My Facebook Profile Mottos

Defend Witches!

Democracy is worth fighting for

Fiat justitia ruat caelum cadet

개는 수프입니다

I'll leave the translation of the last two, from Latin and Korean respectively, to the reader.

Personal Reflections

* This year I'm going to be a sag wagon husband, taking my wife to her Horsetooth Half-Marathon in Fort Collins in April (one of the most difficult half-marathons there is, due to extreme elevation changes in the course) and to the New York City Marathon in November. As I write this post, my wife is doing an 18.5 mile training run for the 13.1 mile Horsetooth race.

* This year, our house which we bought twenty-five years ago turns 100 years old. We've been generally good stewards of it. Its fair market value is more than triple what it was when bought it. But our twenty-five year old swamp cooler is due to be replaced, so we'll do that this spring. I'll be getting bids next week. We're suffering from renovation and repair fatigue, however, after several major projects, so we may pause that, apart from landscaping (to eventually kill the lawn and replace a badly weather damaged back patio gazebo), for a while.

* We could find ways to pay off our small mortgage faster than it is scheduled to be paid off with increased principal payments, if we felt an urgent need to do so. But why waste an ability to borrow money at a 3.625% fixed rate with tax deductible interest that helps our credit rating, while inflation eats away at the inflation adjusted value of the loan principal every year? The money that would be used to pay off the loan can be invested instead for better returns, even in very safe bond investments (or even if it were in high return FDIC guaranteed CDs).

* We've received our compost bin as part of a new City of Denver program that has finally come into being. It takes a little getting used to in daily life to split waste into three categories instead of two and we've thrown out some waste that should be composted. But, we'll get the hang of it. The City also didn't pick it up the first time we put it out on a collection day for some reason.

* In contrast, we've pretty much gotten used to the new policy of having to bring reusable bags to the grocery store or pay a 10 cents per disposable bag tax on that formerly free service.

* One of my two cars has been unofficially the kids car for a long time, but this year, we will officially be a one car household as title to our kid's car is passed down to the next generation. 

* My Nissan Juke will hit 60,000 miles right around the tenth anniversary of purchasing it this year and is in pretty much perfect condition, except for some cosmetic hail damage that we don't plan on fixing. 

* The only thing the Juke lacks that I would actively like to have is a blind spot detector. I wonder how hard it is to add one on an aftermarket basis. 

* If I drove in the mountains more, I'd get snow tires, as the Juke is otherwise a perfect snow car. But I don't drive in the mountains all that much, and Denver doesn't get enough snow to justify snow tires, in lieu of all weather tires with a decent tread.

* My plan is to replace my Juke with an EV (not a Tesla) sometime after the next generation of far superior solid state batteries enter the market, the Trump tariffs have been repealed, and the national charging network is better, perhaps five to ten years from now. This will require emptying the garage (which currently has so much stuff stored there that there is no room for a car), moving the garage stuff to a new backyard shed, and installing an EV vehicle charger (which Denver's building codes now require in new garages, I've heard). The new EV could very well end up being my last car. 

* Incidentally, even though Nissan sells decent enough EVs, it's looking like there's a good chance that Nissan won't exist anymore by the time my next car purchase rolls around. The company is in dire straights, and a contemplated merger with Honda has apparently fallen through.

* Also vaguely car related, I have dropped SiriusXM, which my car is equipped to receive. I almost always listen to Spotify using Bluetooth to my cell phone instead when I'm out and about, and don't drive enough in places with no cell phone access to justify keeping it. 

* My generation has seen vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, iPods, videocassettes, large format video disks, DVDs, 5.25" floppy disks, 3.5" floppy disks, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, hard drives with actual disks in them, and analog broadcast television all come and go (we were too young to really experience 8-track tapes). We have seen digital broadcast television, digital radio, dead tree format newspapers and magazines, large movie theaters, satellite TV (first with large dishes and then with smaller ones), short wave radio, land line phones, pay phones, pagers, slow speed intercity passenger rail, paper checks, personal letters, "dumb" Blackberries and flip phones, and home yogurt makers, lose their shine too. Denmark's Post Office is discontinuing letter delivery at the end of this year and taking away all of its post boxes. Analog FM and AM radio are also just dying a slow and gradual death (especially AM radio). Wrist watches used to be a daily necessity and are now jewelry and a fitness tracking device. Vinyl records are actually coming back, but it's a niche thing that probably won't get big. We saw supersonic commercial flight come and go, but it looks like it will return soon, beyond a niche. So, seeing satellite radio start to lose its relevance too isn't all that shocking.

The story of AM radio over the last 50 years has been a transition from being the dominant form of audio entertainment for all age groups to being almost non-existent to the youngest demographic groups. Among persons aged 12–24, AM accounts for only 4% of listening, while FM accounts for 96%. Among persons aged 25–34, AM accounts for only 9% of listening, while FM accounts for 91%. The median age of listeners to the AM band is 57 years old, a full generation older than the median age of FM listeners.

From a 2009 Federal Communication Commission report (via Wikipedia). A person who was a median aged AM radio listener in 2009 is now 73 years old. Baby Boomers are between the ages of 61 and 79 in the year 2025. As of 2024, the average AM and FM radio listener combined is 57 years old, and 62% of all AM and FM radio listeners combined are 55 years old or older. AM/FM radio formats that were historically mostly AM like talk radio and religious programming, have the oldest listeners (although Spanish language radio formats which were also historically AM dominated have younger than average listeners, and country music formats are only a little older than that).

* I've also decide not to renew my digital Washington Post subscription this month, even though I've read it regularly since college, because the editorial interference of Jeff Bezos in the paper is undermining the quality of the product. I'll probably remove it from the sidebar of this blog as well.

* Today is the start of daylight savings time. I would eliminate it and have standard time all year round if I could. There is nothing wrong with changing the time that businesses and governments open and close during the course of the year if particular businesses and governments want to change that on a seasonal basis.

* My new office, across the street from Shotgun Willies, is so far a success. At a recent deposition I hosted there, that went smoothy from a logistics perspective, opposing counsel and her paralegal were plotting and scheming about how to get a coffee maker a nice as mine for themselves.

* Evidencing my progressing older age, I got a colonoscopy last month. It went fine and I don't have cancer, but it isn't something that I'm looking forward to the next time it is scheduled, a few years from now. The pre-procedure purging is harrowing.

* In very positive news, they are on the brink of introducing a new and affordable screening test for pancreatic cancer, which was the main cause of death of my father, his brother, and two of my not related by blood aunts. If there is a genetic risk factor, my brother and I probably have it, and we will probably live to benefit from this screening test. In even more positive news, they are close to being able to provide a pancreatic cancer "vaccine" that would prevent some subtypes of pancreatic cancer, although this isn't quite as imminent.

* It is a relief that both of our children have finished college, secured good jobs in the tech sector, established themselves in their own apartments, and found good relationships with significant others. 

* It would be nice if they could buy homes for themselves, but the housing market is the toughest for buyers that it has been in at least thirty-years right now, due to a surge in mortgage interest rates, while home prices mostly remain sticky at prices established when mortgage interest rates (and hence home affordability) were half what they are now.

* We've very much enjoyed being able to see our children's significant others this year. We'd welcome their upgrades to official son-in-law and daughter-in-law status, but that's up to the kids to decide. We are proud of the progress that our daughter's boyfriend has made toward becoming a Chartered Financial Analyst®, and are excited about our son's girlfriend's first half-marathon in the District of Columbia next weekend that she is just finishing her training to prepare to run.

* My official running competitions have been limited to 1 mile fun runs and 0.5 km races with donuts at the half-way mark. 

* I'm more ambivalent about my daughter's new dog, Oakley, because, as most people who know me are aware, I'm not a dog person. But, I'm learning to tolerate him.

* Both my nephew and the daughter of a dear friend of the family are applying to colleges this year. They have gotten out all of their applications, and have received acceptances and rejections from some schools so far. Even if none of them remaining responses are acceptances, they each have decent options. Over the next month or so, they'll each hear from some remaining schools that haven't given them an answer so far and they'll make their big decisions. For different reasons, neither will be going to schools in red states.

