Lloyd Maffitt, 1916-2008

A couple of weeks ago, someone I know and I found ourselves seated with Lloyd Maffitt at a round table during a wedding reception for his daughter Mary in Chicago's "312" restaurant . He held the dozen luncheon guests at the table spellbound with stories of reporting years for The Hawk Eye in Burlington, Iowa; interviews with celebrities like Truman Capote and Teddy Kennedy; and the Chicago of the last century--where he had spent his honeymoon at the Palmer House wearing the same suit he sported for the wedding we all attended. He quoted Shakespeare at lunch, too.

After the wedding luncheon, Maffitt continued holding court at the the home of the bride and groom--handling his whiskey like a newspaperman out of Hecht and MacArthur's "The Front Page."

Even from our short audience, it was obvious that Lloyd Wright Maffitt was a real character. It was a privilege to have been able to spend a day together, to celebrate his daughter Mary's wedding (he shared the scoop that her given name was Debra, as well as another scoop about her surname...) When we heard that he passed away at age 92, after a sudden illness, we were sad--but happy to hear that his hometown of Burlington, Iowa turned out en masse for his funeral. As his son-in-law told us: "He was loved." By everyone he met, including this blogger.

More on Lloyd Maffit from The Hawk Eye website:

http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/Wilson-column-022408

http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/Maffitt-022208

http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/Lloyd-022108-sidebar

DC's $50 Million Tax Theft Scandal: Where's the Outrage?

Why Hasn't DC Mayor Adrian Fenty fired Chief Financial Officer Natwar Ghandi?Today's Washington Post reported on a lackluster City Council hearing about DC's $50 million tax theft, a major felony. The embezzlement took place for years right under the nose of Natwar Ghandi, -- legally responsible for the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. For some as yet unexplained reason, Ghandi has escaped major public censure. The Washington Post has not called for his removal, instead running a piece about his new hires who supposedly are going to fix the problem. The Post ran a bigger investigative crusade to replace the director of the National Zoo.

What do you have to do to get fired in DC? I'm a DC property taxpayer myself, and just can't believe the city can't find a better-qualified person to run the tax department--than one who didn't account for some 50 million stolen tax dollars until they were gone. Money that has still not been recovered by Ghandi to date, believe it or not... To top it off, Ghandi recently had the chutzpah to report a $96 million budget shortfall. This was presented in the Post as a serious fiscal crisis. Memo to Post editors: I'd suggest Ghandi be forced to track down the missing $50 million on his way out the door. From the Post story:

Gandhi and two newly appointed aides, tax office director Stephen Cordi and internal investigations chief Robert Andary, laid out their strategy to strengthen internal controls. Their plan, however was mostly a rehash of previously announced reforms.

The one piece of news at the hearing came in a report delivered to the committee that said Gandhi's internal auditors conducted 52 investigations into alleged criminal wrongdoing last year among the agency's 1,200 employees. The investigations found eight reports of employees accepting gratuities, seven of theft or embezzlement, one of bribery, and one of drugs. The investigations resulted in one firing, four voluntary retirements and three suspensions, the report said, and the gratuities were returned to the senders.

The report did not, however, address the fact that the internal audit team never examined the real property tax refund department at the heart of the scandal. Evans did not ask about the report.

As Bob Dole used to ask: Where's the outrage?

If DC Mayor Adrian Fenty doesn't want to appear to be part of the problem, he would do well to become part of the solution and find a replacement for Ghandi, asap.

The Dog That Didn't Bark In The Night...

Barack Obama has made an issue of Hillary Clinton's failure to release her tax returns. Now, if the Democratic contest isn't the equivalent of professional wrestling, it would certainly seem that Obama will need to press this question every day until the Clinton returns are released....Hillary's tax returns would tell us where her money is coming from, and which special interests might have influence on her actions as President. Obama has raised the issue. Can he force her to disclose before the Pennsylvania primary?

As Pennsylvania looms, we'll stay tuned, to see if he's made of Presidential timber himself...

The Sorrowing Soul Between Doubt and Faith

Just saw a version of the 1887 Elihu Vedder painting at the Baltimore Museum of Art (this one is on Cornell University's museum webpage). Thought it somehow captured the spirit of the age, once again...

