David Foster

Starbucks and Patty Murray

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In Washington State, candidate Tiffany Smiley is running a strong campaign against Democrat incumbent Patty Murray.   WSJ writer Kim Strassel reports that three corporations…the Seattle Times, the Seattle Seahawks, and Starbucks…have sent certified letters to the Smiley campaign with accusations of “trademark infringement” for the appearance of their logos in campaign video ads.   These all look like fair use to me.   In “Cup of Coffee,” Smiley stands in front of a derelict building. Barely visible at the top, and seen backward, is the store’s faded Starbucks sign. Ms. Smiley hits Ms. Murray for rising crime, while the ad flashes two Seattle Times headlines, one of which reads: “Starbucks to Close 5 Seattle Stores Over Safety Concerns.”

This resulted in a complaint from the Seattle Times about “unauthorized use of The Seattle Times logo and two headlines” in violation of the paper’s “copyright and trademark.”   For its part, Starbucks complained the campaign was appropriating its intellectual property, and complaining it might “create an unfounded association in the minds of consumers between Starbucks and your campaign.”   The Seahawks complaint was equally or more ridiculous.

I don’t know how many people outside of Washington State have anything to do with the Seattle Times or the Seahawks, but Starbucks is a national chain with a lot of customers, many of whom are not Democrats and are especially not Democrats of the Patty Murray variety.   The behavior of Starbucks in this matter is not very respectful of those customers, and I’d also question whether it is consistent with SBUX fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

There is also the question of whether actions like this represent in-kind contributions to a political campaign.   Indeed:

The Smiley campaign on Thursday filed a Federal Election Commission complaint, charging the paper with providing the Murray campaign a prohibited in-kind contribution. It turns out that Ms. Murray has also used a Seattle Times headline in her ads. Her “First 2016 Ad” sports the newspaper’s logo under the headline: “Patty Murray’s and  Paul Ryan’s Teamwork Is a Model for Congress.” It seems the Times has a different legal standard for candidates it endorses.

As the FEC complaint notes, the Smiley campaign would have to spend an estimated $5,000 to remove and update the ad”costs that Patty Murray does not have to accrue.” It cites FEC regulations that provide “if a corporation makes its resources available for free, it must do so for  all  candidates.”

If you’re not familiar with Patty Murray, she is the individual who, following the 9/11 attacks, said about Osama bin Laden:

He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful.

Michelle Malkin, from 2009: “I’ll never forget interviewing her many years ago when I worked for the Seattle Times editorial board. We were talking about federal entitlement spending. I asked her about FICA taxes. She didn’t know what I was talking about; when I said “payroll taxes,” she still had a frozen blank look on her face.”

Murray has also shown herself to be a nasty bigot. When lobbying against a contract award for an Air Force tanker plane to Northrop Grumman, she said:

“I have stood on the line in Everett, Wash., where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they’ve stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.”

Let’s hope that Tiffany Smiley prevails, despite the forces arrayed in support of Murray.   And you might want to let Starbucks know what you think of their behavior in this matter, and whether it is likely to affect your future patronage of their stores.

Retrotech Event

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The New England Wireless & Steam Museum is having is annual steam-up this coming Saturday.

I was hoping to go up there this year, but won’t be able to make it.   Sounds like a great event for anyone interested.

Book Review: Lydia Bailey, by Kenneth Roberts

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The year is 1798.   Albion Hamlin is a young American, recently graduated from law school: the experiences he is about to have will portray some aspects of American and world history that are not well-known by most people today…the Alien & Sedition Laws, the Haitian revolution, and the war against the Barbary pirates.

Although Albion studied law and has handled a few cases, he has decided he would much rather be a farmer than a lawyer . But a rider arrives at his uncle’s house (where Albion is living, both of his parents having died) and urgently requests the uncle to represent Thomas Bailey, a newspaperman who has been charged under the Alien & Sedition Law and is in serious trouble.   The uncle, who is a distinguished attorney,   is up and ready to go, immediately…but falls down the stairs and is hurt too badly to travel.   So Albion, although reluctant to get involved, is persuaded to go to Boston and represent the accused speech criminal.

The first part of the story is largely about Albion’s attempt to get justice for his client.who he finds bedridden and in extremely bad health, but still game for the legal fight.   The case is heard before Chief Justice Samuel Chase, who acts more like a prosecutor than a judge and whose whose courtroom behavior is portrayed in a way that is reminiscent of the Nazi ‘people’s court’ proceedings and of Stalin’s favorite prosecutor, Vishinsky.   (After Jefferson became President, Chase was impeached at Jefferson’s urging but he was not convicted.)   Not only is Bailey sent to jail…where he soon dies…but Albion is jailed as well, for the crime of representing his client too aggressively.

Albion is sprung from jail with the help of Bailey’s cousin, Harriet.   She asks for his help with another legal matter: Thomas Bailey had been an investor in a ship which was captured by the French (The French seized numerous American ships in retaliation for the US refusal to honor a treaty provision, which the French believed obligated this country to assist them in their war against the British.   Claimants argued that the decision not to honor the treaty had been made by the US government, and hence, the government should be on the hook for the losses. These claims, known as the French Spoilation Claims, were a very hot issue at the time)   The value of these claims, if any, will now devolve on Harriet, and she asks him Albion to pursue the matter with the government.   For his fee in this case, Albion requests only a small painting which he had seen in the Bailey house: it is a picture of a girl named Lydia Bailey, painted by the famed Gilbert Stuart.   Albion is fascinated both by the girl’s beauty and the way in which it was captured by the artist.   He had been greatly saddened when told by Bailey that she had died, having gone to Haiti as a governess for two children and caught the yellow fever there.   Still, Albion is obsessed with Lydia and takes the picture with him everywhere.