* Next year will be senior year for both of my nieces, so we'll get to watch the process of them deciding what to do after high school again next year as well, from front row seats. My brother and his wife will probably move to a different home in the Boston metro area once they become empty nesters.

* On July 3, 2025, less than four months from now, this blog will be 20 years old.

Dog IQ

Everything you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask, about dog IQ.

Researchers from the University of Helsinki assessed the cognitive abilities of over 1,000 dogs from 13 breeds with ten tests. Border Collies scored at or near the top in social cognition, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability, while Labrador Retrievers scored near the bottom. While prior research has shown that a dog's breed isn't as predictive of its personality and behavior as many think, the present study suggests that there are noteworthy differences in certain cognitive abilities.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland put over 1,000 dogs from 13 distinct breeds through a battery of cognitive tests in perhaps the largest laboratory study of canine intelligence ever conducted.

Their findings were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

(Source) 

The paper and its abstract are as follows:

The extraordinary genetic and behavioural diversity of dog breeds provides a unique opportunity for investigating the heritability of cognitive traits, such as problem-solving ability, social cognition, inhibitory control, and memory. Previous studies have mainly investigated cognitive differences between breed groups, and information on individual dog breeds is scarce. As a result, findings are often contradictory and inconsistent. The aim of this study was to provide more clarity on between-breed differences of cognitive traits in dogs. 

We examined the performance of 13 dog breeds (N = 1002 dogs) in a standardized test battery. Significant breed differences were found for understanding of human communicative gestures, following a human’s misleading gesture, spatial problem-solving ability in a V-detour task, inhibitory control in a cylinder test, and persistence and human-directed behaviour during an unsolvable task. Breeds also differed significantly in their behaviour towards an unfamiliar person, activity level, and exploration of a novel environment. No significant differences were identified in tasks measuring memory or logical reasoning. 

Breed differences thus emerged mainly in tasks measuring social cognition, problem-solving, and inhibitory control. Our results suggest that these traits may have come under diversifying artificial selection in different breeds. These results provide a deeper understanding on breed-specific traits in dogs.

Saara Junttila, et al., "Breed differences in social cognition, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)" 12 Sci Rep 22529 (December 29, 2022) (Open access). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26991-5

Dogs Are Still For Soup

A woman suffered serious injuries to her hands after she was mauled while trying to break up a fight between her three English bull terriers during what Longmont police are calling a "massive dog fight" on Saturday night. 

Cmdr. Jeff Satur said a St. Bernard also got caught up in the middle of the fight, but was not being aggressive with officers. All the dogs were injured, and one might not survive. Satur said police responded to 21 Exner Place at 10:30 p..m. on a report of a woman, 55, being mauled by multiple dogs and screaming for help. 

Five officers found the woman being attacked by the dogs, and they began to pepper-spray the dogs and hit them with batons, Satur said. Satur said officers were able to round up three of the dogs, but had to use a Taser to subdue the fourth one. "The fourth dog was not as easy," Satur said. "Eventually, it was clear that pepper spray was not convincing this dog to back down."

From here.

Unfortunately, this woman did not have a heroic cat to come to her rescue. (More heroic cats here).

Quote of the Day

The Republican Presidential candidate debate held by Fox News in Ohio yesterday was mostly a game of hand grenade volleyball, as the "moderators" made every effort to bait the candidates to attack each other and offer intemperate answers.  But, there was one small moment of decency in the affair, which is the source of today's quote of the day.

At about 8:10 p.m., New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was asked if former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is lying when he say that Social Security and Medicare can be saved without significant overhauls.  Christie replies:

He's not lying.  He's just wrong.

Like Colorado Pols from whom I obtained the report of the debate, I think it is a great line.*

One of the real foundations of civility in the practice of law, which applies equally well to politics and business, is to recognize that there is a difference between saying something that you do not believe to be true, and lying.

When you accuse someone of lying you are making an ad hominem attack directed at their character that poisons the well of any future communication or cooperation.  Sometimes, someone is so bad that it is appropriate to poison that well because you don't want to communicate or deal with someone like that.

But, usually, giving someone, particular a potential powerful ally in future dealings, the benefit of the doubt is the better course of action.  People like politicians, diplomats, businessmen and lawyers (professional negotiators all) frequently have repeat dealings with each other related to a wide variety of issues, both in the matter they are currently working together upon and in future completely unrelated matters.

So, crossing the line from giving the other side the benefit of the doubt and continuing to try to deal with someone in a civil matter to determining that the other person is an untrustworthy individual who should be shunned or dealt with through demands imposed by force or threat of force (physical or legal), is a grave one that should be taken only when absolutely necessary.

Also, assuming that someone is not lying is wise because in the worlds of politics, diplomacy, business and law, often someone who says something that seems obviously false to you, really isn't lying. When you are lying, you know that the statement you are making is false and you make it with the intent that someone else will be deceived by your statement.  In contrast, if you actually believe that what you are saying is not false, you are simply mistaken.

In real life, and in particular, in matters of government policies, it is not at all uncommon for people to have inaccurate but sincere beliefs that are deeply colored by cognitive biases, attitudes about which purported experts you trust.  Few people know enough about these policy issues, and nobody knows enough about all of these policy issues, to form their own independent opinions based upon the raw facts.  Everybody, even the people who look at the raw facts, receives expert opinions about which policy is right and often, more than one expert who superficially seem to both be qualified, provide contradictory advice for a whole host of reasons that go into the complicated process of analyzing complex questions like "Can Social Security and Medicare be saved without significant overhauls?"

Questions like these almost always themselves contain inherent ambiguities (what changes to the program count as "significant overhauls") and potentially false assumptions (Social Security and Medicare are broken in a way that will cause some serious but unstated consequence, unless they are "saved").  One of the key elements of analyzing policy is making sure that you are asking the right question and that the question is a valid one, and not just that you are giving the right answer to the question asked.

This is why, in defamation law and the law of fraud, the law recognizes that opinions are never inherently false, which recognizes, basically, the inherent complexity of how opinions (which most statements about policy matters amount to) are formed.

There are some narrow exceptions to this rule that are pertinent to accusations of lying in debates as well.   An opinion that you claim to hold, when you don't actually hold that opinion is false.  For example, if I said that I believed that my neighbor's German shepherd was cute and adorable, I would be lying.  It might be a "white lie" that is justified under the circumstances and couldn't easily be disproven, but it would still be a lie.  (I personally believe that dogs are for soup.)

Also, some statements in the form of opinions so strongly imply a factual basis, for instance, because they would be almost impossible to sincerely hold if a person had knowledge of certain facts, that the statement of opinion implies a statement about those facts which can be false.  If I say that it is my opinion that a company is financially sound, that statement might mean a multitude of things, but it is probably inconsistent to the extent that it would be a lie, with me having personal knowledge that the company had billions of dollars more of debt than assets, was far behind in paying all of its bills many of which had been referred to collections, and had just lost the contract that was to have provided two-thirds of its revenues for the next six months.

Finally, there are statements that are not meant to be taken literally which a reasonable listener should understand were not offered in that sense from context.  If an ordinary health person in the United States says in casual conversation that, "It would kill me to learn my son wasn't going to graduate on time.", the speaker is using a figure of speech, and not lying, even if he is actually certain that he would go on living if he learned that fact.

In sum, there are few more important lessons to learn than that someone can be wrong and say something that you believe to be untrue, without lying.  And, acknowledging that this is true can transform the way that you deal with other people for the better.

The fact that the sentiment and the speaker's attitudes about civility in political tactics, that I've just discussed in this fairly long blog post, can be summed up in a six word sentence delivered on the fly (albeit probably with long hours of preparation and coaching before hand), is what makes today's quote of the day so great.

It also enhanced my respect for Chris Christie whose candidacy was tarnished almost on day one from aspersions on his character arising from "Bridgegate".

* I couldn't have watched it live if I wanted to, because I don't have a television that receives cable television or broadcast television and don't subscribe to a screening service that provides it.

Heroic Cat Saves Kid From Evil Dog

The linked video shows a heroic cat saving her family's four year old kid from a vicious puppy that nearly killed the child.  This serves to exemplify the universally known truth that cats are good and dogs are for soup.

Falling In Love In A Nutshell

It was amazing how simple it was, how fast [we] went from strangers to spending every minute together. He met my parents. I met his parents. We did homework together. We kissed for hours. His dog liked me.

