Excused Lame

For an AKC judge acquiring new breeds involves quite a bit of effort done at one’s own expense, including going to shows for ringside observations, sitting in on breed seminars and judging matches and sweepstakes. On applying for new breeds a judge paid a fee of $25 for each new breed.

With the AKC under financial pressure from declining registrations, on May 13th, John Wade, AKC Director of Judging Operations, sent out this note to all AKC judges with a decision by the AKC Board:

On May 11, 2010 the Board of Directors of the American Kennel Club voted to adopt an annual fee for all conformation judges effective January 1, 2011.

The Board reviewed the financial subsidies AKC makes to support the Events area annually. Fees assessed to clubs and exhibitors have reduced the subsidy by almost 30% to approximately ten million dollars each year. Approximately two million, three hundred thousand dollars of that subsidy relates to the Conformation Judging Operations Division. The Board considered a staff proposal to institute an annual judges’ fee, which would be phased in over two years to reduce this Judging Operations subsidy by 20% in 2011 and 30% in 2012. As the AKC Bylaws prohibit Delegates from charging a judges’ fee, Delegate Conformation judges will not be required to pay this fee. Also, Junior Showmanship only judges would not pay a fee.

Judges will be charged an annual maintenance fee of $50 and a $10 per breed per year fee, however in the first year (2011) the per breed fee will be reduced to $5. The initial billing will be sent out in early November of this year. Fee per breed will be calculated on November 1st of each calendar year and will be based on the number of breeds that an individual has either regular or provisional status for on that date. The $25 judging application per breed fee charged all applicants including delegates will not be increased. Clubs that hire visiting judges will be assessed a $25 per judge per show fee for all visiting judges.

So while my lovely bride would only get dinged for $75 in 2011 and $125 in 2012, an all-rounder – licensed to judge all 164 breeds – would be charged $870 in 2011 and a cool $1690 in 2012 and each year thereafter.

The reaction of the judging community was, to say the least, not approving.  It was, in fact, so negative that Ron Menaker, AKC Chairman of the Board, wrote just five days later:

With the input of the judging community in mind, the Board today has taken the following actions:

1. The previously approved fee structure has been withdrawn by the Board and new fee structures will be considered. The concept of judges’ fees remains intact.
2. The Board has instructed AKC staff to revisit the alternatives discussed over the past year in addition to the other suggestions made recently by several judges to arrive at several equitable methods for consideration.
3. The Board has instructed AKC staff to meet again with representatives of judges organizations for input on these methodologies before any final decision is made.

What the fees pay for is a question no one can answer.  The AKC, apart from providing an oral and written examination, does nothing to help prospective breed judges acquire new knowledge or assist with continuing education.  It’s a fund-raising ploy, pure and simple.

So the camel’s nose is under the tent.  The judging community is celebrating winning the battle but they’ve lost the war:  regardless of how much, they’re going to be charged annual fees for continuing to be licensed, which fees will no doubt be increased in future years.  And, with even less doubt, the judges will pass the increased cost onto the clubs and inevitably on the poor onwner-exhibitor.

When this poor little blog was transferred from Blogger to WordPress, to say the least it was not transparent.  For example, every uploaded photo was lost.  All the formatting mistakes caused by Blogger’s clunky interface were thrown into stark relief.

So I’ve spent the weekend cleaning up the debris from the move.  All the pictures have been restored and all the posts re-edited so even though they contain nothing but nonsense at least they look good.  If there was ever a time for me to be happy that I haven’t been particularly energetic about posting, this is it.

New Yorkers famously have a reputation for being short on tact and civil servants famously have a reputation for the slack quality of service.  Put them together and it seems you get the Port Authority and MTA toll collectors.  Among the complaints tendered by commuters:

• A furious toll worker counts out 44 singles when he gets a $50 bill at the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge.
• A driver with a faulty E-Z tag is called a “punk-ass jerk” by a toll collector.
• Another tells a driver who asks why she looks so sad, “Because of assholes like you. I don’t like you assholes.”
• A  driver hands the collector a $10 bill. The collector returns it, claiming there’s a rip. The customer fishes out another $10 bill and asks, “Is this better?” “Fuck you,” the worker replies.

