Across the Great Divide

Well, That Was a Morning Wasted...

From Hal Davis:

Congress ... in 1924 enacted the Johnson-Reed bill that limited European immigration to just over 150,000 per year with nationality quotas based on the origins of the U.S. population, which heavily favored western and northern Europe, especially Britain. The act required entry visas, with photographs -- another facet of control -- and largely excluded Asians. It exempted most of the western hemisphere so that Mexico could continue supplying western farmers with cheap labor.

— Allan J. Lichtman, WHITE PROTESTANT NATION: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement

From MinnPost, a story on Minnesota's "best and brightest" video bloggers includes Melinda Jacobs, whose other stabs at sincerity, authenticity and attention-grabbing included promoting herself as a flirting expert. She got her start in March after devoting:

two years studying the economics and technology of the industry before jumping into the digital era to do long-form celebrity interviews.
 

Even though she hopes to eventually make a living with online video, she refuses to put ads or product placements into her pieces if she doesn't believe in them.

The Craig Show, also featured, does product placement right, with a Taylor guitar slipped into his golf instruction video. (Maybe he's only hilarious if you play golf.)

And in this, via The Daily Glean,  Michele Bachmann proves herself a much better Autotune singer than Sarah Palin.

How Should Baseball Honor the Fourth?

The Twins beat the Tigers today wearing caps that honored the five U.S. military services. We will now proceed to a new paragraph to make one thing very clear.

I am all in favor of professional sports teams honoring the armed services, active military and veterans.

And baseball, especially, should do all it can to remain America's game and retain its anti-trust exemption.

Veterans Day falls too late for a baseball observance. But the entire month of May was National Military Appreciation Month, followed by Flag Day on June 14th.

So why now, should Independence Day weekend be devoted to armed services appreciation?

Shouldn't the country's birthday honor more than the military? Perhaps the Twins promotion department could show some imagination next year and include caps for: Peace Corps. Americorps. ACLU. NAACP. Federalist Society. Or maybe: Washington. Lincoln. Parks. King. Norquist.

But if they insist it has to be a military promo, how about: Jobs. Education. Housing. Mental Health. Peace.

They'd have the entire month of May to build up to it.

Tax, not Cap, CEO Pay?

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says, don't put caps on the pay of public company CEOs. Raise their taxes instead.

He proposes creating a new 50% marginal tax bracket for income over $1 million. Then average taxpayers could start cheering high executive salaries.

Pay caps provide some after-the-fact window-dressing for the government handouts and may discourage more companies from seeking subsidies, but they're unlikely to last. Like it or not, risk-averse corporate boards compete for proven talent — even if it's the best of a bad lot — and will find some other way to pay for it.

Of course, it’s galling when a chief executive fails and is still handsomely rewarded. But with the concept of “tax, not shame,” a shocking $20 million severance package would generate $10 million for the government. That’s a far better solution than what we have today, not least because it works with the market rather than against it.

Another advantage is that it would also cover the sometimes huge earnings of hedge fund managers, star athletes, stunning movie stars, venture capitalists and the chief executives of private companies.

If only it were that simple for the states facing budget problems.

Minnesota may also consider raising its top income tax rate, but as Al Franken recently demonstrated, collecting state income taxes from traveling entertainers can be a bit more complicated.

Minnesota — which served as the model for a number of other states — already taxes income earned here by non-resident entertainers at 2%. So when a former president, comedian or musician from New York gets paid more than $2,000 for a gig in St. Paul, the local promoter or sponsoring organization is supposed to withhold the tax. (That's also true in California where Franken failed to pay state taxes.)

But professional athletes like Roger Clemens, Kurt Warner and LeBron James are considered employees of their teams, so their income earned for playing here is taxed at regular rates...

Unless they are full-year residents and play for pro teams from Wisconsin, Michigan or North Dakota.  Minnesota has reciprocity agreements with those states not to collect income taxes from their entertainers. (Okay, maybe not likely from North Dakota, but it's still the law.)

According to a Detroit Free Press columnist, other states have similar deals:

Michigan has reciprocal agreements with other states not to charge taxes on athletes who play here in return for the same treatment when pro teams from Michigan play in those states. Michigan has such deals with Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin -- meaning we don't collect a dime from the Bears, Vikings or Packers when they come to Detroit to beat the Lions.