- E. Lockhart, "The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs, and Me, Ruby Oliver." (2005) at page 54. N.B.: despite a promising start, this relationship ends badly.

Some Counties' Republicans More Conservative Than Others

It is widely known that some counties in Colorado, like Denver and Boulder and many of Colorado's ski resort dominated economies, have more liberal voters overall than others, like the rural Front Range, Colorado Springs, and the Western Slope. Yesterday's Republican Presidential caucus in Colorado illustrated the fact that the same trends hold true within the Republican party even though caucus goers make up only the most activist core of the Republican party. There were 65,926 votes cast at Colorado's caucuses yesterday. This was 8.3% of the 793,098 active Republican voter registrations in the state. There are also 304,590 inactive Republican voter registrations in Colorado, and they would not received notice of the caucus in the mail. Colorado's GOP Presidential caucus process was closed. Only registered Republicans were allowed to participate, although voters with inactive registrations were allowed to vote.

Liberal leaning Colorado counties generally favored Romney. Conservative leaning Colorado counties generally favored Santorum.

Romney won in all but one metropolitan Boulder-Denver county (he won in Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties, but lost to Santorum in Adams County). Romney also won in a number of Colorado counties with resort dominated economies (Clear Creek, Eagle, Garfield, Jackson, Lake, Pitkin, Routt, San Juan and Summit). Romney won in just four of Colorado's rural counties, two in liberal leaning San Luis Valley (Alamosa and Conejos), and two in the far Northeast corner of Colorado bordering Utah (Moffat and Rio Blanco) that are also adjacent to Colorado counties with resort economies (Routt, Eagle and Garfield).

Bent County, a rural Front Range county with just 59 caucus participants, cast 25 votes for Gingrich, 22 for Santorum, 4 for Romney and 3 for Paul. Gingrich was a second place finisher behind Santorum but ahead of Romney and Paul in a number of rural counties across Colorado (Baca, Costilla, Dolores, Hinsdale, Huerfano, Lincoln, Phillips, Prowers, Saguache and Yuma) and one resort counties (Park). Gingrich was in second place after Romney, but before Santorum in Routt county.

Santorum won every other county in the State, including the counties that are home to Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Durango, and Grand Junction. Pitkin, Eagle and Routt counties, all of which have resort economies, were the only counties in the state where Santorum didn't place first or second.

Ron Paul didn't win in any Colorado county, but faired best in counties that included some of those where Romney did well, earning at least 15% of the caucus vote in Denver, Boulder, a number of Southern Colorado counties (Archuleta, Chaffee, Costilla, Hinsdale, La Plata, Mineral, Montezuma) and a number of resort economy counties (Eagle, Gilpin, Gunnison, Lake, Pitkin, Routt, and Summit). Paul did finish in second place in Mineral, Pitkin, Eagle, Gilpin and Gunnison counties.

As a footnote, Romney, in addition to being a "vulture capitalist" who is on record as not caring about the very poor, also may have lost the votes of some dog lovers with his less than sensitive treatment of his own dog.

Why care about the dog? I am not someone who thinks that candidates personal lives are irrelevant to whether or not you should vote for them as the family and personal background of a candidate, and a candidate's decisions in his personal life, affect how he is likely to approach issues that come up in his term that may have been individually unforeseeable at the time of the election. All four of the Republican candidates, and President Obama, have truly fascinating lives. For example, Romney, Santorum and Paul have all have many children, while Gingrich had many wives. Neither Obama nor Gingrich were raised by their genetic fathers. Several have changed their religious affiliation during their lives and/or been in marriages with someone with another religious affiliation. Gingrich, Obama and Santorum each had very humble origins. These stories are worth a few posts of their own.

UPDATED ANALYSIS:

Enik Rising has some not very convincing ideas about Evangelical religious affiliation that could drive the differences. I'm inclined to think that the key variable is the extent to which Republicans are urban. Romney counties are pretty much the only ones in which Republicans mostly live in relatively high population density neighborhoods. In other counties, Republicans mostly live in low population density neighborhoods, with a couple of exceptions on the border with Utah. County level population figures obscure this relationship because resort counties have small, high population density areas and lots of vacant land.

For example, in the counties that are home to Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Grand Junction, Republicans overwhelmingly live in relatively low density suburbs. In Denver and Boulder, however, even Republicans live in relatively dense urban residential neighborhoods.

Rolo The Dog Remembered

It happened a year and a half ago, but Rolo the dog, whose owner I represented in an appeal while the dog was on doggie death row (successfully) died in the summer of 2010, about two and a half years later than he would have had he been euthenized, at the age of eight. Farewell, Rolo.

Petty Observations

* The inappropriately low speed limit (25 miles per hour on a stretch that should be 35 miles per hour), on Alameda Boulevard between University and Cherry Creek South Drive in Denver is most annoying. So is a similar inappropriate low speed limit on 1st Avenue between Downing and University. Both strips of road are speed traps apparently maintained by the affluent neighbors can't handle the cognitive dissonance associated with the fact that an arterial road happens to run through their neighborhood.

* The capacity of noise cancelling headphones to eliminate low level background noise, the rumbles and hums of dishwashers, ceiling fans, distant trains thumping along train tracks, and the munching and crumbling in the background, that you weren't even consciously aware was there is quite miraculous. They really work better that I would have expected them to work.

* Why does the Cherry Creek farmer's market end when the harvest season begins?

* After several years with a smart phone, I am thoroughly sick of it. I want a dumb phone that does nothing but talk and text. For my druthers, I'd prefer it if it didn't have e-mail, internet access, applications, voice mail, call waiting, or conference calling either. In fact, voice mail and answering machines are, in general, inventions that tend to reduce the quality of modern life. Oh, how I long for the days when human beings put notes on little pieces of paper with only the essentials or gist of what they had to say.

* Why do people let their pairs of dogs go wild on soccer fields full of kids practicing on a weekday afternoon? They are so threatening. But, every dog owner I've ever met seems to be under the insane delusion that their perfect pet could never scratch, claw, bite or push someone, or the dog owner thinks that other people would appreciate it.

4300 Posts

The flu, and then the backlog of must do work that piled up while I was sick, has kept my posting down for the last few weeks, but 4300 posts seemed like it was worth noting.

It also has kept me out of touch with the news. Emerging from the haze after a few weeks of near total media blackout for any reason (vacations can have the same result), always feels a little weird. Every once and a while a headline peeks through, but it seems disjointed and incomplete without a larger context. No wonder apolitical independents seem so disoriented when it comes time for them to participate in political process or opinion polls.

I remain mystified, with a handful of exceptions, when I try to find rhyme or reason for why some of my posts produce comments or links at other blogs, and others generate no feedback.

I am mildly alarmed that I can't seem to get Taylor Swift tunes out of my head, and have recently and on multiple occasions worn a cowboy hat (together with a leather jacket) for practical purposes, having misplaced my usual knit cap. As much I love living in Denver, I can't imagine that I have really culturally become a part of the cowboy west. It's probably just a fluke, as I feel absolutely no desire to buy a pickup, wear high boots, ride horses, drink whiskey, own a gun, line dance or get a dog.

Political Theory 401: Beyond High School Civics

Over at Square State, I've made some rather long comments on diaries by Something The Dog Said, like recent ones about what it takes to take over the Democratic party and forming third parties.

Something the Dog said invariable reads the relevant constitutional, federal or state law texts or knows what those texts say, and knows how the system is supposed to work on the surface, at a "High School Civics" level. Like Something the Dog said, I am more liberal than conservative, and I have a strong interest in both constitutional rights and our formal political system. Nothing is wrong with either of these things, and this is really a considerable feat given the diarist's status as:

Just a humble (well sort of) talking dog who is lucky enough to have an owner who will type for him.

I assure you that, in contrast, my cat does not give a fig about politics or the United States Constitution, not even cat's rights. The main political issues in my cat's political life are "inside for now" v. "outside for now," and "sleepy" v. "hungry" v. "catnip."

Most people who aren't lawyers, lobbyists or political reporters, and didn't major or minor in government, or a kindred field like politics or political science, who have any reality based clue about the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. political system, understand the U.S. Constitution and the political system like Something the Dog said does. There are, of course, conservatives who believe in a "fantasy Constitution" and conspiracy theorists, but they aren't reality based.