But why are they so grouchy?  Sure they get paid up to $62,000 for talking this way to commuters, but it’s not as though they have a bleak future ahead of them:

In an era of generous municipal salaries and union-friendly overtime rules, it may not come as a complete shock that there are thousands of Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees — 8,074, to be precise — who made $100,000 or more last year.

The usual top-level managers are included in that list, but so are dozens of lower-level employees, including conductors, police officers and engineers, many of whom pulled in six figures in overtime and retirement benefits alone.

One of those workers, a Long Island Rail Road conductor who retired in April, made $239,148, about $4,000 more than the authority’s chief financial officer, according to payroll data released on Wednesday…

Two car repairmen at the L.I.R.R. and 12 police officers assigned to the authority’s bridges and tunnels, some of whom earned more than double their base salaries, were among the 50 employees at the authority who collected $200,000 or more, the data show.

Mr. Redmond, the retired conductor, was the eighth-highest paid employee in the entire authority, ranking 16 spots higher than his railroad’s executive vice president. He earned $67,772 in base salary and $67,000 in overtime, and collected nearly $100,000 in unused sick days and vacation time upon retirement, railroad officials said.

The second-highest paid employee at the agency’s bridge and tunnel division, after its president, was Walter Stock, a lieutenant who earned $226,383, more than twice his base pay of $90,000, according to the data.

At No. 17 was Dominick J. Masiello, an L.I.R.R. locomotive engineer, who earned about $75,000 in base salary and overtime payments of $52,000.

He also received $94,600 in “penalty payments,” which railroad officials said stemmed from a contractual rule that requires engineers who work in a storage yard to be paid extra if they are assigned to move a locomotive to a nearby maintenance facility or if they are asked to operate a train outside of the yard.

Let’s not forget that all this smoosh these (unionized) employees strategically earned will be invaluable in working out their generous pension payments, which the taxpayers are stuck with for the rest of their lives.

(Links courtesy of the always amusing Bridge and Tunnel Club blog)

A Portland police officer on his rounds pops into a coffee shop to get himself some java and associate with the community he’s serving.  Not uncommendable, right?  Wrong!

In mid-May, Portland police Officer James Crooker  went to Southeast Portland on a patrol call. With a few minutes to spare, he decided to get a coffee.

So, he popped into the Red & Black  cafe on Southeast 12th Avenue near Oak Street, bought a coffee and was heading out when a customer approached him, saying she appreciates the hard job that police officers do every day in Portland.

One of the co-owners of the cafe, John Langley,  has another point of view. While the officer and customer were chatting, he walked up and asked Crooker to leave, saying he felt uncomfortable having a uniformed officer in the vegan cafe.

The incident, which was brief, speaks volumes about the tensions between Portland police and some members of the community who are more worried about police shootings than protection.

Crooker said he was surprised to be shown the door but left immediately. He said this marked a first during his nine-year in law enforcement, two in Portland and seven in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

“The places that I’ve been kicked out of before have been places like the methadone clinic,” he said. “I’ve never been kicked out of a regular cafe.”

But the 36-year-old officer, who was born and raised in Portland, said it’s all part of working this city’s streets in a uniform.

“We have a unique relationship with the community,” he said. “You’re there to protect them but on the other hand they don’t know what that involves. Being gracious is part of it.”

A former Marine who served in Iraq, Crooker didn’t take the incident to heart.

“It was not personal,” he said. “He was being hostile to my uniform,” he said.

Langley, who did not raise his voice during the encounter, agreed.

“It’s not about the police,” Langley said. “It’s about what the police represent to many people who frequent the cafe.

The cafe draws vegans — of course — along with homeless people and animal-rights and environmental activists who Langley said have been targets of police abuse and harassment…

The cafe…  has received a deluge of calls, with about half supporting the cafe and the rest expressing anger.

“We’ve received threats,” Langley said. “People have threatened to attack us and break our windows.”

Still, he has no regrets.

“I never expected an police officer to come into the space,” he said. “If it happened again, I wouldn’t serve him.”

Next time your too-too-twee little island of self-righteousness is robbed or burglarized, Mr (?) Langley, get one of your homeless or animal-rights customers to respond.

As almost everyone this side of Alpha Centauri now knows, last night Tigers pitcher Armando Gallaraga’s quest for a perfect game ended with a blown call by first-base umpire Jim Joyce on a bang-bang play.  Unquestionably, Joyce missed it.  I knew it even before the replay.

