I guess both the major league and minor league football seasons are over now, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to think about.

 I just heard on Friday that for over ten years some college players have been working to establish a union for college football players. It's called the National College Players Association. It was started in 2001 by a group of UCLA football players and has expanded since then. According to their web page they have had some notable victories, including:

 A $10 million fund to assist former athletes who wish to complete their undergraduate degree or attend a graduate program.

There was more of a discussion of this on NPR's Tell Me More on Friday, and you can follow the link to hear more. 

Obviously the ultimate goal of any union is to gain the ability to negotiate on wages, hours, and working conditions for the members of the union. This undoubtedly seems a long way off, maybe even inconceivable, for the underpaid workers the NCAA refers to, without a hint of awareness of the irony, as “student-athletes”.

 On the other hand, there was a time when the same would be said of unionization of graduate student teaching assistants at U.S. universities, and that has changed. I well remember the struggle of graduate students to unionize at the University of Michigan when I was there at law school, and the arguments the university made then were the same as what the NCAA would undoubtedly make against unions for football players.

Nevertheless, while the argument that teaching assistants are primarily students, there to learn and not to provide a valuable service to the university found support from the NLRB in 2004 (at least at private schools), the same argument is laughable when it comes to football or basketball players. They're not there to learn, their academic progress is irrelevant to their real jobs of playing football or basketball, and the universities make millions of dollars off their efforts. 

I don't really believe in paying college athletes, mainly because I don't think big-time college athletics should exist at all. Nevertheless, someone is making money off these workers' labor, and it isn't the workers.

Maybe it's time for that to change. 

One of the odd stories in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, which I understand is tomorrow, is the news about Scarlett Johansson.

There are always stories about the commercials that are going to be on the Super Bowl, or that were on the Super Bowl in the past, or that didn't make it past the censors for the Super Bowl.

It turns out that Ms. Johansson's commercial made headlines for more than being in two of the mentioned categories. It's a commercial for Sodastream, the kitchen appliance that is going to save you big bucks that you would otherwise be spending on soda at the store, like Coke or Pepsi.

Oops–that's how they didn't make it past the censors. Since Coke and Pepsi are big advertisers, no fair mentioning the competition, so it's back to the drawing board for Sodastream.

The big story, though, is the conflict between Ms. Johansson's decision to rake in the bucks–I haven't been able to find out exactly how many–and her role as a spokesperson for Oxfam, one of the leading human rights and antipoverty organizations worldwide. 

You see, Sodastream makes its home soda machines in a settlement in the occupied territories in Palestine, so her support of Sodastream puts her in direct conflict with Oxfam, because “Oxfam is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.“

The story percolated for a few days, with human rights activists criticizing Ms. Johansson, but Oxfam not dropping her as a spokesperson. Eventually, though, she resigned her position with Oxfam, who accepted the resignation.

 This is the only way it could have ended, obviously. Ms. Johansson couched her endorsement of Sodastream in the self-serving language Sodastream itself uses, the humanitarian mission of providing employment for Palestinians, never mentioning the sizable checks that are obviously flowing her way. She sure doesn't come out of this looking good.

 I haven't seen the comparison made, but the parallel that strikes me about this is South Africa and the Sullivan Principles. Leon Sullivan was a Baptist minister from Philadelphia on the board of General Motors, and when anti-apartheid activitists were agitating for divestment of American companies from South Africa Sullivan came up with the Sullivan Principles, a set of standards designed to justify American corporations making big bucks off apartheid.

In the case of the Sullivan Principles, as in the case of Sodastream, humanitarian reasons were trotted out to justify corporate policies: we're a positive force for change, the people need the jobs, blah, blah, blah.

Never mind that the activists on the ground supported divestment as the only effective tactic against apartheid, either in South Africa or Palestine.  Ms. Johansson's “argument cuts no ice with Palestinian groups, who say SodaStream pays Palestinians less than Israelis, or with Oxfam, which says that trading with Israeli companies operating in West Bank settlements legitimates the occupation regardless of how they treat their workers.”

 Don't expect this to have any impact on Ms. Johansson's career, but at least we can hope that it creates some greater visibility to the settlement issue in the wider world.