I like Something the Dog said, but a lot of those surface level interpretations of the U.S. Constitution in Square State postings missed the meaning that those provisions have taken on in a couple of centuries of political practice and court interpretation (I made it my habit to supplement those diaries with comments when I could). Likewise, a lot of those surface interpretations of how our political system works lack the insights and understanding of how and why those systems actually work held by academics and political insiders.

One of the important reasons that I am sometimes an independent voice in political discussions (online and off) is because my views on process issues and political tactics, particularly those related to political parties, are informed by empirically based academic political theory, which is often at odds with the high school civics view of the world. This post collects some of the comments I've made at Square State about the political process and ends with some concluding observations about movement politics and the relationship of movement politics to more conventional political approaches.

How Do You Create A New Political Party?

Something the Dog said explains the formal legal steps one has to take to create a new political party and concludes that forming new political parties is harder than co-opting one of the existing political parties, because most existing third parties are dismal failures when it comes to actual results.

My response:

All True, Yet All Wrong.

Your post accurately states the law, and dozens a minor parties try to slog it out this way. But, third parties that take this path inevitably fail.

Third parties that win races do so one of two ways. They either get a good share of existing office holders (or former office holders) from an existing party to defect, giving them people in office immediately, or a dynamic national leader of the party springs up and a lot of dittohead supporters ride that leader's coattails.

In the case of defections, usually they form around some combination of regional/ethnic nationalism or some other intractable national issue.

The party doesn't have to have national support, but does have to have regional support in some culturally-politically identifiable geographic region. They can arise from either a dominant party in a region, or a perpetual loser in a region, but almost never arise when there are two more or less equally competitive political parties.

Probably the most likely place for a third party to arise right now would be in the Northeast, where the GOP is moribund, despite previous strength in the region, with a core of Rockefeller Republicans.

The other way you get third parties is electoral system reform. Every electoral system has a range of parties in any given geographical area that it tends to stabilize at (when it is launched more parties are usually created with most quickly dying out in one or two elections). The U.S. system favors two. Many proportional representation systems favor somewhere between four and nine depending upon the precise details of the system.

How Do You Take Over The Democratic Party?

Something the Dog said then explains the formal process for getting elected to political party positions thereby presumably gaining influence in those political parties.

My response:

This actually does work.

This is essentially what happened in the Republican party in the 1980s and 1990s that allowed Christian conservatives to take over that party.

It is worth noting, however, that change came only after Presidential nominee Goldwater provided leadership for viewing the party as a home for hard core conservatives, and after the "Southern strategy" of co-opting Southern segregationists who had previously been Democrats, was in full swing.

The formula here, as in creating new political parties, is national leadership first, grass roots change to back up that leadership second.

The GOP example also comes with a built in cautionary tale. The Christian conservatives got power in their party, but also lost touch with the party's political base, which ultimately produced a Republican party which did less well in elections, going virtually extinct in its one time stronghold of New England.

Do Political Parties Matter?

How power does a political party's infrastructure (as opposed to political parties as alliances of candidates and elected officials), have?

Someone else making a comment to that post notes:

I'm not sure the State-wide Dem Party is the problem

The main problem with the Colorado Democrats is that the higher-level, establishment politicians are beholden to big donors, lobbyists, State-Lege connections, and their own networks. The DLC is influential in Colorado because they have nurtured these networks.

The actual "Party", i.e. the PCPs, activists, and even state committees, are relatively ignored. The Democratic Party is very strong on Single-payer health care, worker's rights, and environmental issues, but it's like pulling teeth to get Ritter or our federal delegation to actually stick their neck out.

That said, the real ropes to piss up, are the lower-level elections: school board, state House or Senate seats. That is where the Christian right really took over the Republican Party. Yes, they also had a network of extra-Party organizations, from right-wing think tanks, to single-issues like anti-abortion groups, to Christian mega-churches, to talk radio.

For these smaller elections, the PCP and state-house district is where to work. We've had four or five appointment committees in this past year, and because the PCPs did the voting, these elections were all about low-level Party activists, not so much about Party higher-ups or State-level Pols.

A very key place to have influence is in running fund-raising for State Senators and Representatives. A $1,000 house party (10 friends times $100 each) is a huge pile of cash for a State Rep who worked his or her butt off for your cause the past session.

To this I responded:

Colorado is a mixed bag.

On one hand, Colorado's political parties are quite powerful as political parties go.

Colorado's political parties can fill vacancies in state legislative offices held by elected officials from their party, and the Colorado caucus process is the overwhelmingly preferred method of access to the primary ballot. You can count on your fingers the number of partisan state elected officials who were placed on the ballot via petition rather than the caucus process.

On the other hand, in Colorado and every other state, (1) campaign funding is overwhelmingly given to candidates rather than to political parties (in Colorado political parties must also expend private funds to run the statutorily required caucus process before there is money left to spend on advocacy and voter turnout), (2) party platforms aren't worth the paper they are written upon, and (3) voters who aren't otherwise active party members, rather than active political party members, resolve close fights for party nominations in primary elections (the exception to this rule in Louisiana which doesn't have primary elections).

Colorado's state constitution doesn't even allow legislative caucuses of political parties (e.g. the House Democrats) to take positions that bind the members of the caucus, even if the only penalty is expulsion from the caucus.

Also, most municipal, school board and special district governments are officially non-partisan. So, European style political parties that coordinate political action at the local, state and federal level are effectively impossible.

Political parties in the United States are weaker than those in almost every other country in the world, where active party members control the process of nominating the party's candidates, considerable financial power is centered in the political party, and party platforms tend to have more of a meaningful effect.

Political parties were legally gutted by the progressive movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, in response to perceived corruption from "political machines" like Tammany Hall, and have never recovered.

Even if political parties were not legally hogtied they wouldn't be that powerful. Our electoral system automatically favors having two political parties in any given geographic location. This means that to be politically viable candidates have to have the backing of plurality political coalitions before the election, rather than forming them after the election. There are few geographic locations where a plurality political coalition can be very distinct ideologically. Hence, organizations like the DLC which aim for a bigger tent and less policy clarity have an inherent electoral system advantage over, e.g., progressives who want more policy clarity.

Why Not Defect To The Green Party?

A different comment to the post argues

Long, long-time fact: "Democratic Party" is a hollow label for several different parties. Most obvious example: Dixiecrats. Contemporary example: "Western Democrats" in the Mountain Man Time Zone. Another (if you're not convinced yet): Blue Dogs, including J Salazar from our very own SqSt.

Second fact: The two parties, GOP and Democrats, have long been vehicles for corporate interests to buy the government (see: M. Bennet). Slight differences, to be sure, but not profound. Both are stout defenders of the Rights of Private Property, including artificially low rates of taxation on the top 1% of income earners.

The Dog Said would have us believe that there are only two choices here: start a brand-new party, or organize to take over the Democrats from the inside. New Party? Too hard to thread through the maze of BS required to get onto the ballot ... procedures largely designed to prevent a European-style multi-party democracy and to retain a two-party monopoly that clings to the Center (as if this were philosophically the home of the Best Answers, sort of like Adam Smith's glorious Marketplace).

There is, however, the Green Party, which to my knowledge is on the ballot in CO (pls correct me if I'm wrong) and which has been associated with One Issue (not an insubstantial one, btw) but need not be so and is not incompatible with the Progressive agenda on other issues. Might not the Greens be amenable to an infusion of people and support from disillusioned ex-Dems?

My response to this argument is that:

In our system, third parties hurt their friends.

When the candidate with the most votes in the general election wins, even if that candidate doesn't have support from a majority of voters, and there are more than two candidates, ideologically similar candidates split the pool of voters that either one of them would probably have shared if only one was running.

There are ways to prevent this from happening. The primary system was invented to prevent members of the same political party from undermining each other.

Some jurisdictions (even some in the U.S.) require a majority vote to win, and hold a runoff election if no one candidate gets a majority in the first round. A slightly more complex system called "instant runoff voting" (a much better name than the previously used "single transferable vote") has essentially the same effect.