The play where the pitcher has to cover first base is maybe one of the trickier ones in baseball.  The pitcher has to get there in time, field the ball and step on the bag with the runner bearing down on him.  The throw over is necessarily weaker than if the first baseman was standing on the base because of the timing and the pitcher decelerating as he reaches the base.  Not infrequently something goes wrong – the pitcher drops the ball or fails to step on the bag or the throw doesn’t arrive on time – and the runner is safe.

Look at the replay and it’s clear that the play didn’t need to be a close one.  Another culprit here is first baseman Miguel Cabrera.  He shouldn’t have fielded the ball, which was well within the range of second baseman Carlos Guillen.  If everyone had done their jobs right, Guillen scoops up the grounder, makes a quick throw over to Cabrera at first and Donald is out:  perfect game.

Considering the hysterical reaction to Joyce’s mistake, one would think that this was the greatest injustice committed since Socrates was condemned to death, but I had wanted to point out (before Colby Cosh beat me to it) that losing a perfect game after 8 2/3 innings on a bad call isn’t without precedent.  Hooks Wiltse lost his bid in 1908 when umpire Cy Rigler failed to call a third strike on George McQuillan, who was hit on the next pitch.  In 1972, with a 3-2 count on the 27th batter Bruce Froemming called the next pitch on the outside corner a ball, robbing Milt Pappas of his place in history.

Nor do I think that this incident is a reason to expand instant replay.  It’s one thing to have it on home run calls, where the ball is far away from the umpires and hard to see, and quite another to bring it in for balls and strikes or a play at a base.  The job of the umpire is as difficult a one as any other in baseball and it’s truly remarkable the number of times a disputable call is seen to have been judged correctly.  Accept it and, like Gallaraga and manager Jim Leyland, try to behave with some restraint.

Time has a list of its choices for the 50 worst inventions.  Some I can agree with (Crocs), others I don’t (DDT, CFCs).  Let me add a few of my own:

• Capris
• Frisbees
• The electric guitar
• The 12-tone system
• Quadraphonic sound
• The one-child policy

A weepie in the New York Times describes the plight of Cortney Munna trying to dig herself out of almost $100,000 of (non-dischargable) student-loan debt after four years at NYU, a very expensive school.  The article puts the blame on Citibank and NYU for not discouraging Ms. Munna from taking out more loans.  But – dear heavens! – only at the very end do we learn that Ms. Munna: 1) earned her degree in religious and women’s studies; 2) is now living in San Francisco.  Well, no wonder she can’t pay anything back!  What did she expect?

Needless to say, a more realistic view of her prospects and possibilities doesn’t occur to her:

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back,” she said. “It feels wrong to me.”

Sex and the City 2 seems to be more provocative than the usual chick-flick fluff:

The rather scathing portrayal of Muslim society no doubt will stir controversy, especially in a frothy summer entertainment, but there’s something bracing about the film’s saucy political incorrectness. Or is it politically correct? “SATC 2” is at once proudly feminist and blatantly anti-Muslim, which means that it might confound liberal viewers.

Indicative of the film’s contradictory stance is a scene in which the ladies perform a karaoke version of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” in an Abu Dhabi nightclub. An equally outrageous moment comes when the interlopers are rescued by a bunch of Muslim women who strip off their black robes to reveal the stylish Western outfits they are concealing beneath their discreet garb.

I fear this future scenario may be perpetrated by Muslim extremists:  the executive producer wakes up and finds Sarah Jessica Parker’s severed head in his bed.

We let Silver and Fred go today.  They were both quite elderly and their problems reached a terminal stage at the same time.  Hard as it is to know they’re dead, it was harder to know they were fading and it would have been cruel to try to keep them going.

Silver was our last Texas native, born just two weeks before we moved to Cincinnati.  While she finished before her legendary sister Lacey, she never had a specials career, content to stay at home and rest on the sofa.  Outwardly gentle and quiet, she exhibited all the slyness of a Borzoi bitch.  None was better at maneuvering herself into an advantageous position without anyone noticing.