Publisher's Weekly: Former NY Times Book Review Editor's Daughter Hoaxed Before

According to Lynn Adriani's article in Publishers's Weekly, Riverhead Books editor Sarah McGrath, daughter of former New York Times Book Review Editor Charles McGrath ( and sometime PBS critic), reportedly had hoax problems before the current controversy over Love and Consequences:

PW has learned that Riverhead editor Sarah McGrath, who acquired Margaret Seltzer’s Love & Consequences for Scribner but brought it with her to Riverhead, was involved in another book, in 2006, that was cancelled because of fabrications and plagiarism. The book, How to Wear Black: Adventures on Fashion’s Front-line, was purportedly a memoir of Emily Davies’s four years as a fashion writer for London’s Times, and according to Publishers Lunch, it lifted the lid on "a surreal, luxurious and terrifying world of lavish gifts, fashionably skeletal obsessives and couture warfare." According to Lunch, Sarah McGrath bought the book for Scribner; the announcement was posted in mid-December 2005.

In March 2006 Galley Cat reported that the deal, “rumored to be up to $900,000 for U.S. rights alone,” was struck down after a story in Women’s Wear Daily outlined Davies's fabrications and plagiarism. Scribner cancelled Davies’s contract and the NY Daily News quoted Scribner's Suzanne Balaban as saying "we've dropped" Davies’s book.

More "Lies You Can Believe In"

Here's a link to an audio download composition with that title, by contemporary classical composer Missy Mazzoli. From Tom Strini's profile in the Milwaukee Journal:

She lives in Park Slope, a Brooklyn neighborhood teeming with bars full of musicians who are blending their immigrant folk styles with rock, pop and punk.

"It's a vibrant scene," Mazzoli said, from New York. "There are lots of accordions and fiddles, Ukrainian punk bands and gypsy bands."

Music from that scene influenced her Present Music piece, "Lies You Can Believe In," for violin, viola and cello. About eight minutes long, it bristles with violent and nearly constant shifts between triple and duple divisions of 12/16 meter.

Mazzoli explained the title in three ways: First, an archaic meaning of "lie" is a folk tale or exaggerated story. Second, a quote from Picasso stuck in her mind: "Art is a lie that tells the truth." The third "lie" involves her way of creatively misremembering what she's heard those folk-punk-gypsy bands play.

Canadian Paper: Lies You Can Believe In

From Canada's National Post, headlined "Obama accused of lying to voters":

In a Democratic debate last week, Mr. Obama said if elected president, he would "use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage" to negotiate better standards in NAFTA.

According to the Canadian memo, Mr. Goolsbee "was frank in saying" campaign rhetoric "that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political manoeuvring than policy."

It also said, though, that Mr. Obama is "in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and the environment and trying to establish these as more 'core' principles" of NAFTA.

In a news conference yesterday, Ms. Clinton said Mr. Obama needs to explain himself ahead of two crucial primaries today in Texas and Ohio.

"I think that after days of denial, the Obama campaign was confronted with a memo of a meeting -- it was my understanding-- in which there was a discussion of NAFTA. And it raises questions about Senator Obama coming to Ohio and giving speeches about NAFTA and having his chief economic advisor tell the Canadian government that it was just political rhetoric," she said.

"I don't think people should come to Ohio and tell the people of Ohio one thing and then have your campaign tell a foreign government something else behind closed doors. That's the kind of difference between talk and action… that I've bee

More in The Globe and Mail:

The CBC reported yesterday that the affair had infuriated Mr. Obama and his senior advisers to the point that it could impair relations between an Obama administration and the Canadian government, quoting an Obama campaign official saying, “Why is Canada meddling in the internal affairs of the United States...

Maybe Canadian mining millionaire Frank Giustra's multi-million dollar donation to the Clinton foundation shortly after receiving a uranium concession from Kazakhstan has something to do with it?

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune is covering the trial of Obama donor Antoin "Tony" Rezko online.

More From Dr.Robert Jarvik About Those Lipitor Ads...

Via Scott Hensley's WSJ Health Blog:

As spokesman for Lipitor, I have been an advocate of preventive medicine in addition to my work with the Jarvik 2000 Heart, which has rescued people from death and sustained a patient with a normal, mobile lifestyle for seven and a half years — the longest in the world. The Jarvik 2000 Heart is in clinical trials at 18 medical centers in the U.S., is fully approved for use in Europe, and is also used in Australia and Japan.