Something called proportional representation, where you use multi-member districts to elect officials, and seats are allocated to parties based upon their percentage of the vote in the district is also neutral to third parties (and allows parties without plurality support in any one place to have a political voice). A variant on this system used in Germany, the Ukraine and some other countries requires a political party to get at least five percent of the vote in an election to get any seats.

One can also have proportional representation by having people vote for candidates in single member districts. Each vote is both a member for that person in that district and a vote for that person's party statewide (or nationally). Parties whose candidates collectively get a bigger share of the statewide vote than the share of single member district seats that they win, get bonus seats in legislature to make up the difference (at least in part).

New York State deals with the issue with a system were one can run in more than one political party at once, providing ideological clarity in primaries, and designated elected officials for third parties to turn to as allies.

Finally, two political parties that have political common ground in our system can agree to concede seats in races where the other party's candidate has a better chance of winning. This has been done in similar electoral systems in Canada and the U.K., but the alliances tend to either be fragile or lead to the merger of the political parties involved. (In Western New York State, the Democratic and Republican parties had a similar gentleman's agreement to alternative judicial elections; Democrat's ran a judicial candidate for a seat in one election while the Republicans intentionally didn't nominate anyone, and the Democrats returned the favor for the Republicans in he next election; perhaps they still do, I no longer live there).

Unless your third party is so on fire that it swiftly wipes out the competition on your side of a political spectrum (as the Republicans did when they emerged in the U.S.), they are not just irrelevant, they are counterproductive.

In short, third parties could be relevant and useful, but that would take electoral system reform.

Beyond Parties

It isn't that I believe that major political changes in an ideologically positive direction aren't possible.

Seemingly against the narrow politics of self-interest, the franchise was consistently expanded in nations across the world, to broader groups of people. In the end, the abolitionists and the suffragettes won, not just in the United States, but worldwide. The Progressive movement, for better and worse, had an immense political impact in what was then viewed as a liberal direction, a century ago (culminating in the ultimate political experiment, Prohibition).

The Civil Rights movement was so effective that most leading segregationist politicians and religious denominations who outlived it ended up endorsing an end to de jure racial segregation and the legalization of interracial marriage. Almost every non-European country has gone from being a European colony to achieving sovereignty and independence, the largest share in the 1960s. In the 1960s, abortion was illegal or highly regulated in the vast majority of the world. Now, it is legal in most of the developed world with only modest regulation. Government safety nets for those in need were once non-existent and are now the world norm. The death penalty has been abolished is most of the world and a minority of U.S. states; in many of the countries and U.S. states where the death penalty is still on the books as an available punishment (e.g. Kenya which just commuted the sentence of more than 2,000 death row prisoners, or the U.S. military), it is carried out rarely or not at all in practice, even in aggravated murder cases.

Women have vastly more career options than they did half a century ago, and domestic violence is now taken much more seriously by the legal system. Gay rights have dramatically expanded in the last generation.

In the United States, today's progressive Democrats are the intellectual heirs to the advocates of these earlier, stable, yet progressive political sea changes. Conservatives, meanwhile, have consistently opposed these changes.

When these issues emerged, they were highly partisan, even though many are the subject of a broad bipartisan consensus now. There aren't a lot of Republicans out there publicly arguing that the vote should go back to being restricted to white, male property owners (although the less overtly racist and sexist argument that the vote should be restricted to those with sufficient civic education is popular among conservatives today and isn't dismissed out of hand by liberals).

Even in the midst of a national debate about health care, where an impotent "public option" has become a poster child for people fear mongering about "socialism" sweeping America, very few legitimate political figures with any actual power are arguing that the taxpayer funded American single payer health care system for the elderly (a classic example of a "socialist" welfare state program), or its welfare state fellow traveler, Social Security, should be dismantled. Socialism is a lot less frightening when encountered at a personal level (something also true of immigrants, homosexuality, and transgender individuals).

How did these big changes come about?

Yes, there was activism within political parties. In fact, third parties were also created around most of these issues. But, ultimately, the real progress came though movement politics. Ideological and political leaders changed people's views in society as a whole. This happened over time, not all at once. It was done with combinations of electoral politics, legislative politics, public interest litigation, private civic action and public awareness campaigns. The mix has differed with different issues.

Movement politics has its own logic. Philosophers come up with ideas. Pioneers in the movement spend a lot of time engaged in futilely banging their heads against the wall, making sound but not light in formal legal and political institutions, and crying in the wilderness. Effective leaders take up the cause and allow it to gain legitimacy with a progressive "vanguard of the revolution," often an educated elite, and gain traction in formal legal and political institutions.

Two steps forward are often followed by one step back. The abolition of slavery and the political gains of reconstruction after the Civil War, were followed by almost a century of lynchings and the segregationist system. Women entered the workforce, outside a narrow handful of professions, a couple of generations after they gained legal and political equality rights. A great reduction in the use of the death penalty in the United States has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in criminal incarceration and life imprisonment sentences. In most of the world, political independence from colonial powers was swiftly followed by autocratic dictators or autocratically controlled political parties that remained in control for many decades. But, after these social and political movements stall and peter out, the cycle repeats itself and there is more progress. And, gains made in a first round of reforms are rarely completely reversed.

Successes in one movement teach the leaders of the next generation's movements organized around different issues how to bring about change. The gay rights movement, for example, has mostly consciously and intentionally followed the model of the Civil Rights Movement. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent figure in the movement, who is now a national and international icon, in turn, consciously modeled his approach on that taken by Ghandi in his efforts to seek independence from colonial rule for India and on the tactics of the union movement. He was probably informed by the model of the movement for women's sufferage and the abolitionist movement in the United States as well; his embrace of the term "progressive" that had advocated both causes, is one of the important reasons that liberal Democrats today embrace that terminology.

As these movements illustrate, the real leaders in movement politics often hold no formal position of authority in the political system. Martin Luther King, Jr. never held elected office outside of civic organizations that he helped to found. The Ghandi that Martin Luther King, Jr. emulated was never a prime minister or president. The leading sufferagists were self-appointed.

The flame that keeps these movements going, in both their dormant and seemingly futile stages, and as they gather steam and become unstoppable global waves of policy change, is the power of ideas. Powerful ideas are pilot lights ready to ignite immense political and policy change when enough fuel for political action is present.

Of course, some ideas are flawed and are left behind by history. Eugenics has entered a well deserved period of dormancy. The limitations of a constitutional right to freedom of contract eventually became apparent. The right to bear arms as a political right to violent revolution, as opposed to a means by which law abiding citizens can defend themselves from criminals, has the political irrelevance that this suicide pact of a political theory deserves. There are few advocates for the creation out of new government run churches like the one established for France after the French Revolution, or the established town churches of New England.

There is nothing wrong with seeking political change through high school civics channels. It is a good way to fine tune the existing system. But, it isn't a path to the real political change that many who take that approach crave.

Understood in the context of movement politics, even people involved in seemingly futile or counterproductive third party politics seem a lot less crazy. Third parties exist to provide a credible threat that they will undermine the parties to which they are most closely aligned in order to pressure the party that actually has a chance of getting someone elected to change itself in their direction, not to get people elected in politically significant numbers themselves.

The optimal third party never has to exercise the threat. When it does, you get ugly situations like Ralph Nader's effective thwarting of Al Gore's Presidential bid in 2000. Needless to say, George W. Bush's election, which hinged on a few hundred votes in Florida and one vote in the U.S. Supreme Court (but would have been a win for Al Gore by an indisputable margin in Florida and the electoral college without Nader), did not advance the progressive causes that Green Party voters for Nader overwhelmingly embraced. Indeed, the fact that the third party threat can get so ugly (and liberals have no monopoly on the tactic or its tactical epic failures), is evidence that our current electoral system is broken.

In the mean time, my goal is to focus on the power of ideas, to not limit my horizons to formal electoral or legislative politics, and to continue to hope and work for real change that will be stable because the ideas have been assimilated by society at large.

Short Dog Breeds And Other Genetic Dog Tales

Why are dachshunds, corgis, basset hounds and five other short-legged dog breeds short?

It comes down to a single dominant "retrogene." The "trait called chondrodysplasia — causing legs that are short relative to body size, curved and heavier-boned than normal."