I woke this morning to learn that Pete Seeger died yesterday.

It wasn't a surprise. He was ninety-four and had been hospitalized for almost a week, but it's still sad news.

Whether we knew it or not, most of us growing up in the 1960's owed a lot to Pete Seeger. Pete was responsible, more than any other single individual, for the explosion of the popularity of folk music, which was one of the fundamental pillars of the music of the 1960's and beyond. 

Without Pete would we have had Bob Dylan, The Band, The Byrds, and the countless musicians who followed in their footsteps? It's doubtful. Or at least, we might have had Bob Dylan but he might not have been Bob Dylan.

Pete was a seemingly inexhaustible font of folk music, the people's music, from America and around the world. Even more, though, he was an inexhaustible source of energy and inspiration for musicians and activists everywhere. At a time when musicians were mainly cast in the bland, conventional mold of Pat Boone or Patty Page, Pete's music, and everything he did, was informed by the radical political views he never hesitated to share with the public, even at the expense of record sales, bookings, or congressional investigation.

I got to meet Pete once, when he came to sing at the inner city high school in Paterson, N.J. where my mother taught, but he was a presence in my life from the first time I heard him on the first Clancy Brothers album we had in my family. 

Remember Pete's life and work, and enjoy his music. 

Republicans in Oklahoma are showing that, like the rest of the Republican Party, they are taking their cues from the racists who brought us the strategy of massive resistance during the civil rights movement.

 Of course, the new civil rights movement is for marriage equality and equal treatment and dignity in general, and the dead-enders don't like it one bit. They especially don't like that the federal courts are ordering them to stop discriminating, so in Oklahoma they're resurrecting a favored tactic from the Jim Crow days.

You know that a couple of weeks ago a federal court found Oklahoma's marriage equality ban to be unconstitutional, but you might not have heard that the legislature has been trying to decide what to do about it.

For their solution they are looking to the ideas of the old South, when cities under pressure to integrate their public schools closed the public schools entirely, creating what were colloquially known as seg academies, private schools with the ability to keep discriminating. Or, if the city was told it had to integrate its swimming pools it would just close down the public schools.

Bingo, problem solved, no race mixing allowed.

What's the marriage equivalent? Pure simplicity, really. Just abolish marriage.

No, really, I'm not kidding. Watch this:

I'm thinking they may not have thought this whole thing through, though. For instance, lots of people like being married. In addition, lots of people, even straight couples, like the tax and other benefits that being married brings.

I don't think this is going anywhere, but if you want to have a clue to their mindset this is a good place to start. 

Vermont Public Radio, my favorite news source, ran a story earlier this week about Middlebury College and the position it is taking on the American Studies Association's academic boycott of Israel.

As reported by Mitch Wertlieb:

 The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has found its way into a controversy that has some American colleges and universities at odds with the American Studies Association, a group that promotes American History and culture. That’s because the ASA recently issued a resolution to boycott Israeli universities over that country’s treatment of Palestinians.

Middlebury College is a member of the ASA and is among up to 20 other colleges and universities that, in response, issued a statement condemning the ASA boycott.

 http://digital.vpr.net/post/middlebury-college-faculty-object-group-s-boycott-israeli-academic-institutions

The story goes on to quote a professor about why they don't agree with the boycott, calling boycotts of this nature a “challenge to the free flow of ideas”, and doing a pretty good job of explaining why the college would not support the boycott.

What the story did not do was give much of a sense of context, or of the opposing view in this hotly contested debate. Would it have been that hard to talk to someone at the American Studies Association, or to find an academic who supports the boycott?  

I think it's fine to do news stories about local institutions, particularly when they relate to how our Vermont institutions relate to the greater political debate. I do think, though, that VPR could have done a better job in fairly presenting both sides of the debate.

In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to capture the sheer horror of someone like Adolf Eichmann, who carried out his executions of the Jews in the same way that another government functionary would file tax forms, distribute zoning permits, or even hand out railroad tickets, accepting the validity and normality of every dictate of the state.

This is precisely the phrase that came to my mind while listening to last week's two-part NPRinterview of John Rizzo, who is flogging a book based on his experience as the interim general counsel for the CIA during the torture years. (No, not linking to the book here. If you want to pay him for approving of torture you can find it yourself.)

