The Schrug

Just a wee bit of historical perspective on the election results from the “overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts” – some gubernatorial election results:

2002: Mitt Romney (R), 50%; Shannon O’Brien (D), 45%

1998: Paul Celluci (R), 51%; Scott Harshbarger (D), 47%

1994: Bill Weld (R), 71%; Mark Roosevelt (D), 28%

1990: Bill Weld (R), 50%; John Silber (R in D clothing), 47%

Democratic Governor Deval Patrick’s approval rating is currently around 42%, and this was the first open Senate seat in the state since John Kerry was elected in 1984.

So although it’s true that there are very few Republicans right now on Beacon Hill or Capitol Hill, let’s not pretend that this is equivalent to Barney Frank being elected senator from Utah. People who were expecting a Coakley cakewalk a month ago – myself included – were just not paying attention to some basic political facts.

A friend-of-a-Facebook-friend said today that he’d voted for “real change” in the form of Scott Brown, the Republican senatorial candidate in Massachusetts. I asked, “real change from what to what?” He hasn’t yet responded.

A vote for Scott Brown is not a vote for real change. It’s a vote for no change. And somehow that seems to be what people want these days, even as they curse their present conditions.

It’s not just the Republicans anymore. Independents and even many Democrats seem to have decided that just about everything done or proposed by government is a bad idea. That includes all the ideas that were considered good ideas when recently proposed by candidates as opposed to actual officeholders. How else can we explain the huge shift in public opinion over the last few years? After giving the GOP “a thumping” in 2006 and 2008, we’re now turning against the people we brought in to replace them. A year after 60% of Massachusetts voters supported Obama, it now seems that a majority are going to vote to stop him from doing what he said he was going to do.

What is going on? What are people thinking? Are they thinking?

I can imagine a few reasons why a voter would just say no:

• Things are fine the way they are and are going to get better. [This view has been in the minority for years.]
• Things could be better, but anything the government tries to do about it will make it worse.
• Things could be better for other people, but that’s not my problem.
• Things could be better for me and/or other people if government did something, but I’m not willing to make other changes in my life necessary for the government’s plan to work.

I think the second position can be proven false by examining history, and it makes me sad to think that we as a society seem to have forgotten that government can be a good thing.

It also makes me sad that there are a lot of people holding the third position, but at least it’s a position that’s intellectually defensible if not politically correct. Fortunately, I think the number of people who truly feel this way is not large.

It’s the folks in the last group that are in some ways the scariest, particularly because I don’t think they fully comprehend what they’re saying or thinking. We’ve become a society that wants to lose weight without diet or exercise, get wealthier without adding value to anything, and get more of everything while spending less – especially from government.

I was a psychology major. I understand that resistance to change is part of the human psyche. But change is going to come whether you like it or not. The question is whether you want to make it happen or let it happen. Which camp are you in?

“Carrying condoms in DC could get you arrested.”

That warning was posted on Facebook by a magazine targeted to teenage girls. (No, I don’t read the magazine myself. It’s published by a client of mine.) I read that post a couple times and said to myself, “that can’t be right.” And in fact, it’s not. It seems I’d stumbled onto an urban legend in the making.

The Facebook post linked to an article at Feministing.com titled “Carrying condoms could get you arrested.” The article begins:

Jaclyn Friedman has a good post up at Amplify about an initiative in D.C. that could literally get you arrested for prostitution charges if you’re caught carrying three or more condoms with you. In short, D.C. police are using their "Prostitution Free Zone" law to go as far as arresting women for carrying condoms in their purse. This is happening in New and San Francisco as well.

Follow the link to Jaclyn Friedman’s article and you’ll read that

in some areas of D.C., carrying three or more condoms is grounds for arrest on prostitution charges

Follow this link in turn and you’ll come to a January 7 article by Alex DiBranco at Change.org titled “Don’t Carry Condoms in D.C. – You Could Be Charged Charged With Prostitution.” DiBranco opens with:

Think you might get lucky tonight? Well, if you’re in D.C., don’t bring more than two condoms in your purse, or you could be arrested as a prostitute. In D.C., police can declare "Prostitution Free Zones" where officers can pick up (I mean, arrest) anyone suspected of sex work. And they’ve been accused of using carrying three or more condoms as proof of intent to sell sex — rather than intent to spend the weekend getting jiggy with a guy.

