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Election 2016: Of Dog Legs and “Debates”

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1958 Lincoln-Douglass Debates postage stamp (source: Wikipedia)
1958 Lincoln-Douglass Debates postage stamp (source: Wikipedia)

 

Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?

A: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

That riddle, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, comes to mind when I think of the upcoming series of “debates” between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The two are scheduled to lock horns for the first time on September 26 at Hempstead, New York’s Hofstra University.

The idea of a “debate” presupposes reasoned arguments for and against specific propositions. The Hofstra event and its followups won’t be debates. They’ll be combination beauty contests, “professional wrestling” matches, and campaign commercials.

The only proposition either candidate will support will be “I should be president.”

The closest thing to an argument either one will put forward will be “because I am not the other person on this stage.”

At the end of the evening, the audience will have no more clue what, other than personal style, differentiates one candidate from the other than we did at the beginning — for the perfectly good reason that the answer is pretty much nothing.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Commission on Presidential Debates could invite several candidates — perhaps all five who appear on state ballots adding up to more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the election outright (Trump, Clinton, Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, and Constitution Party nominee Darrell Castle).

Instead we’ll only be shown the two establishment-approved candidates. Speaking if which, the Federal Elections Commission really should take notice that due to those exclusionary criteria, the events constitute illegally large (by several orders of magnitude) in-kind campaign contributions to the Clinton and Trump campaigns.

The moderator, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, could put the candidates on the spot with detailed policy questions on important issues, testing their knowledge,  probing their competence, allowing them to distinguish themselves one from the other.

Instead, if history is any guide, the questions and answers will make the interview round of Mr. Trump’s old stomping ground, the Miss Universe pageant, look like a doctoral thesis defense in nuclear physics. Fortunately this “debate” format skips the swimsuit and evening gown competitions.

This cycle’s presidential “debates” will almost certainly put off enough heat to measurably impact global warming statistics, while shedding little if any light at all on the applicants for the most powerful position in the world.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Hewlett-Packard Printers

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HP cartridge (56, 57, 58)
HP cartridge (56, 57, 58) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

September 13 was an unlucky day for an unknown number of Hewlett-Packard printer owners. Instead of going dutifully to work, their printers displayed the error message “One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace them with new cartridges.”

The cartridges weren’t damaged, though. The printers had been sabotaged with, for all intents and purposes, malware. And the saboteur was Hewlett-Packard itself. The company built a digital time bomb into its firmware to stop owners of HP printers from using ink cartridges sold by third parties.

The company brazenly claims responsibility for the cyber attack, saying it bricked its customers’ printers to  “protect innovation and intellectual property, but also to improve the safety of products for customers.”

There’s a word for that claim, but I can’t use it in a family-friendly column. HP is “protecting” and “improving” only one thing: Its profits from the sale of ink cartridges. A full refill (black and color) using HP-manufactured cartridges can cost about as much as some of the lower-end printers themselves; third party manufacturers sell compatible cartridges for less than half that.

I’ve heard it said that some printers are sold at, or even for less, than manufacturing cost as “loss leaders.” Part One: Cheap printer. Part two: Expensive ink. But of course that only works if you can force the buyer to stick with you through Part Two.

HP has a long record of trying to fool its customers into this kind of bait and switch scam. From patent infringement lawsuits against cartridge competitors to “Digital Rights Management” schemes in its hardware and software (former HP CEO and failed presidential candidate Carly Fiorina announced a “DRM in every product” policy at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show), the upshot is “you don’t really own that thing you thought you bought from us.”

But this is the first time I’m aware of that HP has resorted to cyber attacks on its own customers to stop them from patronizing other businesses. It joins Sony BMG, which got caught using music CDs to install “rootkit” malware in 2005, on a list of companies which can’t be trusted to not screw over customers.

The extinction of state-conferred “intellectual property” monopolies became inevitable with the digital age when information reproduction costs fell to nearly zero. Which is exactly where the profit margins of companies like Hewlett-Packard are headed if they don’t knock this kind of thing off.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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@Snowden: Give That Man a Medal, Not a “Pardon”

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In the days leading up to the official premiere of Snowden, Oliver Stone’s eponymous biopic of America’s exiled whistleblower, an international movement came together to pressure US president Barack Obama for a pardon. Executive absolution would make it possible for  Edward Snowden to return from Russia without facing a show trial and a life (or even death) sentence for his heroism.

It’s a fine idea. I support it. But I think it does get things backward and sends the wrong message in certain respects.

Edward Snowden shouldn’t NEED a pardon. He performed a public service of inestimable value by exposing the crimes, the criminals, and the techniques of the largest espionage ring in human history:  A conspiracy directed at the very public expected to pay the gigantic tab the conspirators run up. The National Security Agency’s budget is classified  — of course — but thought to be in excess of $10 billion per year. Talk about adding insult to injury.

So, who SHOULD be seeking pardons?

Well, the  operational ringleaders, including but not limited to the last few directors of the NSA, are clearly habitual felons who, in any society with a functioning justice system,  would be sporting leg irons and orange coveralls and writing their own letters requesting clemency about now.

Those evildoers have superiors who are equally responsible for having let them run wild. The two that come to mind are the president(s) and the congressional Intelligence Committees (the House Intelligence Committee contests the pardon movement with a classified — of course — report which in public summary characterizes Snowden as a mere “disgruntled employee”).

If these characters weren’t (with good reason) convinced of their own immunity to justice, they’d be shutting down their unprecedented warrantless search operations and finding ways to preemptively pardon each other ahead of something like a new Nuremburg Tribunal,  instead of continuing to denigrate and persecute the man who exposed their vile deeds.

The only subject of truly legitimate debate over Snowden’s actions is whether they were military or civilian in character. Otherwise, how are we to know whether he should receive the Medal of Honor (military) or the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal (civilian)?

Perhaps an exception should be made that lets him collect all three. Or perhaps none of them are sufficient and a new award, specific to Snowden and those who will hopefully follow in his footsteps, would be more appropriate.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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