The case against the dome

The Birmingham-Jefferson County Convention Complex (photo by Dystopos)

André Natta comments at the Terminal about the verbal sniping that marred the latest BJCC board meeting. I agree with André about the need to stop the “internal battle.”

But I don’t support building what we keep calling “the dome.” Here’s why.

(André:) Our convention center needs the space, period. Whether we want to admit that or not, it’s true.

According to whom? The evidence shows that building convention centers is not an effective way to invest in a city’s economy. This 2005 Brookings study points to a steady decline in the market for conventions, even as cities continue to battle one another to offer more convention amenities, including discounted rates and publicly financed hotels. The trend was in place even before 9/11 and rising fuel costs made travel less convenient and more expensive. Now we have an economic crisis that promises to shrink the convention market even faster. So who are we building for?

(André:) Despite the fact that the new facility will never fully recoup its construction or operating costs for itself, it is something that can provide long term jobs and revenue for this region.

So we’re clear that the BJCC will lose money on this deal. But where is the evidence that the regional economy will benefit?

Take jobs, for instance. Most of the employment will be temporary or seasonal, with little prospect for career advancement. The major contractor will be the St. Louis-based multinational HOK, so those profits won’t stay around here. The needs of the expanded center will create fewer professional jobs than equivalent investments in other projects would create.

As for revenue — we have every reason to expect that “if we build it, they won’t come.” We’re in a drastically slowing economy that already has a glut of convention space for a declining market. The cited Brookings report advises:

This analysis should give local leaders pause as they consider calls for ever more public investment into the convention business, while weighing simultaneously where else scarce public funds could be spent to boost the urban economy.

Convention planners will have no compelling reason to try Birmingham’s new facility when so many established ones are going begging. The city’s lack of reliable public transit will be a deal breaker for many, to say nothing of negative publicity attached to the mayor’s indictment on fraud charges and the county’s looming bankruptcy.

This is why I’m convinced that going after the big shows is a sucker’s bet for Birmingham. There are so many ways to invest in the city that promise much better results.

For a start, let’s build a public transit system that local people can rely on and out-of-towners can easily understand. That’s a minimal requirement for getting people to come do business in Birmingham.

The synergy of ad men and Nazis

An oil company is in trouble for touting coffee drinks with a slogan that once adorned the gates of a concentration camp (according to the Telegraph).

“Jedem den Seinen!” shouted the Esso ads; it translates roughly as “To each their own!” Change the phrase’s plural number to singular, and you have the words on the gate of Buchenwald concentration camp: Jedem das Seine. In that context, the sense of the phrase was more like, “Each shall get what he deserves.” Like the notorious Arbeit macht frei, it is a cynically vague, but historically and emotionally resonant phrase that could be read in more than one way.

Have you noticed? Both ad men and Nazis have a knack for cooking up language that evades the cortex and speaks directly to the reptile brain. It’s no wonder that the former sometimes end up reminding people of the latter, even without intending to.

In a seminar on the history of fascism, our professor described the Nazi coinage Gleichschaltung, a word that signified the streamlining and merging of organizational structures to align them with ultra-modern, ostensibly scientific, National Socialist goals. (We prefer not to remember how many intellectuals and celebrities in the English-speaking world — Charles Lindbergh, for instance — admired the anti-democratic spirit of Gleichschaltung.)

The word Gleichschaltung combines gleich (“same, equal”) with Schaltung (“switching,” a word that had high-tech electronic associations at the time). One German-English dictionary of the 1930s translated it as “streamlining,” and postwar translators have tried “forcible coordination” and “consolidation of institutional powers.”

So our seminar leader challenged us to come up with an English translation of Gleichschaltung. I thought I had one. Synergy.

I should explain: Because Gleichschaltung was a Nazi coinage, for propaganda purposes, the feeling and emotional effect of the word are more important than its semantic freight. Part of the word’s devilish cleverness is its appropriation of “equality” (through the word gleich) to serve a concept that sought to crush individualism. It also appropriated (through Schaltung) the mystical aura of technology and the assumption that “progress” is unstoppable.