[R]esearchers pinpointed an extra stretch of DNA on chromosome 18 in every dog from the eight short-legged breeds [95 dogs in all], but in none of 204 control dogs they examined.

Retrogenes arise when RNA erroneously puts an extra copy of a gene into a genome, in this case a gene related to limb development.

This particular trait is not found in wolves, so it probably arose "after dogs first became domesticated and before division of early dogs into modern breeds, putting the range . . . anywhere between 300 and 15,000 years ago."

The Domestication of Dogs

Dogs appear to be the first animals to be domesticated. All other domesticated animals appear to have been domesticated after the neolithic revolution, a technological revolution in human pre-history, which took place roughly contemporaneously in several separate places around the globe with the domestication of different plants and animals.

Dogs also appear to be the only domesticated animal that proto-Native Americans brought with them to the New World from Asia, again vouching for their domestication as pre-neolithic.

Australia's native dog, the Dingo, unlike most distinctive Australian fauna, is not marsupial. "Dingoes were the only big placental mammals in Australia, apart from humans." They are most closely related to the dogs found in Thailand. The breed appears to have arisen in the vicinity of Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia about 5,000-5,500 years ago. Current theories place its arrival in Australia at 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, probably via boats from Southeast Asia that landed on Australia's North Coast. This is consistent with genetic evidence of a very small founding population for dingos, possibly a single pregnant dog. This date is also consistent with the absence of dingos from Tasmania, which separated from Australia about 12,000 years ago, after aborigine populations arrived, but before the dingos arrived on the continent. Dingos are believed to have caused the extinction of several species, including the Tasmanian devil, on mainland Australia.

Dogs were not domesticated 40,000 years ago. Dingos arrived tens of thousands of years after Australia's aborigines originally migrated to Australia, a date at least 40,000 years ago and quite probably 70,000 years ago.

Aboriginal populations were present in both mainland Australia and Tasmania when Europeans first arrived. At that time there were 315,000-750,000 or so aboriginals people living in Australia divided into 250 or more nations with separate but related languages. Old world diseases like smallpox killed about half of the aboriginal population early on in British colonization including about 90% of people in the area of first contact.

Melting glaciers caused the distance between Australia and other land masses to increase and flooded the land bridge between Australia and New Guinea around 6,000 years ago. At the time the Australia aboriginal population is believed to arrive, the trip would have involved sea intervals of a minimum of 55 miles by sea.

Pre-European Australia did not see the domestication of plants and animals, or the development of farm economies found on other continents in the neolithic revolution outside the Murray Basin, in far Southeastern Australia, where there was fish farming and hay stacks of stored grain were found.

Dark Haired Wolves

Another trait with a clear genetic identity in dogs and wolves (who can interbreed as a single species) is the gene for a black coat, which wild wolves appear to have inherited from a domesticated dog mating.

A specific mutation in a stretch of DNA called the K locus is to blame for giving some domesticated dogs black hair . . . most black labs, poodles and shepherds have this mutation. . . . researchers found that 102 of 104 black-colored [North American gray] wolves [in Yellowstone National Park] carry the same mutation in their DNA as black dogs, whereas none of 120 lighter gray-colored wolves had the mutation.

Dark fur has proven adaptive for forest wolves, while light fur is more common in wolves on the tundra.

Dog's Guilty Look Not Proof

Dogs can have what is known as a "guilty look." But why? It turns out that the accusation and not the forbidden act is to blame. Researchers studied the matter and learned that dogs wrongfully accused of inappropriate behavior after being set up by researchers look just as guilty to their masters as those who are rightfully accused by their master of doing something inappropriate.

Query if the same result is true in people?

If they treat the Mayor like this . . .

The cops swooped into the house of a Maryland mayor to arrest him for possession of marijuana. His house was actually being used without as knowledge as a package drop point by two drug dealers totally unrelated to him and his wife who were later arrested.

Mayor Cheye Calvo got home from work, saw a package addressed to his wife on the front porch and brought it inside, putting it on a table.

Suddenly, police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple's two dogs and seizing the unopened package.

In it were 32 pounds of marijuana. . . . Calvo . . . said police apparently killed [his dogs] "for sport," gunning down one of them as it was running away.

"Our dogs were our children," said Calvo, 37. "They were the reason we bought this house, because it had a big yard for them to run in." . . .

The mayor, who was changing his clothes when police burst in, also complained that he was handcuffed in his boxer shorts for about two hours, along with his mother-in-law, and said the officers didn't believe him when he told them he was the mayor.

Equally troubling is the fact that:

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High . . . defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened.

He said this despite admitting "that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims." A later statement disavowed any implication of guilty or connection to the case.

The Washington Post reports:

Calvo described a chaotic scene, in which he -- wearing only underwear and socks -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs' carcasses and pools of the dogs' blood, Calvo said.

Local cops, who were kept out of the loop, were naturally indignant:

Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy said his eight-person department has been besieged by phone calls from as far away as Louisiana from people who mistakenly believe his officers were involved.

Murphy said he is angry that, instead, his officers were not informed ahead of time of that the county planned a major operation inside the town limits, especially in light of a 2006 incident in which then-Prince George's Police Chief Melvin C. High expressed formal "regret" that Berwyn Heights police were not told of threats made to an abortion clinic.

"I believe there is absolutely no credible reason why notification to my police department should not have been made," Murphy said. He said he is confident his officers could have entered Calvo's house without violence.

I have a feeling that Chief Melvin doesn't have much of a future with the force after this little incident, and that a lawsuit for excessive use of force and wrongful arrest by the police is coming soon to a Maryland court near you. Sometimes, learning to say you're sorry, and throwing the guys who actually screwed up under a bus is the correct response.

If I were the Jack B. Johnson, the County Executive of Prince George's County (which is one of the more liberal suburbs of Washington D.C.), and had the authority to do so, Chief Melvin High would already have his termination letter in hand. Then again, Chief Melvin High's retirement effective August 31, 2008, which was announced just two days after the raid, may not be a coincidence (although the Chief claims that he informed the County Executive of his impending retirement in June).

This raid has undermined the credibility of every police officer in his force, because the Chief of Police has no sense of reasonableness and the cops are clearly lying.

One also hopes that the state of civics education for Maryland police officers improves a little over the next few weeks. It is pretty appalling that county police officers don't even know the names of the elected officials in their jurisdiction. These weren't state cops or federal agents.

This is particularly ironic because this is a police department whose K-9 unit and use of force policies have been under federal supervision for the past five years, an investigation that was either just completed or was on the verge of being completed:

Our reputation has been restored among our peers and with citizens, as we have worked through the Department of Justice Consent Decree on the K-9 Unit and the Memorandum of Agreement related to use-of-force. We made the transformation process a positive – a stepping stone in the interest of Constitutional Policing and to earn and maintain the best regards of our citizens.

Mr. Johnson, it was your vision for police reform and your understanding of the necessity to take decisive action that positioned and propelled the Department into the future and that vision was the guiding force for our early work together with the Department of Justice to end the investigations. Just last week we completed the seventeenth quarterly review by the Independent Monitoring Team, which reports to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the U.S Attorneys Office, the Federal District Court and indirectly to our citizens on the tremendous progress we’ve made over the past five years.

I guess it is back to the drawing board time on that restoration of reputation among peers and citizens thing.

Is Saudi Arabia Sustainable?

While Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, it is also a theocracy, arguably a more strict theocracy than the semi-democratic Shi'ite theocracy in Iran. The royal family and the extremist Sunni clerics who have carte blanche to impose absurd decrees with royal patronage have a symbiotic relationship. How long can the system last?

Cats and Dogs in Riyadh

The latest news on this front is ban on the sales of dogs and cats as pets, and a related ban on walking them in public, because men use them to attract women.

The prohibition went into effect Wednesday in the capital, Riyadh, and authorities in the city say they will strictly enforce it - unlike previous bans in the cities of Mecca and Jiddah, which have been ignored and failed to stop pet sales.

Violators found outside with their pets will have their beloved poodles and other furry companions confiscated by agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the official name of the religious police, tasked with enforcing Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic code.

The commission's general manager, Othman al-Othman, said the ban was ordered because of what he called "the rising of phenomenon of men using cats and dogs to make passes at women and pester families" as well as "violating proper behavior in public squares and malls."