Over 30 years ago, I invented an improvement to previous artificial hearts that extended the durability from weeks to years and enabled the first human application of any permanent total artificial heart — the Jarvik 7. The more recent Jarvik 2000 is much less well known to the public than the Jarvik 7 was, but has been successfully miniaturized to the size of a c-cell battery with a belt-worn portable power system weighing only 2-1/2 lbs, compared to the four hundred pound console developed decades ago for the Jarvik 7. The improvement in patient quality of life is outstanding.

I am in fact a medical doctor; I am a world expert in mechanical heart technology; and I am an athletically fit man who takes care of his own health through diet and exercise, including frequent five mile runs.

Qualifications to endorse Lipitor

As a medical doctor who chose a career in artificial heart technology rather than clinical practice, I decided not to take an internship, which is required for licensing. Instead, I work with invention, manufacturing, regulatory affairs, and clinical application of artificial hearts. I also work directly with many leading cardiologists and cardiac surgeons, as an advisor concerning management of their patients. My credibility as a heart expert is fully justified and is fairly represented. As an MD medical scientist I am well qualified to understand the conclusions of the extensive clinical trials and FDA review by which Lipitor was proven safe and effective. In the ads I educate the public about the risks and benefits of Lipitor. My recommendation to viewers is to take their own doctor’s advice, and nothing else.

He also says he is able to row a boat...

Everything you ever wanted to know about Wikileaks...

Controversy surrounding a recent court case brought Wikileaks to our attention. Here's what they have to say about themselves on their website:

Wikileaks is an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. It combines the protection and anonymity of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface.

Wikileaks looks like Wikipedia. Anybody can post comments to it. No technical knowledge is required. Whistleblowers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity. Users can discuss the latest material, read and write explanatory articles on leaks along with background material and context. The political relevance of documents and their veracity can be revealed by a cast of thousands.

Wikileaks incorporates advanced cryptographic technologies to ensure anonymity and untraceability. Those who provide leaked information may face severe risks, whether of political repercussions, legal sanctions or physical violence. Accordingly, sophisticated cryptographic and postal techniques are used to minimize the risks that anonymous sources face.

For the technically minded, Wikileaks integrates technologies including modified versions of MediaWiki, OpenSSL, FreeNet, Tor, PGP and software of our own design.

Wikileaks information is distributed across many jurisdictions, organizations and individuals. Once a document is leaked it is essentially impossible to censor.

Amy Chua on CSPAN's Book TV

Talking about Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall.

Finnish Kids Smartest...

So says The Wall Street Journal:

Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.

At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for physics, where class starts when everyone quiets down. Teachers and students address each other by first names. About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.

Someone I know and I had dinner with a Finnish mom and her 12-year old son last week. He was just like the article said: smart, mature, and well-behaved...

Amy Chua Talks about Empire at UC Berkeley

She's talking about her new book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall.

John O'Sullivan on William F. Buckley

From NationalReviewOnline:

When news of Bill's death reached me, I was in Prague. It was suitable and perhaps comforting place to hear such sad news since Prague is one of the great European cities Bill helped to liberate from communism. Eighteen years ago he and I were here on a National Review Institute political tour of Eastern Europe. This was only a year after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the "velvet revolutions." Because of Bill's leadership in the anti-Communist and conservative movements, everyone wanted to meet him. New ministers, heads of new political parties, and editors of old national newspapers (with new editorial lines) told him of how they had read smuggled copies of NR during the years that the Communist regime condemned them to work as stokers and quarry-men.

He took it all very humbly and even a little quizzically. It was as if he didn't quite believe that he had blown a trumpet and, lo, the walls of Communism had tumbled down — "literally," to use a word whose misuse he occasionally denounced. He was a great man and a figure of great historical significance. He founded the American conservative movement that, among many other achievements, won the Cold War. But he wanted to slip quietly away to avoid the presidents and prime ministers rushing up to ask for his autograph.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter says the young William F. Buckley was a lot like...Ann Coulter:

William F. Buckley was the original enfant terrible.

As with Ronald Reagan, everyone prefers to remember great men when they weren't being great, but later, when they were being admired. Having changed the world, there came a point when Buckley no longer needed to shock it.