Rizzo is clearly not a fanatic, but the interview makes clear that he had no difficulty accepting the premise that the government was essentially permitted to do whatever it wanted to extract information from those it held captive.

Rizzo even clings to the tired line that waterboarding isn't torture.

 I'm a lawyer, and torture is legally defined in U.S. law. If I had concluded — or, more importantly, if the Justice Department had concluded — that these techniques constitute torture, we would never have done them. So I can't say they were torture. I didn't concede it was torture then, and I don't concede that it's torture now.

 He's right, it is defined in U.S. law. Here's one definition I found: 

As used in this chapter—

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

. . . 

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality . . . 

 Guess what: this is exactly what waterboarding is. It isn't simulated drowning, or giving the victim the impression that he is drowning. No, it is subjecting him to drowning, only to rescue him before he succumbs. It absolutely carries with it the threat of imminent death, the suggestion that if he does not cooperate the torturer will eventually decide not to stop pouring the water over him but continue until he can no longer breathe.

I don't expect Rizzo to ever face ethical or disciplinary charges for presiding over torture by the CIA, but if he does I am pretty sure I know what his defense will be.

“I was only following orders.” 

As GMD's resident New Jersey exile (Could I really be the only one? Here in Vermont that seems unlikely.) I continue to follow with great interest the exploits of Governor Tony Soprano Chris Christie.

 I've already posted about his little Fort Lee traffic scam, and that's turning out to be the gift that keeps on giving.

My question tonight, and I'll just throw it out for discussion, is this:

Will either the scandal, or his transparent lies about having nothing to do with it:

(a) have an adverse effect on his presidential prospects, or 

(b) he never had any shot at getting through the Republican primaries anyway? 

 And question 2: regardless of your answer to question 1, how much fun are you having seeing this guy get exposed for the bully he is?

You may have noticed the little Internet kerfuffle over last Friday's column by David Brooks. Brooks is the resident conservative at the New York Times, and at the Times, and on Fridays on NPR and McNeill-Lehrer he uses his amiable, slightly self-deprecating shtick to advance his slightly out of the mainstream conservative views.

 Friday he was on marijuana legalization, and in an eminently mockable column he expressed his opposition to legalization, anchoring his opposition to legalization to a youthful experience in which:

 I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning.

I'm not sure why the lesson of this experience is “never smoke pot ever again” instead of “never get high before you have to give an important presentation”, but I'm not David Brooks.

As I said, the column unleashed a stream of mockery on the Internet, the Twitterverse, and elsewhere, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

The substantive key to his argument, though, is this:

 I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.

 It is this point, though, that makes the argument for continued prohibition not only incoherent but even inconsistent with conservative ideology.

Let's take a look at how Brooks's argument fits in with conservative ideology. If you've been paying attention at all in recent years you've seen that one of the greatest evils that the conservatives have been trying to protect us all against has been the National Endowment for the Arts. That was exactly what Brooks thinks we want: the government “subtly encourag[ing] the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts . . .”

That's also the agency that conservatives use to stir up their base, threatening to defund the endowment in the guise of fiscal responsibility. If they ever succeed maybe it will enable the Pentagon buy more paper clips or something. 

More importantly, though, think about the scale of things that the government can do to influence behavior. On one end of the scale we have almost entirely voluntary efforts, like Michelle Obama's efforts to encourage people to eat well and exercise. * You know, the stuff that conservatives call fascism. All those PSA's you see on TV about wearing your seat belt, not drinking and driving, or not discriminating against people? All ways for the government to subtly encourage people to behave responsibly.

From there we go to financial incentives, like tax-exempt status for educational and cultural organizations: if your local orchestra doesn't need to pay taxes on their they can charge lower prices, and then maybe more people can afford to go to classical music concerts, and rich people can get tax breaks by giving them contributions. Those grants from the National Endowment for the Arts fit in here.