In the second part of the story, Albion meets with various government officials in an attempt to get reimbursement for the claims. He is not very impressed with those he meets with:

I hated everything about Washington–that raw, mud-smeared, newly created city.   I hated its blazing, steamy heat in spring, summer and autumn; its moist and biting cold in winter…the determined ignorance of a large part of the duly elected and appointed representatives of the people; the universal gossiping and backbiting among those who considered themselves socially superior; the unwarranted importance arrogated to themselves by public men whose mental attainments and value to the world were noticeably inferior to those of any competent journeyman carpenter.

He does like Thomas Jefferson, who shares a boarding-house table: Albion   finds him “a tall, angular red-headed, benevolent-looking man…apologetically asking for the butter and obligingly passing the salt.”    After Jefferson is installed as President (following a bitter Congressional dispute over who had really won the election), Albion feels he has some chance of getting somewhere with the claim.   But an official tells him that in view of the revolution then in progress in Haiti..and the former French officials there being absent…there is no way to certify the claim’s validity.    His search for information that could be useful in the case leads Albion to French refugees from Haiti who are now living in Philadelphia–and to the amazing information that Lydia Bailey is actually very much alive, having been seen in Cap Francois only two weeks prior.   But she is likely in considerable danger, given what is going on in Haiti.

Clearly, Albion needs to go to Haiti, both to find and if necessary rescue Lydia, and also to gather information that may help with the Claims.   And he quickly does so.

When he arrives in Haiti, the situation is chaotic: fortunately, he is befriended by a black man called King Dick.   This individual is noteworthy for his physical strength, his command of multiple languages, and his calmness in bad situations…at times when others are reacting with the worst blasphemies they can think of, Dick’s expression of concern is likely to be something as mild as ‘my, my’.   Via King Dick, Albion meets the leader of the Haitian revolution, Toussaint   L’Overture, with whom he is very impressed.

Haiti was a producer of great wealth, especially in the form of sugar and coffee, and the French were not going to give it up without a fight.   Moreover, Napoleon saw Haiti as a base of operations to establish a credible military presence in the Louisiana territory, and possibly to claim additional land in the United States.

As the French amass their forces to re-take the island, chaos and violence become worse, with many atrocities on all sides. (The bad feeling between mulattos and blacks is portrayed as equal to or worse than the bad feeling between blacks and white)     With Dick’s help, Albion locates Lydia, and she is as wonderful as he has dreamed.   They marry, in an impromptu ceremony, and locate a ship to take them out of the country.   But due to bad luck–and betrayal by a sea captain who resents Albion’s friendship with a black man–they are captured by Barbary pirates and become captives of Yusef   Karamanli, Bashaw of of Tripoli.   Albion finds that the Bashaw’s admiral, Murad Reis, is in reality a Scotsman named Peter Lisle, who following his own capture chose to convert to Islam and serve the Bashaw.   (Historically true)

The third part of the book, in my view the most interesting describes the depredations being committed by the pirates on the merchant fleets of the world, the ransom and extortion money paid out by their governments, and the conditions of captivity–basically, slavery–for the unfortunate victims.   The United States, under Jefferson, has decided that war against the pirates is preferable to tribute.

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Freight Rail

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…may not be as glamorous as passenger train travel, but in the US it is quite important, as people will learn if the possible rail strike actually happens.

Here are some interesting links on the railroad industry:

The potential impact of a railroad strike

The difficult work environment in rail, and the current worker shortage

A thoughtful piece by two very experienced railway executives

Are single-person train crews a good idea?

Also…if you haven’t already read it, see my review of Linda Niemann’s memoir of her time working on the old Southern Pacific. She got a PhD in English before going to work for the railroad, and her writing is excellent.   (Not that excellent writing is by any means guaranteed for PhDs in English, but this book has been compared to Melville, and I think it does compare well with ‘White Jacket’, his book about working as a crewman on an American sailing warship)

9/11 and the Attrition Mill

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A few years after 9/11, I visited an old industrial facility which had been restored to operating condition. One of the machines there was an  attrition mill. It consists of two steel discs, rotating at high speed in opposite direction and crushing the substance to be milled between them.

I immediately saw this machine as a political metaphor. Western civilization is caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one disc being the Islamofascist enemy and the other being certain tendencies within our own societies. The combination of these factors is much more dangerous than either by itself would be.

For example,already   in 2015 the student government at the University of Minnesota has  rejected a resolution calling for annual commemorations of the 9/11 atrocity.  Why?  It was argued that such a resolution would make Muslim students feel “unsafe.” The “Students for Justice for Palestine” said that being reminded of 9/11 on its anniversary would lead to increased “Islamaphobia.”

It seems pretty clear that this sort of ridiculously deferential “sensitivity” does not make immigrants, or children and grandchildren of immigrants, more likely to assimilate.  Contrarily, it reinforces group identifies and intergroup hostilities.  And in doing so, it creates a social environment in which it is much more likely that actual terroristsrepresenting the upper disk of the Attrition Millwill go unreported or even be actively supported in their ethnic/religious communities. And that, in turn, greatly increases the risks inherent in large-scale migration.

Hillary Clinton reacted to the Benghazi murders by blaming a video, going so far as to tell a grieving father that  he would have his revengenot on the killers, oh, no, but rather  we are going to have that filmmaker arrested.  Here, we see the threat and actuality of Islamist violence being used as an excuse for interfering with the free-speech rights of Americans…and you can bet that if that precedent is successfully established, it will be applied with plenty of other justifications, too.

And, of course, Islamist murder threatssuch as the fatwa against Salman Rushdiehave helped accustom people to  keeping their mouths shut, for the sake of safety.

Related post in The American Mind:    The Woke-Islamist Axis Against Free Speech.