA.  The Board's attorney White, vigorously argued that it was impossible  to meet both standards and starting with the state requirements would just be spinning your wheels.

Michael White addresses the court

There was also questioning on whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) really would have rejected a draft plan that met the constitutional requirements but paired native Senator Hoffman of Bethel with Senate President Stevens (non-native).  Walleri argued that if they truly had a native effective district, then it was Stevens, not Hoffman, whose seat would have been in danger.  After White repeated that the DOJ had been focused on whether native incumbents were paired, he was asked by Justice Matthews if they distinguished between pairing two native incumbents and a native and non-native pairing. 

Was the Board required to first make a plan that met the Alaska Constitutional requirements and then, if necessary, make variances as needed to also meet the VRA?
Even if they had to make variances to a plan that met constitutional requirements, wouldn't that plan at least then serve as a benchmark to see that variances were necessary?
Why did the Board begin with the VRA requirements instead of the Alaska Constitutional requirements?


 I've written more than I expected and there are still many points I've left out.  For those who have trouble sleeping, I'll attach my notes from the courtroom.

As usual, there's this WARNING:  the notes are my feeble attempt to capture what was said.  They are NOT at all transcripts, but they're what you'll have to make do with until transcripts are available.


Alaska Supreme Court Redistricting Board Case March 13, 2012

Meet You At the Alaska Supreme Court This Afternoon

From the Alaska Redistricting Board's website:

WHAT:  The Alaska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in an appeal over Superior Court Judge Michael P. McConahy's decision in 2011 Redistricting Cases v. Alaska Redistricting Board.

WHEN:  Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 1:30pm. Each side has been allotted 45 minutes for argument.

WHERE:  Alaska Supreme Court, 5th Floor, 303 K Street, Anchorage, AK 99501

The Board's petition for review and other litigation documents are available for download at www.akredistricting.org.    

The questions presented for review by the Redistricting Board are:

1. Whether the trial court erred in holding the configuration of Proclamation House District 37  was not justified by the Board's need to adopt a non-retrogressive redistricting plan that complied with Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act?

1. Whether the trial court erred in holding the configuration of House District 38 was not justified by the Board's need to adopt a non-retrogressive redistricting plan that complied with Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act?

The questions presented for review by the Plaintiffs Riley and Dearborn are:

1. Did the Superior Court err in not invaliding [sic] the plan based upon process claims?
2. Did the Superior Court err in holding that the City of Fairbanks population was too small to give rise to an anti-dilution claims [sic]?
3. Did the Superior Court err in failing in holding that the Voting Rights Act excused violation of borough's rights to proportional representation/split borough excess borough population.

City of Fairbanks/Faribanks North Star Borough Districts

 

 

Planning and Zoning Does Round 1 of Title 21

I've promised myself to try to limit most of my posts to 1200 words for a while so I can do other things.  So I'll try to summarize what happened.

After a multi-year public hearing process, the Assembly had voted to provisionally approve Title 21 and it was waiting for some cleanup language by the staff when Dan Sullivan became mayor and hired former Assembly member Dan Coffey to go over it all again and recommend changes.  He's made recommendations to the Mayor and the Mayor has refined that into a set of proposed amendments.  Now the Planning and Zoning Commission is weighing in on these before they go to the Assembly.

Testimony included land owners and/or their representatives citing

• specific sections of new Title 21 that would negatively affect the value of their property
• general complaints that the new Title 21 is essentially social engineering that takes economic decisions from private landowners and gives it to the government
• complaints that Title 21 is the introduction of the United Nations Agenda 21 which, according to handouts, advances global sustainability and "is being covertly pushed into local communities throughout the United States."

Basically, the people who testified framed Title 21 as social engineering that would take away the rights of individuals to make decisions about their property.  Some specific issues raised:

• Change in I2 zoning to take out business and retail use and make this only industrial.  People said it would lower property values of existing structures and it covers  places like C and O'Malley that should have retail.
• A CIRI representative with property at C and O'Malley  seemed not too fazed by the new Title 21, but wanted to be sure that they would be able to have an overlay district to make appropriate exceptions for a corner like that where they are planning retail development. 
•  Target's representative felt it would take so long to get the overlay district approval that they would lose significant time in building and attracting other retailers into their south Anchorage project.  
• The current chapter 12 on non-conformities does not afford owners of existing property  latitude to do maintenance and repairs as the existing code does.  When they do repairs, they are required to spend more on upgrading to the new requirements than presently required.  This will cause people to skip maintenance and lead to deterioration of property.
• The staff's economic impact study is inadequate.  Staff argues that reducing the number of required parking spaces will offset the costs of added requirements.  But a couple of people said that with the landscaping requirements and extra costs because of more complicated requirements the costs will really go up.  