Pohlad Reconsidered, Sort of.

The death of businessman and Twins owner Carl Pohlad is getting the full treatment, bordering on hagiography, in the local media.

It's challenging to cover the life of a remarkable 93-year-old who was involved in many big deals over his lifetime and was still hatching them on his death bed. To most Minnesotans, Pohlad is seen through his relationship with the ball team and his hardball efforts to get a new stadium built, largely at public expense. What's less well-known was how he used government connections to leverage his fortune to a new level.

The Strib's Neal St. Anthony gives the episode two paragraphs.

In 1960, Gov. Orville Freeman asked Pohlad to form an investment group to bail out Twin City Rapid Transit, a bus company whose officers had just been convicted of fraud. Pohlad's group bought the company and changed its name to Minnesota Enterprises Inc.

By 1969, local politicians were upset, amid a request for an emergency fare increase, to learn that the Pohlad group had borrowed several million dollars from the company at no interest to buy an airline. It was not illegal, but eroded public trust in the operation. Pohlad and associates eventually sold the bus company to what became the Metropolitan Council.

The move was vintage Pohlad, investing in "distressed businesses that he could liquidate at a profit or fix and sell at a higher price."

Truth vs. the Machine asks an interesting question about Pohlad's involvement, but then leaps to make a point that misses the mark.

Asked to bailout the company by Gov. Orville Freeman (back when the market, not government, bailout out companies), Pohlad led an investment group that bought the company.  Can anyone picture the response if Gov. Pawlenty asked a similar favor from the major economic figures in the state today? [...]  In keeping with the character of the man and the region, the transit company made money under Pohlad.  It lost money under the government.

Pohlad probably did a good thing in rescuing the transit system. As a private company, it had been one of the best in the nation before WWII, but it was later pillaged by asset strippers and outright criminals.

Pohlad's civic conscience had boundaries, however. He was only marginally less rapacious than the crooks he supplanted, and he never went into a deal where he expect to lose money. He ran the bus line like he ran the Twins — on the cheap.

I haven't dredged up the original 1997 St. Paul Pioneer Press article referred to here, but the City Pages summary gives a bit more flavor of how Pohlad operated.

In a piece that should have been much more widely noticed (and probably not relegated to the opinion page), associate editorial page editor Steve Dornfeld takes note of the eerie similarities between the current debate and another public bailout of a Carl Pohlad enterprise--the metro area's bus system. The 1970 acquisition of what was then Twin City Lines, Dornfeld writes, "enabled [Pohlad and associates] to avoid bankruptcy and emerge with a fist full of cash that no private buyer would ever have offered." By the time it was over, Dornfeld goes on, "the taxpayers ended up paying $7.9 million for a bus company with an outdated, unreliable fleet; declining ridership; and a huge unfunded pension liability."

None of this came about by accident. Twin City Lines turned a profit for most of the 1960s. But instead of upgrading ancient buses and raising driver salaries, the money went into "diversification" as parent company MEI Inc., of which Pohlad was a big shareholder and top officer, acquired properties like the Hotel Tropicana in Las Vegas.

In 1969, after the company's drivers went on strike, the Legislature gave the Metropolitan Transit Commission power to acquire MEI by condemnation. Pohlad said he'd sell for about $15 million; the public's attorneys argued said the bus company was worth close to zero. The final price tag was $7.9 million. And that money, Dornfeld notes, enabled Pohlad to build MEI into an enterprise that would net him, by 1986, a personal profit estimated at $160 million.

Other sources claim Pohlad provoked the strike with the end game in mind. He used similar brinksmanship with the Twins franchise during the stadium struggles, first coming up with a straw buyer from North Carolina and then offering up the team for league "contraction" that would've paid him to liquidate it.

It's unlikely we'll ever get a full appraisal given today's skinnied down reporting. And the guy who wrote the 1997 piece is now working for the Met Council, the entity that operates public transit in the metro.

Golf and the New Nascar.