"If a man is caught with a pet, the pet will be immediately confiscated and the man will be forced to sign a document pledging not to repeat the act," al-Othman told the Al-Hayat newspaper. "If he does, he will be referred to authorities." The ban does not address women.

The Saudi-owned Al-Hayat announced the ban in its Wednesday edition, saying it was ordered by the acting governor of Riyadh province, Prince Sattam, based on an edit from the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars and several religious police reports of pet owners harassing women and families.

Early implementation of the ban has been spotty, but honestly, it is just one more straw in a heap of indignities that have been imposed upon the Saudi people.

The dog and cat ban, like the ban on women driving cars, appears to be a case of Saudi Arabian exceptionalism. There isn't anything inherently Islamic about either, although both are conducted with religious authority. The Islamic world is a big place, and most are far less circumscribed in their regulation of people's daily lives (although most Muslims in predominantly Muslim places also not nearly so libertine as Americans).

The Future Of The House of Saud

The current king is 84 years old. The crown prince is 80 years old. Of course, the House of Saud is in no danger of running out of heirs. Under current Saudi succession rules, there are over 150 people eligible to be the next crown prince, "though consensus and competency would limit this number." But a generational change in leadership is bound to happen before too long. The youngest member of the current King's generation is sixty-eight, and it is possible that some members of the current generation would be passed over in the process of reaching a consensus of the successor to the current crown prince.

Due to the common practice among male members of the Saudi royal family of having many children with multiple wives, the size of the royal family is immense. The late King Abd al-Aziz had 22 wives (no more than four at a time), 45 legitimate sons, and about 50 daughters. His next successor, King Saud King Saud had 53 sons and at least 54 daughters. There are now thousands of descendants of King Abd al-Aziz, with probably at least a thousand wives in addition. Most, if not all, of the widows, wives and descendants of the many potential crown princes and late male descendants of King Abd al-Aziz, have been raised with immense wealth and privilege, elite educations, and close proximity to power. But there are only so many positions of power that a country like Saudi Arabia, which has fewer people than California, has available to allocate to the innumerable princelings. Also, there are elites within the roughly 20% of Saudi residents who are immigrant foreign workers, and within Saudi elites outside the royal family, which have members who are more competent than the lesser princelings whom the royal family would like to reward.

In the traditional European monarchies, most royal descendants were bastards and the youngest legitimate princes and princesses couldn't expect much for their descendants. Both European and Chinese monarchs traditionally insisted on the pre-eminence of the eldest son in the line of succession. Bastards and younger sons were traditionally sent off to be senior soldiers in the innumerable wars of these monarchies; the princesses, legitimate or not, were married off and cast their lots with whatever husbands they were married off to in order to cement alliances. But, in the Saudi system, legitimate close male desendants are abundant, the order of succession is more fluid, deadly wars have been scarce, and the Ottoman practice of killing off rival siblings has been abandoned. Far more people have a claim on the family's power and resources than in historical royal dynasties.

Can It Last?

Is this kind of political system really sustainable? When does it all fall apart? What will be the last straw? Perhaps the regime can survive until the oil runs out, because there is no domestic position movement of consequence known to the outside world, but it can't last forever.

Anecdotal evidence abounds that large swaths of Saudi society, including much of the most practically educated and competent part of its elites, publicly follow the rules, but ignore the rules in private.

Many Muslim women, particularly in France within the West, adhere to an Islamist feminism that embraces the distinct roles of men and women in Islam and welcomes the veil. But this doesn't mean that they support a system where women can't drive, the Internet is profoundly censored, satellite television is sometimes forbidden, cell phones are suspect, dogs and cats are banned, religious police met out summary justice to vulnerable women on the street, and women are punished for being victims of sex crimes.

The kind of middle class that Saudi Arabia needs to transition to a less oil dependent economy is also precisely the kind of middle class that has historically demanded political reforms, economic freedom, the rule of law and cultural liberalization.

The members of the next generation of leaders also know that Saudi Arabia is deeply out of step with most of the rest of the world. Many members of the ruling royal family have traveled, studied and lived abroad extensively, and are comfortable in that entirely different world.

Both the group of people whom their mini-royal welfare state supports, and population that the larger national welfare state must support, are growing much faster than their nation's wealth, with the royals outpacing the general population's growth. If national wealth declines, resentment towards collateral members of the royal family who have economic privileges may heighten.

Reading from the muddy tea leaves of official pronouncements, there seems to be a tendency in Saudi Arabia's official governmental structures towards an oligarchy in which all legitimate male descendants of the first King in the current dynasty form a de facto House of Lords, with equal voices and votes in their non-binding recommendations, and with a first priority for appointment to senior positions in government and business (like church and state, they are also not so distinct in Saudi Arabia). The group of men eligible to be heirs to the throne has been constituted as a sort of college of cardinals to choose the next crown prince.

The Future Of Saudi Arabian Oil and the Timing Of Political Change

Most importantly, many members of Saudi Arabia's next generations of leaders are no doubt acutely aware that their nation's oil supplies, that have made the existing system possible, won't last forever. Saudi Arabia will be hard pressed to maintain current oil production levels for another decade, and could easily see oil production drop 75% in thirty years.

After seven decades of supposedly investing the nation's oil wealth back into the health and welfare of the Saudi Arabian people, their nation still earned 75% of its GNP (this 75% is about $15,000 per capita on a purchasing power basis) and 90% of its export wealth from oil, and still has to import in the form of foreign labor a huge share of its skilled and unskilled labor force.

A 75% reduction in national oil wealth would reduce Saudi Arabia's per capita GNP (on a purchasing power basis) to less than that of Mexico, even in the unlikely event that the foreign workers who sustain the economy stayed on when the oil wealth of the country dried up, even before accounting for anticipated population growth (which tends, perversely, to accellerate in times of economic scarcity).

Without any oil wealth, Saudi Arabia's per capita GNP would fall to that of China, even before population growth and the lose of the economic engine of foreign workers, and to sub-Saharan African levels once those factors were considered. Continued investment in human and physical capital, sovereign wealth funds, and reductions in the massive drain that the royal family imposes on the nation's wealth could buffer this catastrophic economic decline for Saudi Arabia, but only genuine modernization can prevent a collapse or mute it in the long run.

Political consequences of an inevitable long term decline in Saudi Arabian oil production are likely to come much sooner, probably not long after declining oil revenues and rising populations start to make a serious dent in the national standard of living.

Saudi Arabia's political system is a bread and circuses affair. Its no representation system survives because there is no taxation and there is an ample welfare state. But to maintain even a shadow of the current welfare state, taxes on the general public will be necessary in ten or twenty years. History has shown that democracy and expansion of the franchise is closely linked to the need of the ruling class to tax its subjects.

The Peaceful Change Option

Given these pressures and trends, a close parallel of English political history of several hundred years earlier, seems like the most plausible model for gradual political change if Saudi Arabia manages a peaceful and gradual political and social transition.

In this scenario, Saudi Arabia would develop a powerful House of Lords made up of men eligible to be the next King that periodically elects a crown prince to serve as successor to a current king with real political power; a subordinate elected parliament whose power primarily is limited to control over the funds contributed to the public fisc from taxes; and religious authorities of the established Islamic religious authorities, who would monitor and constrain political authorities in a manner similar to, but probably less absolute than, those of Iranian religous leaders. And, if Saudi Arabia takes that path, this might happen in the time frame of ten to twenty years, when the forces that sustain Saudi Arabia's current system seem likely to fall apart.

But, the British style gradual political evolution has very much been the exception, rather than the rule, in world history. Most countries have had messier political histories, and even the English one had to endure to Republican "Glorious Revolution" led by Cromwell, before a monarchy was restored.

The Post-Soviet Model

A Soviet Union-like implosion without warning, once the older generation is cleared out of key positions of power, with traumatic reform initiated from the top before spiraling out of control, seems possible. Russia actually had two such reforms, one in 1917, and the other two generation later. Neither ended particular well or stayed on course precisely as expected. Both spawned more authoritarian counter-revoultions. But there is hope that the current transformation in Russia could produce a happier ending the one that followed Russia's brief flitation with Western style democracy in 1917.