But to call Buckley an "enfant terrible" and then to recall only his days as a grandee is like calling a liberal actress "courageous." Back in the day, Buckley truly was courageous. I prefer to remember the Buckley who scandalized to the bien-pensant.

Other tributes will contain the obvious quotes about demanding a recount if he won the New York mayoral election and trusting the first 2000 names in the Boston telephone book more than the Harvard faculty. I shall revel in the "terrible" aspects of the enfant terrible.

BTW, I published a chapter on the life and career of William F. Buckley in my book, PBS : Behind the Screen which you can buy from Amazon.com, here:

This Year's Oscars

Didn't see the show.

Didn't see the movies.

From the Nielsen ratings, it looks like I wasn't alone...

Dr. Robert Jarvik's Statement

So, it seems that under Congressional pressure Pfizer has pulled the Lipitor ads which made my surname a household word.... Here's what my cousin has to say on his website about the controversy:

For the past two years, I have been the national spokesman for Lipitor.

My work in the field of artificial hearts spans 36 years, including inventions contributing to the first permanent total artificial heart used in a patient (the Jarvik 7 heart), and the invention, development, and clinical application of a miniature, silent heart assist device (the Jarvik 2000 heart) that has sustained a patient in good health for 7-and-a-half years, much longer than any other artificial heart in the world.

I do not practice clinical medicine and hence do not treat individual patients. My career is in medical science. I have earned Bachelors, Masters, and MD degrees, and I have received honorary Doctor of Science, Doctor of Engineering, and Doctor of Medicine degrees. I am presently President and CEO of the company that manufactures the Jarvik 2000 heart. I have collaborated closely with many top surgeons and cardiologists from dozens of leading medical centers in the United States, Europe, and Asia. I have been named Inventor of the Year and have received a Lifetime Research Achievement Award among other honors. The Jarvik 7 and Jarvik 2000 hearts have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution as part of their exhibit called “Treasures of American History.”

I have the training, experience, and medical knowledge to understand the conclusions of the extensive clinical trials that have been conducted to study the safety and effectiveness of Lipitor. Also, Pfizer submits advertising concepts in advance to the FDA for review and comment. The statements included in the ads fairly represent the scientific truth about Lipitor, which the public has a right to know, and which Pfizer is entitled to teach.

I accepted the role of spokesman for Lipitor because I am dedicated to the battle against heart disease, which killed my father at age 62 and motivated me to become a medical doctor. I believe the process of educating the public is beneficial to many patients and I am pleased to be part of an effort to reach them.

I am not a celebrity. I am a medical scientist specializing in advanced technology to treat heart failure who understands that no one in his or her right mind would want an artificial heart if it could be avoided with preventive medicine.

Robert Jarvik, MD
Source: Jarvik Heart, Inc.
Date: 1/14/2008

We haven't spoken in years, but when I was younger Robbie once said he was a fan of Ayn Rand, so I assume he's preparing for any upcoming Congressional testimony with Howard Roark in mind. Maybe Pfizer will send Senator Bob Dole (Viagra) and Mandy Patinkin (Crestor) to sit next to him at the witness table, that might make for an interesting hearing on C-Span. In any case, I believe Robbie would not have been asked to do any drug ads in the first place if anyone at Pfizer though he were a practicing physician, since it's against AMA ethical guidelines to pitch drugs...

Audi Alteram Partem

A couple of weeks ago, someone I know and I went to a wedding ceremony held in the Illinois State Supreme Court, Chicago Chambers--the couple were married by Justice Anne M. Burke. It was a memorable ceremony--the bride and groom had been dating for some two decades. After the vows had been taken, Justice Burke pointed to the words "Audi Alteram Partem" on the back wall of the courtroom, shining in metal letters at least one-foot high. 

She turned to the newlywed groom and said: "That means, listen to your wife."

Is PBS Still Necessary?

