Hasta La Gadget!

On our first date he sat across the booth from me at Outback Steak House and over a Blooming Onion he said, “I bet you’ve never dated a guy like me.”

I replied, “What do you mean?”

He held up his fingers, palms toward him, fluttered them and said, “A guy with dirty fingernails.”

He was right. I hadn’t. I’d recently left an eight year marriage from a soft-handed man. My now ex-husband was hygienically conscious and washed his hands after every meal, every task, lotioning them up in the dry winters. My ex-husband’s fingers, like mine, typed on a computer all day. They didn’t smooth wood or grout tile or carry stacks of lumber and crack from overuse like this man’s hands. This man’s hands were tools fastened to his wrists. They were like giant boulders on the end of steel rope; mangled, filthy, misshapen and torn to pieces. At this point in my journey, I wanted different hands.

On our second date he took his hands and he used them to help paint my bedroom. Never once afraid of getting them dirty, he wiped away the excess paint without thought or consideration. He ate fajitas that night on my back porch with Celedon colored cuticles.

Then one day, he took his hands and he built my toddler son’s “big boy” bed. He took large rails of oak from his own childhood bed and he fastened them to a frame. When he watched me look sentimentally at my son’s dismantled crib, he waited until I was gone, and then took a piece of it and used it for a headboard. Back then, in the beginning, I didn’t even know how to make him understand how much it meant to me.

Over 9 months, I’d get to know those hands pretty well. They held me so kindly while I sobbed in some of my worst moments of despair. One evening, when I was too weak and sad and scared to move from my bed, he took his hands and he brought me my shoes. He gently opened the tongues, undid the laces and he slipped them on my feet. Then he took both his hands and lifted me up, off that bed, and he made me live again. And again. And again.

Sometimes, as we lay together at night I would take his big, rough, more-knuckle-than-phalange fingers and I would run the pads of my thumb over his thumbnails. They were as flat as sanded pine. He’d laugh and say, “My thumbnails are permanently flattened from hitting them with a hammer so many times.” Oh I loved that about him. And I loved those thumbnails. They were my favorite part of those tough, gnarled, gentle hands.

With those hands he’s built homes, not just houses. With those hands he black-belted in more than one martial art but never talks about it. Those scratchy and knobby fingers held his newborn baby girl against his chest, and after watching YouTube videos, those stiff fingers braided her long, 10-year-old hair. Although he could so easily, he’d never use them to hurt her, or me, or anyone, really.

But he’s gone now.

A few times, toward the end, when I was finally seeing the beauty of his hands, he’d come home from working hours and hours on someone else’s house and he’d have cracks in the skin on his fingers that ached horribly. I’d inspect them, go to the medicine cabinet and retrieve anything I could find to make the pain go away. He smiled so sweetly when I covered his wounds with Sleeping Beauty band-aids. I’d ask him if it felt better and he said no, but it will tomorrow.

He left because he feels like his hands aren’t good enough for mine. He left because his hands are as empty as turned over buckets and he’s afraid of how that emptiness will hurt me. Nothing I say will convince him that his hands are enough.

And now, all I can think about are all the things his hands have done. And now I cry for different reasons. I cry when I remember that one morning when he took his right hand in my left, and his left around my waist, and slow danced in my kitchen to silence after I’d just spent several minutes raging over an angry email from my ex. Now, all I can think about is how those rough hands softened me time and time again.

As things were looking like they were coming to an end, we spent one last weekend together at the beach. While there, we built a fort, like children, and sat under it and out of the rain. We cooked by a fire. A fire he built. We took shelter behind logs of driftwood, logs he moved into just the right spaces. When I saw his hands I asked him to hold them out, I wanted a picture.

He asked me why I wanted a picture of his hands. I wasn’t able to convey all the reasons why, but it was because I loved them, and appreciated them, and I knew I might never see them like that again. I needed that memory.

Those huge, hard-as-stone hands could build anything, fight for anyone who needed it, and yet… I know he would never use them to hurt me.

In the end, he was right, I’d never dated a man like him. But someday, I hope I might again.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Wolf von Laer, PhD Candidate in Political Economy at the King’s College London

Public choice theory teaches us that the bigger the political entity, the less incentives the citizens have to participate actively and to be well informed within a democracy. Democracy and its advantages should be discussed while taking the size of the democracy in question into account. During my last visit to Switzerland, I was astonished to learn about the election process of local judges and other public offices, where some local towns and villages elect them by assembling at the local town square and vote. This form of democracy is totally different from a democracy that consist of over 300 million people, as in the case of the United States of America. The citizens of Switzerland know the people who are in charge. They are able to give direct feedback to them in the form of conversations, citizens’ advocacy groups, or in severe cases, social ostracism. These mechanisms are not available, or at least weakened, in the case of the USA, where one member of Congress represents 600,000 citizens (when the U.S. constitution was written the number of citizens represented by an elected official was 30,000). Debates about the merits and shortcomings of democracies would benefit if the size of the state in question would be taken into account.