Finally, we’ve arrived at some primary source material: A 2008 report written by the Alliance for a Safe & Diverse DC and published by a nonprofit called Different Avenues, as well as the official definition of a Prostitution Free Zone from the DC Metropolitan Police Department.

One teensy-weensy problem: Neither the report nor the police regulations nor anything else outside the blogosphere state that carrying condoms – whether three or three hundred — can get you arrested.

Alex DiBranco knows this now. Five days after posting the “Don’t Carry Condoms” article, she wrote a follow-up, titled “D.C. Police Confirm Condom Policy that Endangers Public Health.” She noted that DCist.com, another blog, had done some fact-checking. DiBranco wrote:

DCist contacted the Metropolitan Police Department for comment on its policy after they reported on an article I wrote last week about the use of condoms as evidence in "Prostitution Free Zones." According to DCist, MPD spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump confirms that condoms can be used as a factor leading "an officer to suspect (reasonable suspicion) that a person is engaged in prostitution," but stresses that possession of rubbers alone isn’t sufficient cause for an order to disperse or arrest. [emphasis added]

Here is the full comment from the police spokesperson, as posted by DCist:

Although the possession of multiple condoms may be a factor that leads an officer to suspect (reasonable suspicion) that a person is engaged in prostitution, it is not enough to establish probable cause for any crime. Depending on the circumstances, factors such as this may justify an investigative stop – but not an arrest.

If an individual is congregating with at least one other person in a Prostitution Free Zone (PFZ), which is already by nature a high prostitution area, late at night with no apparent destination, and in possession of multiple condoms, that would be sufficient to order the individual to disperse. Police cannot just order individuals to leave a PFZ without a reasonable suspicion that they are engaged in prostitution or prostitution-related activities.

The criminal offense associated with a PFZ involves the failure to disperse after an officer issues such an order to two or more persons congregating on public space within the PFZ for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or prostitution-related activities. The indicators for determining whether a group is congregating for prostitution-related activities are below, and the full DC Code section is attached.

Essentially, if police cannot arrest someone for having two or more condoms outside a PFZ, police cannot arrest them for it within a PFZ. Community members often refer to PFZs as an anti-loitering statute. To some extent that is accurate, but the only loitering that is prohibited is that related to prostitution.

One may approve or disapprove of DC’s actual tactics to thwart prostitution, but boiling down their policy to “carrying condoms in DC will get you arrested” is preposterously misleading. Advocates do their causes no favors by repeating errant claims, and bloggers should take the time to drill down to the original source material before rebroadcasting inflammatory reports.

As of this writing (January 13 at 11:15 AM EST), the main text of DiBranco’s original “Don’t Carry Condoms” article has not been updated to reflect the DCist’s post of the MPD clarification. I’m going to tell her to edit the original article. Even if she does, though, it’s probably too late to prevent this urban legend from making the rounds. Look for it someday at snopes.com.

Update: Alex DiBranco has since thanked me for my comment and an update has been posted on the January 7 article. The misleading headline and statements in the body regarding condom counts and arrests remain.

N.B. It occurred to me too late to check to see whether anyone else had already exposed this myth. After Googling carrying condoms arrest I found that CityPaper scooped me by a couple of hours. Drat!

We’re planning a trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon next year. We’ll be renting a car in Las Vegas and seeing Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks on our way. I wanted to get a sense of drive times between Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim. I started with my go-to mapper, Google. Here’s the suggested route:

Start address: Bryce Canyon Lodge 63 Bryce Canyon National Pk Bryce Canyon, 84764
End address: Grand Canyon Lodge Grand Canyon North Rim, AZ 84720