Given the many quite old but competent potential heirs to the Saudi Arabian throne available, who seem to be firmly in charge and quite conservative, an opportunity a Soviet style implosion initiated by liberalism at the top may come too late. Economic circumstances may force fundamental political and social change in Saudi Arabia sooner than anyone in a position to bring that about appears on the scene.

Revolutions and Coups As Political Options

Two other time honored mechanism of political change when existing systems don't work any more are on one hand, popular revolutions instituting revolutionary authorarian rule in the name of the people (not ripe now, but perhaps someday), and on the other, military coups which lead to civilian dictatorship which lead sometimes after several iterations to fragile democracies that may or may not eventually become secure.

Spain, France, Iran, China, Cambodia, and Mexico all offer examples of what can happen in popular revolutions.

Iran's model is notable because it is local and because Islamic fundamentalist clergy are one of the few independent power bases from the ruling royal family in Saudi Arabian society. An Islamic revolution in which the religious authorities would align themselves with the people against the royal family in a bid to have greater power in the face of pressure to modernize, makes much more sense from a Saudi perspective than a revolution driven by communists or Western oriented reformers. Indeed, such a revolution would be almost nationalist given the close identification that the Saudi national identity has with its local brand of Islamic practice. Dissent royals don't appear to have the power base necessary for a more secular revolution.

Spain's revolutionary example is also notable because in that case, the revolutionaries lost and in the end, a military dicatator restored the monarchy, albeit with less real power, to legitimitize his own regime. Any would be military leader in Saudi Arabia attempting to put down an Islamist revolution would be tempted to take a similar approach. Of course, as the example of France shows, restored monarchies don't always last, and military dictators sometimes establish their own royal dynasties.

The complicating factor to political change via the military in Saudi Arabia, however, absent a popular revolution that had to be put down with the force of arms (and might also forever end the alliance between the monarchy and religious leaders, secularizing Saudi Arabia), is that the royal family, which in the open oligarchic succession model of the dynasty spreads power more widely than a traditional royal family, controls most military leadership positions and has a strong stake in the status quo.

International Impact

Like a collapse of the Soviet Union, a collapse of the existing system in Saudi Arabia would have worldwide geopolitical implications.

Worldwide Islamic fundamentalism within the Sunni tradition receives much of its financing and leadership from Saudi Arabia, not necessarily from the ruling group within the ruling family or the official organs of the Saudi Arabian state, but from Saudi Arabian elites. Osama bin Laden, most of the 9-11 attackers, and a plurality, at least, of the suicide bombers in Iraq hail from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian sponsorship is what made the Taliban possible and fueled its rise to power. Via the Taliban, the Saudis conquered Afghanistan with ideas, money, training and trade, rather than soldiers.

Saudi Arabia is awash with young men with college degrees in extremist Islamic theology, with high rates of unemployment but no immediate need to find work, and no real future for themselves in the ordinary economy.

An Islamist revolution against the monarchy in Saudi Arabia would enchance the role Saudi Arabia plays as a threat to the West. Other courses for Saudi Arabia could maintain the status quo, or defuse the engine of worldwide Islamic fundamentalism, depending on the fine details of how they evolved.

For now, at least, when the West supports the Saudi Arabian economy and government, it is also keeping alive the beating heart of the larger state nutured Islamic fundamentalist movement, one part of which is Islamic fundamentalist motivated terrorism targeted at the West. Venues like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somolia and Keyna are mere staging points for a movement based in Saudi Arabia.

The weakness of secular society in Saudi Arabia, and in the Middle East generally, makes the prospects for change in this respect more liklely to be a product of reduced economic clout than local political change.

The U.S. Stance

Should the U.S. be selling some of our most sophisticated weapons to a country like this one?

Consider that, per Wikipedia and its cited sources, "As recently as the 1950s, the Saudi Arabia’s slave population was estimated at 450,000 — 20% of the population. Slavery was finally abolished in 1962. . . . The country has been in a state of war with Israel since May 15, 1948, the day after Israel declared its independence."

More recently and more chillingly, a public opinion survey of over 15,000 Saudis in the summer and fall of 2003 indicates that 48.7% of Saudis had a positive opinion of Osama bin Laden's rhetoric. They may not think that Osama bin Laden himself is a good leader, but there is broad public support for his message.

Even if Saudi Arabia grows more democratic, there are no assurances that this nation's foreign face won't grow more ugly. And, made in America military equipment will remain functional and even sophisticated by international standards long past the decade or two that the current regime is likely to be able to sustain.

The bet that the United States is making on Saudi Arabia as an ally, is a high stake and high risk gamble.

Save The Dog, Save The World

Rolo lives. That's what a judge decided this afternoon.

Assistant Presiding Judge Mike Graber ruled that Rolo the German shepherd can return to his owner, Laura Hagen, who has to continue intense training with Rolo and learn how to better control her dog.

A 90-day jail sentence against Hagen also will be suspended if the dog stays out of trouble for a year[.]

From The Rocky Mountain News.

The judge this afternoon gave Hagan a 90-day suspended jail sentence. He ordered her to have her fence inspected and to obtain $100,000 in liability insurance. She must maintain Rolo's dog-training sessions, and if she moves, her new home must be inspected to ensure it meets the fence conditions.

From The Denver Post.

I was appellate counsel in this case and spent a couple of months driven by the "Save The Dog, Save The World" mantra. Practicing law is basically about trying to achieve a client's goals, one case at a time. Who knew, when I started, that the case would be splashed across Denver's major daily newspapers and television news outlets as front page news?

I'm pleased for my client, her dog, and her trial counsel (Joe Lazarra), to see a good result (which, incidentally, is very close to the plea bargain originally reached in the case). It is also worth noting that restitution has already been paid in the case.

Dog Repossesed

My law practice includes both secured transactions (i.e. obligations secured by collateral), and dog law (I've handled a surprising number of dog cases for a cat person). So this high profile dog repossession case caught my eye.

[Ellen] DeGeneres explained on her show that the Brussels Griffon terrier mix didn't get along with her cats, so she gave it to her hairstylist's family. The owners of Mutts and Moms claimed that DeGeneres violated the adoption agreement by not informing them that she was giving the dog away and removed Iggy from the hairstylist's home Sunday. . . .

[Rescue agency operator Marina] Batkis rejected DeGeneres' plea to give the dog back to her hairstylist's family.

"She (Batkis) doesn't think this is the type of family that should have the dog," said Fink, who is not legally representing the owners but is authorized to speak for them. . . . DeGeneres had said her hairdresser's daughters, ages 11 and 12, had bonded with Iggy and were heartbroken when the dog was taken away. [Co-agency operator] Fink said Moms and Mutts has a rule that families with children under 14 are not allowed to adopt small dogs.

"It's for the protection of the dog," he said.

I've actually had a dog repossession case myself once, although that involved a "dog share" agreement. In a dog share, a dog breeder retains stud rights in a pedigreed prize dog, while another family gets the pet rights in the dog. One of the parties breached their side of the deal, so the other sought to repossess it. In those cases, the potential for unauthorized self-help is particularly great. Neuter the dog and the breeding rights become worthless (and for pedigreed dogs of this caliber, most the value is in the breeding rights). Furthermore, there is room for retalitiation in the forum of the pedigree registries, as well as in the courts.

British Animal Rights Protestors

Animal rights protestors in Britain are different than those in the United States.

Rather than doing the "hey, hey, ho, ho" gig outside fur shops in Cherry Creek North, throwing paint on mink coats and bombing medical laboratories, they take a more "civilized approach." They eat meat from the Queen's favorite breed of dog:

The corgi meat was mixed with apple, onion and seasoning, turned into meatballs, and served with salad.

Of course, the dog allegededly "had died recently at a breeding farm and had not been killed for the purposes of the protest."

Sarah For Council District 1

Soulful Sarah

While Rick Garcia remains the odds on favorite for City Council District 1, being an unopposed incumbent and all, thanks to Westword, the sentimental favorite is Soulful Sarah, i.e. George in Denver's beloved Alaskan Malamute, who is definitely the leading write-in candidate in the race. (I assume that since she is now a candidate for public office that displaying her picture falls under the category of fair use.)

We don't have a campaign platform yet, but I think it is a safe bet that Sarah is a strong backer of leash free dog parks, universal veterinary care, and domestic partnerships.