Social science and statecraft are complicated and their insights opaque. There are no conditions that can be held constant to accurately test the effects of one policy and compare it to another. It had to be learned the hard way that one cannot simply take a given institutional framework that has worked in one context (for instance common law or the rule of law) and enforce it onto a different society and get the same results. Institutions are sticky and are hard to change. This mistake is encapsulated for me by a presentation by the former commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, General McChrystal. One slide of the presentation showed the blueprint for Afghanistan to become a functioning state. This desire for such large scale planning is a Pretence of Knowledge. Institutions are the result of evolutionary forces and built upon complex foundations. One cannot just simply transfer a set of institutions from one society to the next and expect the same results. That the US has moved private troops out of (and have left numerous private mercenaries in) Afghanistan does not lead to the conclusion that “nation-building” was successful.

However, one has not to despair. These real-world complexities can be addressed by small states through experimentation. Smaller political entities are more capable of accounting for diverse cultural conditions. Sensible people diverge in their beliefs what the best policies are. If we have smaller states different views as to what constitutes a good society can be implemented. People can vote not only at the ballot but also with their feet. Admittedly, it is always difficult to move but if there are more options available these costs are decreasing. Citizens’ feedback in small states will be faster in revealing what they desire. With more experimentation and a multitude of states that offer different public services there is more choice and more opportunity for learning.

One retort to this line of argument is the potential human rights abuses possible under a variety of heterogeneous states. This is a valid argument. However, it fails to show why this problem would be mitigated by larger sized states. The potential for abuse is given in small states and in large states. If human rights abusers get to power in larger states then the potential damage done is larger than in smaller states. Smaller entities are more restrained in what they can do due to the better feedback mechanisms available to the citizens. There are also more options for citizens to opt-out of a given society in a world full of smaller states. This is not possible if one landmass is controlled completely by one state that only allows for one way of producing public policy.

A democracy, just like any kind of system, needs to be judged by its institutional framework and the incentives it generates. I consider Switzerland to be a more robust framework for political decision-making than the USA, due to the superior feedback mechanism and the higher level of accountability of people in public offices. Of course, size is not the only one component that play a role within the institutional web that makes-up society. Nevertheless, I maintain that the complexities of the world we live in might be better handled by smaller institutions than by larger ones, due to their responsiveness, their agility, and the increased potential for experimentation.

This question and others will be discussed at this year’s St. Gallen Symposium (7-8 May 2015) on the topic of “Proudly Small” – www.symposium.org/livestream. Wolf von Laer is member of the St. Gallen Symposium’s global Leaders of Tomorrow Community.

Follow the St .Gallen Symposium on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/SG__Symposium

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The teens of Altoona, Pennsylvania, can now add McDonald’s to the list of places — like R-rated movies and liquor stores — at which they’re not allowed to hang out.

A McDonald’s franchisee in the central Pennsylvania town announced this week that no one under the age of 18 would be allowed in his restaurant without being accompanied by an adult, CBS Philadelphia reports.

The franchisee, Gerald Harrington, made the move days after he was allegedly assaulted by a group of about 40 teenagers whom he had refused to allow into the restaurant. According to the Associated Press, Altoona police were called to the scene and charged four of the teens with simple assault, defiant trespass and other unnamed offenses.

The Altoona Mirror reports that police maintained a presence at the McDonald’s on Tuesday, where two local teens stood outside the restaurant holding signs protesting the ban. Few other teens apparently showed up at the restaurant that day, perhaps because there are four other McDonald’s locations within Altoona city limits.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

One of the difficulties in mounting a boycott is not knowing in advance whom you’re going to hurt. While the whole point is to influence the behavior (e.g., hiring practices, working conditions, wages and benefits) of a retailer or manufacturer by threatening to limit their profits if they don’t become more “enlightened,” there are risks involved. Instead of hurting an employer, a boycott can punish the very employees it’s trying to help.