The other two couples we spent New Year's Eve with are still members of the golf club we left two years ago. Among suggested categories for our 2009 predictions was: Will the club survive 2009? Membership is down, the club settled an expensive liability claim, and golf has generally lost its luster.

Without ever being trendy, we are accustomed to finding ourselves on the front end of certain trends. Having ridden the leading edge of the golf boom, we felt no surprise at its contracture.

So my prediction carried a caveat that it depended what survival means. For our former club and the many inconsequentialities dredged out by real estate developers over the past two decades, it seems certain many will not survive in their original forms, and some will cease to be golf grounds at all.

As I child, I grew up as one of the "golf course kids" in a Colorado resort town. We lived on a golf course, all right, but it was one that had been bulldozed to make room for post-war housing.

It still takes my breath away to see the tiny house in a row of them jammed together on small lots that, paired driveway to driveway, defined our first football field. To adult eyes the patches of grass where we staged kickoffs and went deep seem scarcely worth keeping up as lawn. The homes, which I now realize were built by business owners and up-and-comers, would not even qualify as contemporary suburban garages. Gutted, the envelopes might have enough space to park two vehicles and a boat, but their trusses would have to be raised to admit an SUV.

Two years ago, I might have predicted an upscale housing development would take over my old club's  90-year-old tree-lined fairways. Now, I think a different reuse may be found for these well-irrigated acres — community gardens.

I'm rather sanguine, not to mention more concise, compared to James Howard Kunstler in his forecast.

I've been saying since publication of The Long Emergency that comprehensive downscaling in all our activities, from farming to business to schooling to governance, will be the categorical imperative of the years ahead. Giant enterprises requiring giant loans to get from quarter to quarter will tend to not make it. Borrowing from the future will become a practical impossibility as past bad debts from previous borrowings continue to unwind, cease performing, and get written off. This argument implies that the federal government will tend to flounder just as General Motors, Citicorp, Target Stores and other gigantic enterprises will tend to flounder. It would be sad to see a President Obama so hamstrung and helpless, and it is largely why I see his role as largely symbolic -- as a reassuring presence encouraging the distressed public to bravely bear their hardships, and to be kind and helpful among their neighbors.

Households, like businesses, will have to pay as they go from earned income. The house as ATM is over. Credit cards are maxed out and credit ceilings are lowering like the ceiling in "The Pit and the Pendulum," preparing to slice-and-dice the old "normal" of family life in America. Bankruptcy will be the new Nascar.

One Championship Lost. Two Brats Won.

This afternoon, I went to my first college football game in a very, very long time.

By college football, I mean college football, not the university/NFL farm team brand.

St. John's University played Carleton College for the MIAC championship at Northfield today, and squeaked out a last-minute victory after a pass play that had resulted in two previous end zone interceptions finally paid off.

The game was a rewarding way to spend a few hours, independent of any fan affiliation. The sun shined, mostly, and the stands blocked the prevailing wind. If you were going to paint blue lightning on your chest and cheer with your shirt off in mid-November Minnesota, it was as good a day as you could expect.

As played by both teams, the offense was more imaginative and wide open than you will see these days almost  anywhere you have to buy a ticket. (Yes, this championship game was free to all comers.) Had they played like this in the late '60s, I might have answered the Carleton football coach differently when he called me to his office and asked why I hadn't come out for the team.

Today, I sat next to the guy who 41 years ago lived next door to me in the dorm we could see up the hill from the stadium. We recalled the day, according to legend, when our generation fielded nine players on LSD, and one destined briefly for the NFL, then Christian ministry.

If you are a Carl, you cannot take your football more seriously than a Johnnie. It is impossible to approach sport — at least watching from the sidelines — with anything short of irony. Bad calls and importune reversals are merely cause for philosophical reflection.

For example, on one late St. John's drive, the Johnnies were allowed to replay a down after offsetting penalties — pass interference against Carleton in the end zone versus an illegal forward pass as the quarterback threw after crossing the line of scrimmage.

Is this a rules question or a quantum physics problem? Is interference possible against an illegal pass? Can a man be convicted of murdering a dead body?

This sort of discussion is more interesting than just calling for the execution of the referees.

