March 30, 2006

Grandpa Sam

I still can feel the weight of his body as I held his arm to steady him. The rasp of his unshaven beard over the softness of his cheek still prickles my lips where I kissed him goodbye on Sunday. His voice will echoe in my ears and on my answering machine forever. And I will always hold him in my heart, even though now his body has been taken from us. 1914-2006

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March 5, 2006

Ah...Civilization

This evening, I apparently edged out a man who had been waiting for a taxi on a wintry street for a half hour. I didn't see him, and I saw the cab, ran around a corner and up a street to get it, only hearing voices behind me once S was getting into the cab. I must admit, however, I was much less inclined to ease off and ask S to get out of the cab once he'd elbowed me, called me an asshole and hit me with the open car door.

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December 21, 2005

Cold As Ice

When I was a but a little shoe, I had a friend who rode horses. For some reason, a lesson he told me stuck with me. To this day, I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I remember it from time to time. He told me that when you're riding a horse at a gallop, you can't just make it stop; you have to slow it to a walk and then bring the horse-rider combination to rest. If you don't--he said--you end up making the horse's stomach tie up all in knots and kill it. When I first heard the story, I wondered if that was something that could happen to humans. I doubted it, but I wondered anyway. And we all know the benefits of cooling down. But this is what is frustrating me, personally, about the transit strike. I won't get into the politics of it, because I make a very healthy wage, and I recognize that sometimes drastic measures are needed to call attention to issues. I also won't get into the fact that I would really have preferred that the workers went on strike in the springtime, where I didn't freeze myself on the 25 block walk to work. I also recognize I've got it pretty good on that front. This week, I've been coming to work with nothing to do and leaving without having done anything. It may be letting the cat out of the bag a bit to say that the majority of my clients are investment managers running hedge funds, and that many of them were required to file their registrations with the SEC last week. This means that the majority of my work suddenly was completed, and my superior from whom I get all of that work has gone on a (well-deserved) little vacation. At the same time, I've had a project with a very senior member of my firm who doesn't seem to be very concerned with making forward progress. In reality, I know it's that he's worried about the forward progress of far more lucrative and time-sensitive clients, but the fact is that my emails don't get returned and my voicemail take at least 3 days to provoke a response. Which is why it's a true delight to call him and check in (what a bizarre situation that one of the most-junior people in the firm is calling one of the most senior to ask him to pay some attention) only to find out that he has gone on vacation for the week without telling me. Result: no work on that project for Shoe. Which brings me back to being the horse--I was busy, I was very busy, and then suddenly, I have literally nothing to do. I spent 18 minutes yesterday doing client-related work. Yet I had to walk to work, and I had to walk home. And when you are forced to dress up nice-like, trek in eye-watering cold to a job at which you need to be, but have nothing to do after having raced all year…well, that's just a recipe for getting your insides all twisted up.