Boycotting Wal-Mart qualifies as a “good” boycott. Obviously, because Wal-Mart can afford better wages and bennies, a big, splashy national boycott (coupled with employee protests) could just be the public relations tool to influence them. Given Wal-Mart’s aversion to organized labor, increasing employee compensation in order to keep the unions out would be viewed by the giant retailer as the lesser of two evils.

Another example of a “good” boycott, was the one directed at the Coors Brewing Company, back in the 1970s. Because Coors had such vehement, anti-union sentiments (some of which were deemed “illegal”), and had been accused of discriminating against African-Americans, Latinos, women, and gays in its hiring practices, the AFL-CIO called for a national boycott in 1977.

By all accounts, the Coors boycott was moderately successful. In addition to actor Paul Newman, in a show of solidarity, making a dramatic announcement that he was switching from Coors to Budweiser, a wide-scale public relations campaign was launched.

Accordingly, sales of Coors in California dropped from 40-percent in 1977, to 14-percent in 1984. It was reported that every union hall and every gay bar in California had stopped serving Coors. The AFL-CIO’s national boycott was called off in 1987.

Conversely, an example of what is probably a “bad” boycott is the one aimed at Third World textile manufacturers, specifically textiles made in Bangladesh. After a disastrous fire, in 2012, that killed more than 120 workers, people began calling for a boycott, one that would pressure textile factory owners to improve employee safety and general working conditions.

The problem with a textile boycott is that it would cause poor Bangladeshis to become even poorer. Textiles aren’t just important, they’re the basis of its economy. Bangladesh (population: 157 million in an area smaller than West Virginia) is the world’s second-leading exporter of apparel (behind China). A “successful” boycott would not only cripple the industry, it would basically ruin the country.

As for working conditions, the bitter truth is this: Countries (including the early 20th century U.S.) that move from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy go through a messy stage. They don’t enter the industrial arena by resembling a sleek, state-of-the-art production facility in Detroit, Michigan. They enter it by resembling a “sweatshop.”

And not to be glib, but historically, the institution that was clearly the most effective in improving the working conditions and welfare of employees during this “messy” transitional period wasn’t the government or the church or the media or charities. It was organized labor.

It’s a fact. American sweatshops didn’t begin to improve significantly until labor unions began representing their workers. Accordingly, if we truly wish to help Bangladeshi textile workers, it won’t be by refusing to purchase the apparel they produce. All that will do is destroy their livelihoods.

Rather, the goal should be to promote the Bangladesh labor movement. Keep the marketplace healthy, but let labor do what labor does best: represent the interests of the workers. Another fact: Child labor in the U.S. was abolished through the efforts of labor unions, not politicians. If you don’t believe it, look it up.

David Macaray is a playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor,” 2nd edition).

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The relative of a Baltimore cop involved in Freddie Gray’s arrest told CNN on Wednesday night that Gray’s injuries did not happen while he was being transported in a police van.

“He believes that whatever happened to Mr. Gray happened before he was transported,” the woman, who was granted anonymity, told Don Lemon on “CNN Tonight” about the cop’s views.

She also said Gray, who died while in police custody, “was irate” while in the van.

“He was cursing, he was yelling and he was kicking,” the woman said. “That’s what was heard.” She said Gray did not have his seatbelt on in the van, and added that there’s an “unwritten rule” that when a suspect is “irate,” police won’t buckle them in because of fear the suspect could bite or spit on the cops during the process.

The relative’s account clashes with what Baltimore Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez told reporters last week.

Gray “gave up without the use of force,” Rodriguez said, according to CNN. The officers involved in Gray’s arrest also denied using force against him.

Don Lemon’s interview aired the same night The Washington Post reported on a leaked police document that suggested Freddie Gray may have injured himself. A prisoner who was in the van with Gray allegedly told investigators he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the police vehicle, and said he believed Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a document written by a Baltimore police investigator.

WBAL’s Jayne Miller told MSNBC that the Post’s story was “inconsistent with what we reported.”

“We have reported for some time that by the time that prisoner is loaded into that van, Freddie Gray was unresponsive. Secondly, we have no medical evidence that Freddie Gray suffered any injury that would indicate that he had injured himself,” Miller told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Wednesday night.

At a press conference on Thursday, Baltimore police announced that they gave evidence gathered during the department’s internal investigation to the state’s attorney’s office. The office will decide whether any charges are warranted.

The findings of the police department’s investigation will not be made public, CBS reports.

The six officers involved in Gray’s arrest are suspended with pay while the investigation continues.

@media only screen and (min-width : 500px) {.ethanmobile { display: none; }}

Like Us On Facebook |
Follow Us On Twitter |
Contact The Author

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.