When good people let us down

On this evening's PBS News Hour, Jim Lehrer asked David Brooks and Mark Shields for their comments about Barney Frank's decision not to seek re-election. Both praised Frank's formidable intellectual and verbal skills as well as highlighting his ability to get stuff done in Congress.

About Frank's impatience with stupid questions there is little disagreement. That's fine and often funny. Brooks went on, however, to characterize Frank as a bully.

You know, you go to Capitol Hill, and we see -- just on the show today -- there are these scrums, where these reporters surround the politicians. And most of them are like us, who are sort of middle-aged guys, and we can take it. But there's always a bunch of young people who are just learning the trade. And they're nervous.

And I just saw Barney Frank as cruel to them on a couple of occasions, needlessly cruel. And I'm sure he did a lot of good things, but that needless cruelty always put me off. And that's the lingering memory I have.

Shields, Brooks on Gingrich's 'Skeletons,' Bill Clinton's 'Second Act,' Tax Cuts | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 2, 2011 | PBS 

I have no direct experience with Barney's behavior. Sandra and I saw him in downtown Boston one time years ago. My impressions of him are based on what I've read, heard, and seen in the media. Reflecting on those stories and the reports from people who have met and worked with him, Brooks's comments are credible.

There are always times when it's necessary to speak truth to power. There are always times to afflict the comfortable. Mike Benedetti and I spent a good bit of time talking about those themes last night. #Occupy has carried hard messages but has done so with self-deprecating humor.

Barney used to do that, too. A campaign ad in the 70s clearly showed that he understood that his sartorial abilities rarely reached a passing grade.

When campaigning, Barney could be funny and smart, but also charming. That happened when he needed something - a vote or a favorable press piece.

In his non-reelection announcement, he said, “I don't have to pretend to be nice to people I don't like.” His political insights were sharp enough to know that he couldn't be successful if he was his natural self. By dialing it back, he could champion the liberal causes and get a lot of good stuff done.

His true perspective, though, seems to be that, for whatever reasons and for whatever purposes, he knew that he was smarter than the rest of us and that he didn't respect us for that.

Damn.

Say it ain't so, Barney.

Bankruptcy as a competitive strategy

Let me see if I understand this. AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, is declaring bankruptcy because it's the right time. All of its competitors have already done so. In the process, they shed expensive debt and pesky labor contracts, resulting in lower operating costs.

The Wall Street Journal reports that [t]he company decided a filing now would be from a relative position of strength by avoiding a tangled relationship with creditors who might want to control how the company restructures itself. Unlike many other companies that have sought bankruptcy protection in recent years, AMR didn't file for Chapter 11 with a reorganization plan in place supported by creditors. Instead, AMR must develop its plan during bankruptcy proceedings.

Filing for Chapter 11 reorganization will cost AMR millions of dollars in legal fees. The corporation, however, has $4B in cash.

Meanwhile, the company's employees are still bitter about the millions in stock bonuses paid to the executives who made lead the company to $10B in losses in the past decade. Granted, AMR stock plummeted 84% today. It may take a while for new AMR CEO Thomas Horton's 300,000 shares to be worth his effort to trim $1B from the the employees' pension fund.

[Update 11/30/11: upon further reflection, I realized that AMR shares will become worthless as the result of the bankruptcy and reorganization. As a result, the executives who received stock grants that vested after this filing will be out of luck.

[Update 12/1/11: The New York Times editorializes that  Mr. Arpey may be the only airline C.E.O. who regarded bankruptcy not simply as a financial tool, but more important, as a moral failing. Arpey held out against bankruptcy. When AMR's board overruled him, he left, with no severance and his stock holdings nearly worthless.

“Our bankrupt colleagues all made net profits, good net profits last year, and we didn’t,” Mr. Arpey told me a few months ago. “And you can mathematically pinpoint that to termination of pensions, termination of retiree medical benefits, changes of work rules, changes in the labor contracts. That puts a lot of pressure on our company, not to be ignored.”

I hate computers, little ones even more

For a while, my phone (HTC Incredible) hasn't been able to keep a wireless connection when it goes into sleep mode. I've set the Wi-Fi Sleep Policy to Never, but it's had no effect. When the screen goes dark, the WiFi connection drops out. If I ping the phone from another system, I can watch it go away.

I've tried various configurations on my routers with no consistent good result. Y'see, sometimes it works as intended. The screen goes to sleep, but the WiFi stays connected and I can listen to music or news or whatever. Most of the time for the past few weeks and constantly now, there's no joy.

I've done several reinstallations of the phone's operating system (Gingerbread, for those who care).

Now, sitting in NuCafe, it works fine. Now, using an open access point, the furshlugginer thing works fine. I have less of an idea why it works here than why it didn't at home.