The game highlight, however, came at halftime. Two long lines were snaking toward the lone concessions trailer, where the "best barbequed bratwursts in the Central Time Zone" were being sold by the Carleton baseball team.

As we neared, one player called out: "We only have 30 brats left. I'm sorry we suck."

Within a few spots of the window, the brat count dropped to 15. We began discussing our strategy for getting our order there in time.

A big red head in Carleton sweat pants was just ahead of us. He smiled and said, "You guys go ahead. I'm just getting popcorn." I said, "I'm buying your popcorn."

It allowed my final lean at the tape. My friend and I got the last two brats.

To all the Carleton players on the field, I know the loss hurt, but I'm telling you guys, life is good and you were part of it today.

Obama Knows the Game.

My thanks to Mr. Sponge for giving me a day off. Just go read "The Four Factors of Winning Presidential Politics" instead.

One of the most interesting aspects of the campaigns run against Mr. Obama by Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton is their focus on the "big play." By honing in on things like William Ayers, Reverend Wright, and the old war horse of raised taxes, McCain and Clinton thought that they could simply associate Obama with an idea or subject so rank that the American people would stop supporting him and the game would be over. Despite what our awful media may tell you, campaigns, like basketball games, aren't decided this way.

It's Only a Pinkie.

A college football player decides to amputate a finger so he can keep playing this season. His story makes perfect sense to me — or at least the me that played football — and it probably will to ex-military types, too. 

Sitting on the sidelines, it may be difficult to see that the players aren't necessarily acting out our versions of the game or finding the same meaning in fighting a war.

What About Art Moms?

Jay Weiner got down to the Hockey Mom demographics at the end of a long MinnPost story last Friday.

Among casual participants, hockey claimed 1.8 million, but soccer scored 17.9 million and basketball — Obama's game — 26 million.

At the high-school level nationally, there are 1 million boys and girls playing basketball, 730,000 playing soccer and a mere 45,000 playing ice hockey.

Last time we checked, basketball players had mothers, too.

*****
All Things Electoral was the first show presented by Susan Hensel Gallery back in 2004. A new version is back in Minneapolis, opening at 3441 Cedar Avenue South on September 12th, 5 to 9 pm.

Fifteen artists submitted their "votes for change," including New York Performance artist James Leonard, who will offer  a free performance of "WARBONDS" at 7:30.

The Third Man on the Podium.

Forty years ago, the same year Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, John Carlos and Tommie Smith stood on the winner's podium at the Mexico City Olympics and staged their famous silent protest against inequality.

Because of their raised fists, it became known as the "Black Power Salute," but there was a third man present — Peter Norman of Australia, the second-fastest man alive. Far from an unwitting participant, Norman consciously joined Carlos and Smith as their witness.

The actions of all three men cost them dearly. As documented in Matt Norman's brilliant new film, Salute, Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked out of the athletes' village, suspended and banned from the Olympics. For the Australian Peter Norman, participating in the organised action cost him his athletic career and he was not chosen for the next Olympics despite being one of the fastest men in the world.

Though they were vilified, Smith and Carlos returned as heroes to their community. Peter Norman was ostracized by his.

In October 2006, Norman died of a heart attack and his two mates carried him to his grave.

John Carlos had this reaction: "Peter was a piece of my life. When I got the call, it knocked the wind out of me. I was his brother. He was my brother. That's all you have to know." Tommie Smith added, "It took inner power to do what he did, inner soul power. ... He was a man of solid beliefs, that's how I will remember Peter -- he was a humanitarian and a man of his word."

In 2008, suppression of human rights comes from a new power that is steeling itself against protest, just as the white Olympic fathers once warned the "boys" against attempting any demonstrations.

We shall see.

Meanwhile, Australia's Qantas airlines announced that Salute will be  shown on all flights to Beijing beginning in late July.

UPDATE: The Strib has an op/ed today that has more about Smith and Carlos and the global nature of their protest. (Norman isn't even identified in the picture caption.) In noting how the image still resonates today, the piece only gently raises the question of where the athlete human rights advocates of today may be — especially those with a far bigger platform than Smith and Carlos had. The answer the writer doesn't quite give: To suppress dissent, don't threaten top athletes — give them big contracts.