Do we have a word like this in English? I think we do. It’s “synergy.”

Synergy takes a classical prefix (syn-) that suggests unity and sounds like “sin,” a mischievous word beloved by advertisers. The rest of the word sounds like energy, a word with so many positive associations that our despised oil companies keep referring to themselves these days as “energy companies.” Maybe this is why synergy glows like an HDTV.

To be fair, synergy is not a brand-new word, but has popped up rarely over the last three centuries as a Greek-derived word for “cooperation.” (The related synergism has a different, technical meaning to epidemiologists and other specialists.)

But the word’s emergence as a superstar buzzword (since the ’80s) has nothing to do with its history. As used in the biz world, synergy has more feeling than meaning. And it never means plain old “cooperation” or “working together.”

In the context of (for example) corporate mergers, synergy suggests something a lot like the Nazis’ Gleichschaltung: Getting everyone to hew to the same party line, to seek the same goals, while submerging the good of individuals for the sake of the corporate entity. I mistrust the word.

Twitter for beginners

I’ve been signed up at Twitter for most of a year now, without any clear idea of what to do with it. David Pogue’s recent blog posts on the topic have helped clear the mental block:

• Twittering Tips for Beginners, including: “Don’t tweet about what you’re doing right now.” Uh, really?
• The Twitter Experiment, or what happened when Pogue tweeted a request for a cure for hiccups.

Quick political advice

The best motto I’ve seen so far for Obama-struck idealists this January:

Lower your expectations now and increase your output.

Thanks go to Mr. Moo — from the original Birmingham — whose query about the “monster sale” also made me smile.

60 Minutes: Too late for a Palestinian state?

CBS News just broadcast the best report I’ve ever seen on TV concerning the barriers to Mideast peace. It’s only 13 minutes, but covers the ground very well, and is up to the minute.

I can’t manage to embed the video, but here’s a link.

What do you think?

Mideast peace: Carter ain’t quitting

Running an errand yesterday at Brookwood Mall, I take a short cut through Books-A-Million and am brought up short by a notice of a book signing. Jimmy Carter will be in the store this Friday at 7 p.m., signing yet another book about Israel and Palestine. This one’s called We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land. And the subtitle? A Plan That Will Work.

In the introduction Carter retreats from the word “apartheid” which appeared in the title of his 2006 book (Palestine Peace Not Apartheid), provoking a firestorm of indignation from American critics. This was despite the fact that a number of noted Israeli commentators had made the comparison themselves, without being denounced as anti-Semites or imbeciles, as Carter was. Apparently it is OK to make this historical comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa, as long as it is not done within the notice of U.S. decision makers.

So Carter tries again. This book usefully surveys the turning points in decades of wars, exploits, and mostly fruitless peace talks. That alone makes it worth the price. As in Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Carter also includes some key documents in the back of the book. To me, the most remarkable of these is the official Israeli response to the “Road Map” proposal. It has to be seen to be believed.

The second-to-last chapter discusses the view of a growing number of Palestinians that there will never be a viable Palestinian state, and that what must be sought instead is full citizenship for Israel’s Arab subjects. This is my own view. But it presents a quandary to Israelis, who are attached to their country both as a democratic republic and as the Jewish homeland. They lack the imagination to see how, if the Arabs are included, it can continue to be both.

What’s clear to everyone who cares — even those who outwardly insist on preserving the status quo — is that things cannot continue as they are. Israel must either grant the Palestinians their humanity, and with it their human rights, or it must try to exterminate them. The tendency toward the latter course is already too strong. Does the vow “Never Again” apply only to the mass murder of Jews, but not of their fellow Semites?

Carter doesn’t talk about these things, perhaps because he knows that frank talk has to wait for the establishment of trust. But how do you establish trust with the heirs of the Shoah? It’s a fact that we still have active Jew haters on the fringe of Western political life, the same fringe that once accommodated the Hitler movement. No wonder that American Jews feel a need for a safe place to escape to, in case the worst should happen.