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October 27, 2004

Bush: Not a CEO, Not a Director, Not a President

Yesterday, in the business journal Compliance Week, former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt proposed some guidelines for outside directors of companies.#[OD] Ironically, I think that his lessons about what an outsider can and should do are applicable to the presidency of the United States, particularly if you buy in to the theory of the "CEO President", as Mister W likes to be framed. Obviously, a CEO is an officer, and usually an inside director, but I believe that these rules apply equally to both kinds of directors.#[dir] Below, you'll find Pitt's pointers for potential directors, and my commentary as to whether I think the Bush has followed through on them. [OD]: For those who don't know, an outside director of a company is someone who is broad onto the board of directors without a prior connection--like being an employee--to the company. [dir]: Actually, the reason for the article in the first place--aside from Pitt's obligation to write a column each week--is that outside directors until recently were not held as closely responsible for the foibles of companies. This means that the rules really are meant to remind outside directors of the responsiblities of all directors. Here are some general guidelines for all directors to consider: 1. Understand your responsibilities. Being the President requires a balance of what Lyndon Johnson described as "guns and butter"; you have to match foreign affairs with domestic concerns. Bush has neglected, time and again, the domestic for the foreign affairs. If there is anyone who doubts this, consider the spectacular failure of our employment rates, our education of children, and the safety of this country. Why are we focused on foreign wars and democracies in other countries when we can barely police ourselves? Make no mistake, it is the precise opposite of safety from terror that we spend our time focusing abroad rather than internally. Bush does not understand this. 2. Monitor and assess corporate policies and procedures. In other words, there are rules that you must set, and rules you must follow, no matter how far up you are, and when things break down below you, it is not to be shuffled off on someone else--like Herr Ashcroft--but to be accepted as your responsibility. Yet we have a President who cannot recall a single mistake he'd ever made. 3. Understand the requirements and obligations associated with being a director. Guess what? The President doesn't understand that he cannot act as he would on his ranch in Texas. He has obligations to be a statesman, not just a commander-in-chief; the principal American, rather than the only American. He acts as if it is only his will that matters. For that matter, he is required to remember that, despite his belief that God called him to the job, he has a responsiblity to listen to and respond to the American people. And all that I have seen is a stubborn resistance to that call. 4. Assure the existence of effective delegation of oversight responsibilities. I don't trust John Ashcroft; even if you believe his policies, the fact that Bush sends him out and then cuts him down so as not to seem so bad suggests ineffective delegation. 5. Avoid constituency dictates. Stop listening to the Religious Right. Stop listening to the homophobes. Stop listening to any one group that got you where you are and start leading a country towards unity. Start doing what is best for the country. 6. Learn the business of the corporation. Does anyone else get the feeling that in the Bush Administration, one hand hasn't a clue as to what the other is doing? Shouldn't the guy at the top know it all? Does anyone really believe that he has even more than the slightest gloss on the facts of the US economy, even though he is theoretically an MBA holder? 7. Know where the company and its competitors stand. Maybe Bush is aware of this, but I'm convinced that he takes the stance of "competitor" or rival countries and twists them in his mind so as to make the best of himself. Nevertheless, I don't believe that he knows where this country stands, ethically, politically, spiritually, legally, or otherwise. 8. Make compliance and ethics programs a priority. People don't listen to Bush in his own administration. 9. Assess risk and fortify internal controls. Do you feel safer when you walk through airport security? Me either. 10. Be prepared. 9/11 11. Ask questions. Bush takes everything on faith, and asks surprisingly few questions. 12. Understand alternatives. Is there a man more committed to a black-and-white worldview than W? 13. Be committed. This means to commitment to the general purpose, not to some single point. Bush is very stubborn. Unless you go to think about his recent thoughts on winning the war on terror, children being left behind, or just about anything else he claims to believe. 14. Be direct. What's that in your suit, Mister President? Where are the WMDs? What happened to my job? No answers? Hmm. 15. Keep up. Given how much time he spends on his ranch, is there any doubt he's way behind? 16. Ensure that you have adequate resources at your disposal. Oh, I know, we're losing money, so I'll just give money away, and then I'll spend it on a war that I underfunded. Double Oops. 17. It’s important not only to do the right thing, but to be able to prove that you did the right thing. This is a man not believing in--in fact mocking--the concept of a global test that he simply doesn't understand. It's very simple, Mr. Bush--you have to be able to demonstrate that you did the right thing. That's it. That's the whole test. At any rate, it should be no surprise that I plan on voting for Kerry. I believe he has every single one of these rules not just understood, but ingrained in his very person.

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October 14, 2004

30 Days In The Hole

I just convicted a man of a crime. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. It was also one of the most important.

At the end of the trial, the judge quoted another, deceased judge, who said there were only two things the government asks you to do. The first is to fight for your country. The other, to serve on a jury. That indicates just how crucial jury service is—it’s on par with defense of the country. One might even argue that jury duty itself is a form of defending the country, from within.

I found this somewhat comforting, after I made a decision I never thought would be so hard. I have spent years discussing the jury system, learning about it, and crime, and virtually everything that goes into the administration of justice; I had always thought that being on a jury would be like writing a paper. You do the research, you examine and explore the issues, mining testimony for fact, and in the end, you and your eleven jury-mates—forced to be friends for a fixed period of time—come to the only logical conclusion.

Of course, I always knew that there were such things as hung juries, and I consistently believed that they were a natural outgrowth of either bad lawyering, or bad circumstances. However, I never believed that I’d be the one who might send a jury to that point. I found myself arguing the very legalistic point of whether the Government had actually done its job and proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Meanwhile, the rest of the jurors had already gotten me to admit that I believed the person had done that of which he had been accused. Yet I persisted in saying that although the Government had presented all this evidence, I didn’t believe they had actually proved that the defendant was guilty.

As the day progressed, I did come to the realization that he was definitely guilty, and that the only doubt I had had to do with the fact that this was so serious—I was sending someone to jail. My doubt was purely emotional, and while a reasonable emotion, it was not the sort of doubt about the proof that a reasonable person would entertain.

Clearly, then, I feel that the decision I made was right, and I was glad to have been exposed to the other side of the lawyer’s experience. But I did realize that it was hard. And while I’m totally unsure as to whether I could ever pull a trigger or coordinate an attack on behalf of my country, at least I know for sure that I can sit on a jury and find the facts.

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