Start at: Bryce Canyon Lodge 63 Bryce Canyon National Pk Bryce Canyon, 84764

1. Head northeast on UT-63 N toward N Camp Ground Rd – 3.8 mi
2. Turn left at UT-12 W – 13.6 mi
3. Turn left at US-89 S – 60.3 mi
4. Continue straight onto S 100 E – 0.7 mi
5. Continue onto US-89 Alt S  Entering Arizona – 36.2 mi
6. Turn right at Grand Canyon Hwy – 95 ft
7. Take the 1st left to stay on Grand Canyon Hwy – 0.1 mi
8. Turn right at AZ-67 S/Grand Canyon Hwy – 4.6 mi
9. Turn right toward Forest Service Rd 317 – 0.2 mi
10. Continue straight onto Forest Service Rd 317 – 1.9 mi
11. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 217 – 2.2 mi
12. Turn left – 0.4 mi
13. Turn right – 118 ft
14. Turn left – 0.3 mi
15. Turn right – 2.9 mi
16. Turn right toward Forest Service Rd 282 – 0.8 mi
17. Turn right at Forest Service Rd 282 – 1.0 mi
18. Turn left at Forest Service Rd 758 – 3.2 mi
19. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 462 – 5.5 mi
20. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 641 – 1.1 mi
21. Continue onto Forest Service Rd 462 – 3.6 mi
22. Turn left – 36 ft
23. Turn right – 3.2 mi
24. Turn left toward AZ-67 S – 2.9 mi
25. Turn right at AZ-67 S – 0.5 mi
26. Turn right toward Point Sublime Trail – 10.2 mi
27. Turn left at Point Sublime Trail – 5.8 mi
28. Continue onto Point Sublime – 2.5 mi
29. Continue onto Point Sublime Trail – 2.5 mi
30. Turn right toward AZ-67 S – 0.9 mi
31. Turn right at AZ-67 S  This road may be seasonally closed – 2.6 mi

Arrive at: Grand Canyon Lodge Grand Canyon North Rim, AZ 84720

Estimated time: 6 hours, 32 minutes.

I knew from the Park Service web site that all that Forest Service Road stuff was crap. I tried to adjust the route to stay on AZ-67, but I couldn’t get Google to go along. So I tried Bing instead. Their directions were slightly simpler.

1. Depart SR-63 4.5 mi

2. Turn left onto SR-12 13.6 mi 18 min

3. Turn left onto US-89 60.8 mi 1 hr 4 min

4. Keep straight onto US-89 Alt / SR-11 / 100 St E / S 100 E 36.7 mi 41 min

5. Turn right onto SR-67 / Grand Canyon Hwy 43.6 mi 55 min

Seasonal closure of road

6. Turn left onto road 0.1 mi

Seasonal closure of road

7. Arrive at Grand Canyon Lodge

Estimated time: 3 hours, 7 minutes.

The difference between the two mapping tools was that Bing correctly deduced that I was a grownup and could figure out that I shouldn’t drive on a road that’s closed for the winter. Google was so concerned about the possible road closure that it advised me to travel instead on Forest Service roads – which I’m betting are closed to private vehicles anyway. Google got so spooked about Route 67, in fact, that when I asked it to take me to North Rim, AZ, rather than to the lodge, it told me to take US 89 Alt South all the way from Jacob Lake to AZ Route 64 in Cameron.

The only thing I’ll say in Google’s defense is that they make their turn-by-turn directions a whole lot easier to paste into a blog.

Recommendation: next time you plan a drive, try Bing as well as Google. You may find your allegiances shifting.

Did you know this? I didn’t until Mike Capuano mentioned it during a debate for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts. The number of Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan reportedly hovers around 100. I’m not sure where Capuano is getting his estimate of Al Qaeda within the US borders, but it’s easy to believe that there are more than 100.

If President Obama expects any measurable public support for a troop increase in Afghanistan, he’d better have a good explanation for why our anti-terrorism strategy requires us to fight the Taliban as well as Al Qaeda. Right now the suggestion made by Capuano (and others, I’m sure) to focus on Pakistan rather than Afghanistan sounds pretty compelling.

If you’ve driven from New York to Boston via I-91, I-84, and I-90 on high-traffic days, you know that the delays getting onto I-90 (the Mass Pike) can be deadly. Last night, I found a pretty good work-around. Get off I-84 at exit 73 and get onto SR-190. Turn right onto SR-171, which becomes SR-197 in Massachusetts. Follow that through Webster, MA, as it turns into SR-12 (and watch for the poorly lit right turn sign on 12 at the intersection of South Main Street, North Main Street, and East Main Street). Finally, stay straight on SR-16, following the signs to I-395. Now just take I-395 north to I-290 and follow the signs to I-90.

