This is what Democracy Looks Like?

So reads a sign in the rotunda of the Wisconsin state capital building in Madison. It describes the demonstration by thousands of union members against the attempt of the electorate’s representatives to pass legislation that would strip public employee unions of some of the collective bargaining tools first granted by state law in 1959.

Yes. 1959. Before that, unions of public employees union were generally prohibited from collective bargaining and striking, the widely held belief described by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, certainly a great friend of the union movement,

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

The legislation proposed in Wisconsin is a partial roll-back of that 1959 law and a 1967 extension of collective bargaining to state employees (the 1959 law applied to teachers and municipal employees). It’s partial because it preserves collective bargaining for wages. Why is it necessary? According to who supporters, without it, the very budget roll-backs that the unions say they are willing to accept can be blocked across the state town-by-town, school district-by-school district, and contract-by-contract.

But it’s not whether you or I are yea or nay on the proposed change, it’s rather whether there are votes cast at all. A teacher at the capital was asked, “shouldn’t you be teaching your students?” She answered, “I’m teaching them about democracy (here).”

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary,

democracy is a: government by the people; especially the rule of the majority, b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

So, how is democracy defined by a mob intent on blocking a vote of the people’s freely elected representatives? Where is democracy implemented by fleeing across a border to thwart the will of a freely elected majority of the state’s citizens? Should the Republicans in the United States Senate have fled to Canada to block the vote on the president’s health system overhaul? Would that have been defined as democracy? Should our armed forces now be allowed collected bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions?

FDR recognized the absurdity of the people’s employees striking against the public, and of unions able to elect those with whom they would then bargain. It should be easier for us to recognize the same now that collectively bargained contracts have brought cities and states to the brink of insolvency.

One might well sympathize with those protesting in Wisconsin, but is that the way we should henceforth contest political decisions – on the street and in hiding rather than on the floor of a legislature?

Whatever it is that's going on in Wisconsin, it’s certainly not democracy.

Valentine's Day 2011

A card for those I love
And have loved.

Some are with us still;
A few are gone.

Some are near
And many are far away.

All are in my heart,
All are in my thoughts
Every day.

For your cards,
For your thoughts,
For being you,
Thank you.

Be successful
By your own measure.

Be good at what is important:
Mother, father, son, daughter, wife, lover, brother, sister, friend.

Be happy
And create happiness around you.

To be loved –
love.

Urban (and rural, and suburban) Myths

Here are a few things nearly always stated to be factual - things that "everyone knows." Unfortunately for those who so smugly say them, they are also completely wrong.

In Vietnam, a disproportionate number of those who served in country – and thus of those Killed in Action – were black.

A smaller percentage of those who served in Vietnam were black – 10.6 percent – than the percent of black Americans of military age in the general population – 13.5%. Of those killed by hostile action, 12.1% were black. That reflects the fact that blacks were slightly more likely to be in combat military occupational specialties like infantry and artillery, but is still less than their representation in the American population.

Most of the combat troops in Vietnam were drawn from the poor and poorly educated in American society.

Half of those who served in Vietnam were from middle class, 75% from lower middle/working class or higher backgrounds. About one fourth had a parent who was in a professional, managerial, or technical occupation. Nearly 80% of those who served in Vietnam had a high school diploma, compared to only 63% who served in Korea and 45% in WWII.

Vietnam veterans are broadly afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder, and as a result are less successful in life than their non-veteran peers.

Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than their age group in the rest of the population. Their personal income is 18% higher than that of their non-veteran peers. There is no difference in the rate of drug use by veterans and non-veterans. Vietnam veterans are less likely to be in prison – only one half of one percent have been incarcerated for crimes.

You met a guy at the club or bar yesterday who was a Vietnam vet – who served “in country.” Naturally, you bought him a drink. Was he for real?

The chances are four in five that your new-found friend was lying. According to the Department of Defense, about 2.7 million soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen served in Vietnam. Many have been lost to us in the years since. However, according to answers given on the 2000 census, 13.9 million claim to have served in-country in Vietnam.

A Personal History of Computing - Part 6

By January 1985, I was up to my eyeballs in the commercialization of a maintenance management-inventory control-purchasing software product at EMA, Inc., in St, Paul. – Part 5, June 28, 2008.

When I was hired in January 1985, EMA, with corporate offices in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, had two divisions – EMA Technologies, and EMA Services. Most of the company worked for the second of these, an engineering unit that designed control systems for water and waste water facilities. Of course, I worked for the other one.

EMA Technologies grew out of a contract with WLSSD – Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, in Duluth, Minnesota – to design and develop a computer-based equipment and facilities maintenance and inventory management system. This had been completed successfully enough – at least in the view of EMA executives – that it was decided to purchase the rights to the system and market it as a software product. Soon after, the sale of a corporate license to 3M convinced the company that it was on the right track. It wasn’t.

I was hired to be Technologies’ Product Manager for its key – only, actually - product. A multi-user, mini-computer-based, maintenance planning, scheduling, work order, and inventory control system written in COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) and running on Hewlett-Packard’s HP3000 line of mini computers. It seemed a natural fit. My resume included oversight of the development of just such a system at Chevron, and my education was in marketing.

Short of writing a business case study, I’ll just enumerate the problems with EMA Technologies. Most of the company, the engineers who worked for EMA Services, hated the product (actually hated the idea it was a product at all), and hated the computer it ran on (if it wasn’t a DEC VAX, it wasn’t worth spit). They wanted nothing to do with it and prevailed on the company’s CEO to bar any realistic attempt to sell it to the municipal and regional utilities with which the company routinely did business and with whom the company had a positive image. So the only market in which EMA had any contacts or credibility was off limits. The accidental sale to 3M – a scandalously cheap corporate license, little more than a give-away – convinced the geniuses running the company they could succeed in a competitive market after giving away their only substantial competitive advantage. It didn’t take long to figure out this might be pretty difficult, but heck, there were three small children at home in Apple Valley, and I was at the age at which I could do almost anything – or so I thought.

Technologies was headed by a 3M refugee named Doyle – his last name escapes me – and had a salesman named John Stack. Techies included two project managers and three programmers. And me. The Product Manager.

It had been some time since the 3M sale – since any sale – so Doyle was on the hot seat. That summer Stack, an officer in the Naval Reserve, went on temporary active duty in Hawaii (a better deal than mine in the Minnesota National Guard, a couple of weeks at mosquito-infested Camp Ripley). Anyway, Doyle fired John when he returned. I wasn’t there long enough to know whether John was a good salesman or not. Not long after, Doyle called – or was asked to call – a meeting, a strategy session at which a new direction could be found for Maintenance Manager (that was the product name) sales.

That meeting was a disaster – even before it started. Doyle had invited the CEO, Exec. VP., and other senior employees. Doyle was running around the conference room, hanging paper on the walls, paper that represented the discussion of the group. It wasn’t going anywhere, aimless chatter, when what was expected was leadership, from Doyle, who was supposed to know where we should be going. Alan – he was the CEO – finally got tired of it all, ended the meeting and left. Doyle was gone the next day. Randy, the Exec VP and CFO – the guy who had overseen the development of Maintenance Manager and created Technologies – took over. He was a pretty good manager, but this was a product not going anywhere, anyone could see that. Well, not anyone. I couldn’t. Not then, anyway.

You’ll find out why when I get around to Part 7.