Fred was destined for a career in the field after he gained his conformation championship; he was bar-none the fastest dog I’ve ever seen.  Sadly, a bout of pneumonia after he was neutered scarred his lungs and made running for any distance impossible.  It was easy to take him for granted but he showed he was special when he gazed at us with his luminous, gentle eyes.

Rest well, dear friends.

Ch. Soyara’s Silver Angel JC, “Silver”

December 17, 1997-May 17, 2010

Ch. Bokhara Soyara Fjor, “Fred”

August 25, 1999-May 17, 2010

The Philadelphia Flyers, left for dead when they fell 3 games to none to the Bruins, came back to force Game 7.  There, again, they were left for dead when they fell behind 3-0 late in the first period. 

Down, but not out, for they came back to win 4-3 on Simon Gagne’s goal at 12:52 in the third period on a power play for a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty.  Even more enjoyable than this historic comeback, only the third time a team has come back from a 3-game deficit to win, are the tears and lamentations of the Boston fans.  Bwaaahaaa!

Update:  Enjoy!

Philadelphia plays Boston tonight in the Eastern Conference semi-finals, having been the only team since the 1975 Islanders to come back from a 3-0 deficit.  An Eastern Conference fan has a request for the Supreme Being:

Dear God,
I know You probably don’t care about anything as trivial as hockey, but if You do please let an Eastern Conference Team win the Cup. I know in Your infinite wisdom You also can’t stand that little showboating worm Patrick Kane, and well, no God in Their right mind would support the Sharks… Besides, do You really want to take responsibility for another cheesy California town to behold Your beloved Cup? (You let Anaheim slip by, but You were more than likely busy with an earthquake or volcano…). Personally, I don’t have a dog in the fight now that the Wings and Sabres are out, but I promise to be good and say nice things (except to Hawks and Sharks fans) for the next year if You only hear my wishes.

SCOTUS 2011:  Six Catholics and three Jews.

Is there a better hockey announcer today than Doc Emrick?  Guy would make a chess match sound thrilling.

Update.  I’m pulling for Pittsburgh, but you won’t see a more beautiful goal than Max Lapierre’s.

On Youtube, the CBS news coverage of the Kennedy assassination: 

CBS was the only network with national programming that afternoon:  local NBC and ABC affiliates had their own programming.  Part 1 is the the broadcast of As The World Turns just before the first interruption.  The first break-in is at the beginning of Part 2 or at about 1:40 PM EST, 10 minutes after the President was shot.  There’s a commercial break for Nescafé coffee and station identification before Walter Cronkite breaks in with more news.  The soap resumes with a scene in a restaurant before another commercial break for Friskies dog food, the second of which is cut off (at the beginning of Part 3), regular broadcasting never to resume. At the time, As The World Turns was broadcast live; the actors were unaware of transpiring events until afterwards.

Without a “flash” studio, CBS was unable to put Cronkite on camera for some 20 minutes.  He broadcast behind a black “CBS News Bulletin” graphic, which adds a stark chill to the tragedy. 

What’s striking about this broadcast, Cronkite at first is mostly reading wire service copy.  As well, the only voices are Cronkite’s and Eddie Barker in Dallas.  Charles Collingswood takes over for a while only during Part 9. 

Compare to how such a story would be broadcast nowadays.  There would be half a dozen talking heads babbling simultaneously, microphones stuck under the noses of everyone in a 10-block radius of events and, of course, David Gergen.  Would it be more comprehensive coverage?  Yes.  Would it lose its sense of historical import thereby?  Definitely.

An insight from Ilkka at The Fourth Checkraise:

If Wal-Mart were otherwise exactly the same as now, except that it was fully owned and run by the government as a public service and a anti-gouging and price control program to force all those pig-snouted top hat capitalists and industrialists to sell their products cheaply instead of extracting hefty profit margins from the blood and sweat of the people, the left that so eagerly bashes it now have nothing but praise for it.

I think that Wal-Mart needs a marketing makeover that would make it more palatable to Goodthinkers.  Stores in or near centers of enlightened thought should change their name to Wal-Martí.  Instead of some little grey-haired grandma welcoming you there should be a bearded revolutionary in fatigues and beret (cigar acceptable).  The face of management wouldn’t be some paunchy, middle-aged guy in shortsleeves but an Oriental in a Mao suit.  This should send a thrill up the leg of every progressive customer.  Nothing else need change.