If there were no traffic, taking this detour would increase the travel time from 29 to to 48 minutes. But the tie-ups getting onto the Pike from I-84 can easily exceed 20 minutes, and the psychological benefits of avoiding the stop-and-go are immeasurable.

Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009

Subject: Mayoral term limits

To: Mark.Ciommo@cityofboston.gov, John.R.Connolly@cityofboston.gov, Michael.F.Flaherty@cityofboston.gov, Stephen.Murphy@cityofboston.gov, Sam.Yoon@cityofboston.gov

Cc: Maureen.Feeney@cityofboston.gov

Today I received an e-mail from the Committee to Elect Sam Yoon suggesting that I contact you regarding term limits for the Mayor of Boston.

While I am a fan and supporter of Mr. Yoon, I believe he is wrong on this issue. Job experience is a good thing. Officeholders who enjoy popular support should not be removed simply so someone else can have a turn. I understand that our campaign system presents high barriers to entry for newcomers, but they are not impenetrably high. A mayor who truly abuses his or her power or whose decisions are bad for the city can and will be removed by the voters.

Had it not been for term limits, the man elected President of the United States in 2000 would likely have been Bill Clinton rather than George W. Bush. Enough said.

David Schrag

Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) is running for the Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy. One of his campaign strategies – a very cool one, if you ask me – is to hold teleconferences with potential voters. They’re like town hall meetings but without the signs and screaming. I’ve been in on two calls and both times I’ve entered the queue to ask a question, but I haven’t gotten picked yet. If I had been called, here’s what I would have said:

Congressman, a large part of what’s wrong with the United States is the Senate itself. There are 15 states with populations under 2,000,000. These states represent less than 10% of the country’s population, yet they have 30% of the vote in the Senate. Even worse, Senate rules and/or traditions grant enormous power to individual senators, either as committee chairs or as potential filibuster participants. So we’re in a situation where a Senator who was elected with under 200,000 votes can singlehandedly thwart the efforts of a President who was elected by 67,000,000. We can’t do anything about the disproportionate power of small states without changing the Constitution, but we should be able to do something about the Senate rules and procedures.

My first question is whether you have a problem with the way power in the Senate is distributed and manipulated. If not, why not? If so, what would you try to do about it?

There is a viral Facebook status update going around today:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

Let’s ignore the grammatical problems with this position and examine it on the merits.

“No one should die because [he or she] cannot afford health care.” By that reasoning, no one should die because he or she cannot afford nutritious food, clean water, adequate housing, or a safe neighborhood either. Anyone who thinks that U.S. citizenship is ever going to guarantee the supply of all those other necessities is as loony as the people talking about death panels today. Also, I might agree that no one should die because he or she can’t afford a $500 treatment that would extend his or her life by another 50 years. But what about a $5,000,000 treatment that would extend his or her life by another six months? Is it reasonable for any of us to expect someone else to subsidize that sort of extravagance?

“No one should go broke because [he or she gets] sick.” You certainly hate to see someone recover from an illness or injury only to have his or her life in shambles anyway as a result of the financial stress. But we also have to avoid moral hazards. Some say addiction is an illness. Are we ready to say that no one should go broke because he is addicted to drugs or gambling? And couldn’t we also say “no one should go broke because he or she is the victim of a crime?” And yet we hear no calls to establish mandatory insurance against Ponzi schemes, e-mail fraud, or insider trading.

I understand and applaud the sentiment behind the “no one should” slogans. However, advocates of health care reform must be held to the same rigorous standards as opponents of health care reform. If we’re going to ridicule their comments about mandatory abortions, rationing, and government-run health systems, we have to watch what we say and how we say it.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed District 9. But at the same time I couldn’t stop noticing all the bits of this film that reminded me of other films. The ones that occurred to me were:

1. 28 Weeks Later
2. The Fugitive
3. Black Hawk Down
4. E.T.
5. Alien
6. Iron Man
7. The Fly
8. Minority Report
9. Saving Private Ryan

And, of course, The Office.

What’d I miss?