The forbidden, although valid comparison of Israel with apartheid South Africa actually gives me irrational hope for the future. It wasn’t so long ago that people found it almost impossible to see a peaceful way out of South Africa’s apartheid trap. Things are far from perfect there, to say the least. But compared to what everyone had a right to expect, South Africa has achieved the impossible. There must be a way for Israel, too, even though we can’t see it.

A few links:

• NPR interview with Carter that aired yesterday.
• Simon & Schuster page for We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land
• Quick summary from the Rocky Mountain News.
• Jewish Telegraph Agency release announcing the book while criticizing the last one. Followed by smug comments from readers.
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch review, contributed by a reader, seeks to portray Carter as both egotistical and naive about the Arabs. Likely to be a typical response.

Eagle vs. Bear: How to play

In the news: Russia scraps plan to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad

It’s pretty simple.

Under President Bush, America pushes a missile defense system in eastern Europe, claiming it’s meant to protect against so-called rogue nations like Iran.

Russia replies that there is an existing radar array in Azerbaijan, built by the Russians, and located just north of Iran. If America would use this location in cooperation with Russia, it would clarify that the system is intended for our joint security and not as a potential strategic advantage against Russia.

America pretends not to hear and makes arrangements to site the missile defense system in the Czech Republic. Close to Russia and a long way from Iran.

Russia makes trouble for America’s small ally, the Republic of Georgia, by supporting separatists in the border regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

During the Olympic Games, Georgia invades South Ossetia with the expectation of an easy victory. (America feigns ignorance of these plans.)

Russian troops defeat the Georgians, then invade Georgia and threaten the capital. They demonstrate that the Republic of Georgia exists on Russian sufferance.

America does nothing, because there is nothing it can do. The Bush administration clings to the missile defense project.

Just after Election Day, Russia announces it will locate missiles in Kaliningrad, capable of hitting targets in the new NATO countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.

President Obama takes office, and America announces it will “review” the missile defense project.

Russia announces it will not proceed with plans to locate missiles in Kaliningrad.

The game is “tit for tat,” and the rules are simple: When you act like a treacherous felon, so will I. On the other hand, when you behave yourself, so will I.

Chicken joke: Slavoj Žižek

Today’s chicken joke comes with a hat tip to Jahsonic. Slavoj Žižek (1949- ) is a Slovenian philosopher and academic pop star, further discussed here.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Žižek: It was going after the man who believed he was a seed of grain.

Cutbacks at the Alabama Archives

Due to state budget cuts, the Alabama Department of Archives and History has had to lay off staff and limit its operating hours. Beginning February 1, the archives will no longer be open on Saturdays. Six staff members will be laid off, and five more are leaving “through attrition.”

The agency had already stopped new book purchases and canceled its internship program, which hires and trains students from Alabama colleges. Some public events have been postponed or canceled. As is always the case when the state runs out of funds, some cuts are going to cost extra money in the long run.

It’s tax rip-off season

From research by the National Consumer Law Center, a private, non-profit advocacy group in Boston:

• About 60 percent of taxpayers hire someone to do their income taxes. But tax preparers often make mistakes or give bad advice.
• Anyone can open a tax-prep service. No special knowledge is required, and only three states require licenses (California, Maryland, and Oregon). H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt do require their employees to undergo training. At other shops, employees sometimes don’t even know what to do with supplementary tax forms.
• Tax preparers often pad the bill with “junk fees” like an “application fee” or “document preparation fee.” You shouldn’t have to pay these.
• The biggest rip-off of all is the “refund anticipation loan.” Customers often get the idea that this is free money that will be paid off by the amount of their refund. Truth is, the tax-prep shop charges interest on the loan, at rates comparable to the steep charges for payday loans and similar rip-offs. If you accept the loan, you’ll have to fork over up to 25 percent of your refund.

Source: “Is that tax preparer really qualified?” Consumer Reports, March 2009, pp. 12-13.