Commissioner Mulcahy asked everyone if they had any financial calculations to back up their allegations.  The Carr-Gottstein rep suggested the changes in zoning class would cost them $65 million in property value.

No one spoke in favor of Title 21.  There were quite a few ideological complaints about social engineering and loss of individual property rights.

One man, speaking for his 21 year old daughter who had bought her first house said, "I appreciate the academics who have spoken.  I speak as a citizen."  [I didn't hear anyone who identified themselves as even remotely involved with academics, and if they had, they too would still be citizens, it seems to me.]

Another, who identified himself as a contractor from Eagle River said, "Don’t know much about Title 21.  Heard a few things in the last few hours.  Couple of questions.  Assembly,  first make note of where Title 21 came from - Agenda 21 from the UN.  We are not in the UN we are the US.  We have a constitution. . ."

A few people referred to changes that would tell home owners how many windows they could have in their house.  [None of the commissioners asked them to identify which section said that.]

America's ideological divide was evident in the room Monday night.  The anti-government folks were out in strength fighting off what they see as the social engineering crowd whose goal is to take away people's individual liberties.

71 Years Ago Today: "The president's "whole program," later to be known as "lend-lease," was the unconventional idea that the United States could send Britain weapons and supplies without charge and then, after the war, be repaid not in dollars but in kind."

On This Day in the New York Times today:

On March 11, 1941, President Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.

Wow, I'd just been cruising the Caribbean last night with  Roosevelt when he came up with the idea of Lend-Lease in No Ordinary Time.  That's the magic of very good books - they take you temporarily into another time and place.    When the cruise was over . . .

The president returned to Washington Monday afternoon, December 16, tanned, rested, and in excellent humor.  The following day, at his press conference, he puffed hard on his cigarette and then revealed his startling plan.  He had heard a great deal of nonsense about finances in the past few days, he began, by people who could think only in traditional terms.  Whereas banal minds assumed that either the Neutrality Acts of the late 1930s or the Johnson Act, barring loans to defaulters on World War I debts would have to be repealed in order to allow loans or gifts to England, he had a much simpler notion in mind - a gentlemen's agreement that eliminated the foolish dollar sign entirely, and allowed England to make repayment in kind after the war.

"Well, let me give you an illustration:  Suppose my neighbor's home catches on fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away.  If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help to put out his fire.  Now what do I do?  I don't say to him before that operation, 'Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15;  you have to pay me the $15 for it.'  What is the transaction that goes on?  I don't want $15 - I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.  All right.  If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it back t me and thanks me very much for the use of it."  And if the hose was damaged by the fire, he could simply replace it.

[Some background for the historically disadvantaged:  Germany had invaded France, Holland, and Belgium very quickly in 1939 and was now (late 1940 early 1941) conducting air raids nightly on Britain.  There was fear Britain would be invaded.  But isolationists - both on the left and the right - were opposed to the US involvement arguing the oceans would keep us safe.  Roosevelt said the aeroplane had made the US vulnerable as never before and was building up the military just in case and was trying to get as many weapons and other supplies to Britain as fast as he could.  There had been a lot of opposition to arming Britain - the US didn't have enough to protect itself if there were an attack and arming Britain seemed a way to draw us into the conflict.  In November 1940, FDR had just be reelected for an unprecedented third term.]

Doris Kearns Goodwin (the author) framed this story around the idea of how people think, well, how FDR thought, starting with author John Gunther asking Eleanor Roosevelt how the president thought.

Mr. Gunther's question was on the minds of several Cabinet members in mid-November 1940, when the president seemed unable and unwilling to concentrate his thoughts on a new and disturbing crisis:  Great Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The cash reserves of the British treasury, the U.S. was told after the election, were no longer sufficient to pay for the munitions and supplies that Britain had ordered from the U.S. - supplies needed now more than ever.  Though Britain's success in repulsing the Luftwaffe had postponed the threatened invasion until spring, the German advantage in war materials was growing and would continue to grow as Germany increasingly moved to supplement its own vast production with that of the industrial countries it had conquered - Holland, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia.  Without American supplies to close the gap, Britain would be defeated in a matter of months.

What to do?  The idea of loaning the money to Britain was raised in the Cabinet, but no one believed that Congress would go along, given America's experience with unpaid debts in World War I.  During the discussion, the president, Frances Perkins recalled, threw out "a question here and a hint there."  Perkins had the feeling that "he was thinking about something, about some way in which the people of the U.S. could assist the British," but he had nothing concrete to offer.  The problem seemed insoluble.

