Sep 03
I was recently elected to the Board of my condominium. It’s only been 4 months, but I can already say that being a member of a 5 person circle whose responsibility is overseeing the operation of a 404 unit building with a multimillion dollar budget is a unique and enlightening experience. For the most part the experience has been positive. I could write a score of entries about things I’ve learned, people I’ve met, and projects I’ve undertaken. Today, though, I want to talk about a very negative experience that came out of my work on the Board: an accusation of discrimination.
I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never been accused of discrimination, and I don’t consider myself a discriminatory person, but there it was, in writing, on the electronic forum that the community uses to communicate and organize. And why? Because I had the audacity to suggest that a playground may not be the best use of a piece of our property. Instead I proposed using it for something that a larger number of the community’s residents would benefit from, such as an outdoor party area or charcoal grills. My reason was simple – there just aren’t that many children in the building, we are talking about an amenity, not a necessity, and there is already a playground within 300 yards of the building. How am I discriminating? Am I missing something here?
Just to add a bit of context here, it’s not as if I can, or even want to, reject the playground by fiat. Quite to the contrary, I actually initiated a proposal to poll the residents of the community in order to determine what they would like done with the space. Included in the list of options that I suggested for the poll is – this is a shocker – a playground. I believe in democratic choice. In fact, I actually think the playground is a pretty good idea. It just happens that I personally think another idea is better, and so far no one has produced a compelling reason to persuade me otherwise. It seems that some people think you’re discriminating against them when you don’t agree with them. I’m inclined to disagree.
Word of the Day
syncopate (syn co pate) [sing-kuh-peyt]
- (verb) Music.
- to place (the accents) on beats that are normally unaccented.
- to treat (a passage, piece, etc.) in this way.
- (verb) Grammar. to contract (a word) by omitting one or more sounds from the middle, as in reducing Gloucester to Gloster.
Feb 04
“Sometimes even the Supreme Court just gets it wrong.” That’s what I thought to myself last week when I heard the Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to use profits to directly influence political elections. The justification for the ruling has a few parts, which I’ll summarize here.
- Each individual citizen is guaranteed the right to freedom of speech.
- The use of money to influence political elections is a form of free speech that cannot be restricted.
- Corporations are collections of individuals, many of whom are citizens, and should therefore be accorded all the rights of an individual citizen.
My personal opinion is that the third assertion is a gross misinterpretation of the First Amendment and that the Court’s ruling will be destructive to democracy. I won’t waste time explaining why. If you disagree with me, you probably begin with a different collection of axiomatic principles. Instead, I want to look at one logical extension of the Court’s conclusion.
Can a corporation run for public office? No, not an individual associated with the corporation. I mean the corporation itself. Absolutely not, right? Just doesn’t make sense. Well, at least one corporation disagrees. Right here, in my hometown, Murray Hill Incorporated is planning to contest the seat of the 8th district of Maryland in the House of Representatives. You’re probably thinking, “That’s ridiculous, that will never fly.” While I happen to agree that it’s absurd, and so does Murray Hill Incorporated, five of the nine Supreme Court justices apparently do not. And by all indications, it will fly. After all, if a corporation is afforded all the rights of an individual citizen then it is afforded the right to run for public office. I can’t help but wonder what James Madison would think.
Common sense is all the rage nowadays. Common sense in health care. Common sense in economic policy. Common sense in national defense. Maybe it’s time we start applying a little common sense to the law. Otherwise, we might find ourselves living in the world’s first corporate plutocracy.
Word of the Day
iconoclast (i con o clast) [ayh-kon-uh-klast]
- (noun) a breaker or destroyer of images, esp. those set up for religious veneration.
- (noun) a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.
Feb 01
We are all undoubtedly aware of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that recently afflicted the small island nation of Haiti. Perhaps 200,000 are dead or missing. Hundreds of thousands suffer from injuries. More than 1,000,000 may be homeless and hungry. The conditions on the island are squalid. Bodies lay in the streets. Garbage is accumulating. Sanitation is nonexistent. This is truly a humanitarian crisis.
The response of the international community has been capacious. So many planes are arriving at the island that some of them aren’t able to land. People are placing their lives on hold in the hope that they can pull survivors from the rubble. Donations continue to flow at breakneck pace. Tragedies such as this bring forth the better angles of our nature and serve as a reminder that cynicism has its limits in the face of hope.
But there’s something strange about this type of event that I can’t quite understand. What exactly is it about the disaster in Haiti that leads us to perceive it as so acute? Is it the 200,000 that may have perished? Is it the innumerable people with no home, no food, and no water? Is it the hundreds of thousands afflicted by injury and unable to receive treatment? Is it the destruction of the cumulative efforts of an impoverished nation? What is the measure of a catastrophe?
If the measure is any of the numbers given above – the death, the starvation, the disease – then this world is never without humanitarian crises. Each day is a calamity of the scale that Haiti is experiencing. Poverty is ubiquitous, disease is omnipresent, starvation is the norm, and death is the rule. Yet we accept all of this as status quo. So many people were moved to do more in the face of the crisis in Haiti, to dig a little deeper than they thought they could. And that in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis. I just can’t help but wonder what the world would be like if we recognize that every day is a catastrophe. And I can’t help but wonder what it might be like if we all dug a little deeper than we thought we could.
Word of the Day
kakistocracy (kak is toc ra cy) [kak-uh-stoc-ruh-see]
- (noun) government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.
- (noun) government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