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked what I thought of Charles McGrath's NY Times Arts and Leisure article, with that headline. I told him, honestly, that I had never heard of it. We don't get the Sunday New York Times. So I looked it up and found what he had to say--with the exception of an unfair low-blow age-ist slam about Jim Lehrer's age (that his editor should have deleted) --seemed common-sensical, such as this observation:

In a needy bid for viewers, public television imitates just as much as it’s imitated, putting on pop knockoffs like “America’s Ballroom Challenge.” Even though a number of surveys suggest that a large segment of the viewing population still wants the best of what public television has to offer, there isn’t as much of that as there used to be, and when it is on, it often gets lost amid all the dreck.

If Charles McGrath, or this blog's readers, want to know more about the topic, there's background material in my book PBS: BEHIND THE SCREEN, available from Amazon.com:UPDATE: Tim Graham doesn't like PBS's new Pete Seeger documentary airing on American Masters.

John Cerone: Kosovo a "Complex Case"

JURIST Guest Columnist John Cerone, Associate Professor of Law & Director of the Center for International Law & Policy at the New England School of Law, formerly a Human Rights Legal Advisor with the UN Mission in Kosovo, writes:

Even less clear is the question of whether Kosovo’s independence is justified. Those claiming that it is justified typically ground their position in a black-and-white view of the Kosovo conflict that tends to obscure a much more complex reality.

I have to admit that, upon my arrival in Kosovo in the summer of 1999, I had very much shared this simplistic view of the situation. Indeed, my work there on war crimes documentation was largely driven by a desire to secure accountability for the seemingly steady stream of international crimes being broadcast by the international media.

I was initially stationed in western Kosovo, where I, along with throngs of other international aid workers, was welcomed as a benefactor and friend of the Albanians; that is, until I questioned the acceptability of blowing up the town’s Serbian Orthodox Church. Any suggestion that Kosovo Serbs should benefit from the protection of human rights law was met with open hostility.

I later moved north to Mitrovica, the ethnically divided city bisected by the River Ibar, with Kosovo Serbs living to the north and Kosovo Albanians living to the south. Working regularly with individuals from all ethnic groups, I was one of very few people who crossed the Ibar on a daily basis. The few Kosovo Albanians who remained in the north lived in a state of continuous insecurity. Kosovo Serbs fared less well in the south. Shortly before I arrived in Mitrovica, a Kosovo Serb was discovered south of the Ibar, and was consequently beaten to death by an angry mob.

The work of documenting past abuses was quickly supplemented by the need to respond to the spike in crimes against ethnic minorities, including Kosovo Serbs. Over the course of the following 18 months, the killing and displacement of Kosovo Serbs, and other ethnic minorities, continued unabated, notwithstanding the presence of tens of thousands of NATO soldiers.

Further reflection was prompted once the percentage of the Kosovo Serb population that had been murdered or displaced surpassed the percentage of the Kosovo Albanian population that had been killed or displaced in the years leading up to the NATO intervention. While only a tiny percentage of Kosovo Albanians were directly responsible for the killings, the perpetrators were protected by the majority of the population who saw these crimes as unfortunate, but understandable. Even when these perpetrators killed an elderly Serb woman in Pristina – a woman who could have played no role in the conflict, and who had never left her apartment for fear of attack -- her murder was portrayed as forgivable in light of what ‘her people’ had done.

To the extent that prior abuses could serve as a “justification” for Kosovo to secede from Serbia, it could equally serve as a justification for the northern part of Kosovo, populated mainly by Kosovo Serbs, to secede from the rest of Kosovo.

Of greater concern, however, is that the portrayal of Kosovo’s secession as justified typically rests on a conception of independence as a much deserved reward for the Albanians and fitting punishment for the Serbs. This view of the situation makes it far too easy to disregard the plight of minority groups in Kosovo and feeds into the destructive mentality of collective responsibility.

Britain Aided Torture Flights Says Foreign Secretary

Robert Fox, writing in the Guardian reports that the British government has admitted expediting "extraordinary rendition" flights, after previous denials:

Remember that both Tony Blair and Jack Straw, as foreign secretary, assured parliament that they could find no evidence that Britain had been involved in such a process. Now the present foreign secretary tells us that, on two separate occasions, an American plane carrying a detainee to be roughed up by foreign judicial musclemen stopped over on the British dependency of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Misha Glenny on Kosovo Independence on BBC Radio Scotland

Speculation about Berwick-upon-Tweed's secession aside, you can listen to Glenny's interview on BBC Radio Scotland's Sunday Live Programme of 17 February.