Then if you want to go all the way to the most coercive, most violent method of influencing behavior, we have the criminal justice system. See someone doing something we don't like, throw them in jail. That's the approach we've been following with marijuana for decades, and we've figured out that it doesn't work that well at “discouraging lesser behaviors like being stoned”. Hell, it didn't even work for David Brooks when he was in high school, and I'm guessing he wasn't much of a wild rebel when he was growing up. (Okay, that's going out on a limb, so feel free to prove me wrong.)

So that's what Brooks wants to do: he wants to keep throwing people in jail for marijuana use, even though it doesn't work, apparently because it is government's subtle way of tipping the scales in favor of temperate, prudent behavior and subtly encouraging the higher pleasures.

But there's one more thing that David Brooks left out of his column: his experience of being arrested and going to jail for smoking pot. I'm pretty sure he left it out because it never happened to him. I have a very hard time thinking of a single one of my white friends that it ever happened to, either.

But it's a funny thing: it does happen to black people. Black people use marijuana at about the same rate as white people, and yet they are arrested for it at a tremendously higher rate. Depending on where you are, if you're black you may be three, four, five, or even eight times more likely to be arrested for marijuana use than if you're white.

So of course David Brooks didn't get arrested, and he really didn't have much to worry about. Some people do get arrested, though, and the odds are that those people are not white.

So when he tells us that we should keep marijuana illegal, what David Brooks is saying is that continuing to arrest black people for marijuana use is one of those ways that the government can subtly tip the scales to discourage white people from getting stoned.

Personally, I don't think the goal of keeping future David Brookses from smoking pot and blowing an English report is worth the price of locking up black people.

But maybe that's just me. 

 *CORRECTION: A reader has pointed out that in addition to the voluntary exercise and healthy eating programs promoted by Michelle Obama, legislation adopted in 2010 and regulations adopted in 2012have made mandatory changes to the school lunch program, including fruit, vegetable, whole grain, and other nutritional standards.

Note that I'm not saying “top ten”, because I don't necessarily know how many I'll want to list. Still, I have a feeling that I won't have trouble with the dividing line between the books I would strongly recommend, those that are just okay, and those that I would steer you clear of.

 Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May

This year we saw Republicans in state legislatures continue to try to keep black voters away from the polls and Republicans on the Supreme Court gut the Voting Rights Act, so this is a timely reminder of the difficulty and heroism of the fight to establish voting rights.

 Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

At a time when conservatives think slaves should have been grateful for the life they had, and Southern conservatives express nostalgia for the Lost Cause and anger at what they like to call the War of Northern Aggression, it is still important to have a clear vision of the reality of slavery in our past.

 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins.

 A new poll just demonstrated that the percentage of Republicans who “believe in” evolution (do you “believe in” gravity? the germ theory? the heliocentric model?) has dropped to a minority. Maybe it's because some of the smart ones are leaving, but it's important to know the facts.

 Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry – A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat.

We are constantly seeing new research demonstrating the limited effectiveness and affirmative harms of psychiatric medications. In this book Carlat exposes the moral bankruptcy of the industry in which so many policy makers continue to repose their blind faith.

 Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

New York City is falling apart, Richard Nixon is about to resign, and a French tightrope walker prepares to walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  This novel, which I had some reluctance to read, captures these events and a world we can hardly imagine or remember forty years later.

 The Cost of Haven (Great Cities, #1) by F.F. McCulligan

 My interest in fantasy pretty much begins and ends with Tolkien, but I know that fantasy readers are always on the lookout for a new voice. Here's one that presents a believable world and believable, relatable characters. It's worth reading, even if I, the author's father, say so myself.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 You really haven't read it yet? Come on, what are you waiting for? Too big a fan of capitalism? 

 Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon.

 I never thought I'd have any interest in a book about the world of horse racing, but this is definitely worthwhile.

Okay, not the weightiest matter we have to talk about this, but I hope you didn't miss this story.

According to the Nashua Telegraph,   

 Longtime state Rep. David Campbell, a Democrat, was behind the wheel of the BMW that struck several ducks outside the Crowne Plaza’s main entrance late Monday evening.

 And get this–it was their fault!

 When a witness took a picture of Campbell's legislative license plate, his excuse was “The ducks should have moved.”

Or, as George Costanza taught us many years ago:

Don't we have a deal with the pigeons? 

George Costanza versus the pigeons by joeyguse