In the midst of the crisis, as administration officials were frantically scurrying from one meeting to another, the president suddenly announced that he was leaving Washington for a ten-day sail through the Caribbean on the navy cruiser the U.S.S. Tuscaloosa.  He told his stunned Cabinet, "All of you use your imaginations" to come up with an answer.  To be sure, the exhausted president needed to rest after the wearying campaign.  "The more I sleep, the more I want to sleep,"  he was heard to say.  But the timing of the pleasure trip was profoundly disturbing to those who worried about Britain's survival.

 Eleanor, who had been in a ship accident as a child and still did not like being on the water, was traveling through the South and Midwest, lecturing, and keeping an eye on economic conditions where she traveled.  She's disturbed to see people living in shacks "made of scraps apparently, bits of corrugated iron, even heavy cardboard is used. . . .I cannot help feeling that there should be a better way of meeting this problem."

Crowds send off FDR's cruise from Miami. 

Map from Lonely Planet

 The president spent his days with his white shirtsleeves rolled up over his wrestler's arms, talking, fishing and basking in the sun.  From the beginning of the trip to the end, the newspapermen who followed faithfully behind on a convoy destroyer had no idea where they were going or how long they would be gone.  At Guantanamo Bay the cruiser pulled into the dock for an hour's stop so that a large stock of Cuban cigars could be carried on board.  At Jamaica, St. Eleuthera Island (in Bahamas), St. Lucia, and Antigua, the president hosted British colonial officials and their wives at lunch.  At Eleuthera Island (in the Bahamas) he was joined by the duke of Windsor.  Relaxing evenings were spent on deck cheering boxing matches between black mess attendants, listening to drummer contests between sailors and marines, playing poker, and watching movies - including Tin Pan Alley, staring Betty Grable, and Northwest Mounted Police, with Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard.  .  .

But the world would not go away.  From daily dispatches Roosevelt learned that heavy raids on London had devastated the House of Commons and that massive bombings of Coventry, Birmingham, and Bristol had so severely damaged dozens of war factories that vital production would be halted for months.  At the same time, it was reported that the severity of German submarine sinkings had escalated;  in a matter of weeks, seven merchant vessels carrying tons of needed supplies had been sunk.  And from Washington came news of the unexpected death of Lord Lothian, British ambassador to the U.S., who had worked unremittingly to strengthen his country's bond with the United States.  A Christian Scientist, Lothian had refused treatment for a simple infection that turned exotic.

[To find the three unmarked locations on map: Miami is on the lower right side of the finger coming down from the word CARIBBEAN;  Guantanamo Bay is  at the bottom of Cuba, facing Jamaica; and Eleuthera is in the Bahamas.]

A seaplane dropped off an urgent letter from Winston Churchill who regarded it as "'one of the most important' he had ever written" which said how the British were ready to fight to the death against the Germans, but they were now facing a new problem - finances. 

"The moment approaches where we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies.  While we will do our utmost and shrink from no proper sacrifices to make payments across the exchange, I believe you will agree that it would be wrong in principle and mutually disadvantageous in effect if, at the heights of this struggle Great Britain were to be divested of all saleable assets so that after the victory was won with our blood, civilization saved and the time gained for the United States to be fully armed against all eventualities, we should stand stripped to the bone.  Such a course would not be in the moral or economic interests of either of our countries."

. . .Churchill's letter had a profound effect on the president, though he said little about it at first.  "I didn't know for quite a while what he was thinking about, if anything," Hopkins said later.  "But then - I began to get the idea that he was refueling, the way he so often does when he seems to be resting and carefree.  So I didn't ask him any questions.  Then, one evening, he suddenly came out with it - the whole program.  He didn't seem to have any clear idea how it could be done legally.  But there wasn't a doubt in his mind that he'd find a way to do it."

The president's "whole program," later to be known as "lend-lease," was the unconventional idea that the United States could send Britain weapons and supplies without charge and then, after the war, be repaid not in dollars but in kind.  How Roosevelt arrived at this ingenious idea, which cut through all the stale debates in Washington about loans and gifts, is not clear.  "Nobody that I know of,"  White House speechwriter Robert Sherwood has written, "has been able to give any convincing idea" of how the refueling process worked.  "He did not seem to talk much about the subject in hand, or to consult the advice of others, or to 'readup' on it . . . One can only say that FDR, a creative artist in politics, had put in his time on this cruise evolving the pattern of a masterpiece."

 There's lots to learn in these passages - some geography, ways of thinking (getting away and letting my brain solve puzzles on its own often works for me), and seeing that imagination can often come up with a new solution that overcomes the objections.  And also the importance of being able to frame your solution in a story that people can understand.  And I learned that Caribbean has one 'r' and two 'b's.

And I suspect that this book has a lot for President Obama to learn from. 

These quotes come from the beginning of Chapter 8 of No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin.