The View from Right Field

“Oppenheimer”, the Bomb, and Should It Have Been Used

With the new movie “Oppenheimer” out, we are once again debating whether it was right to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.  I have talked about this question many times before, so I will not go into it again,¹ except for one thought that I have had for a while but not written about before.  Actually, it’s more of a possibility or a question than a certainty.  In any case, I thought of it again because of a couple of things in a review of Road to Surrender, a new book by Evan Thomas focusing on three men involved in the decision to drop the bomb and end the war:

“After receiving a full description of the destruction wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including an account of the civilian death toll, President Truman ordered that further atomic bombs would be used only on his explicit order – first time in American history that a president had taken direct control of a military weapon. …

IRS to Stop Surprise Visits on Taxpayers at Home. What Took So Long?

The Internal Revenue Service announced today its agents will no longer make unannounced visits to taxpayers’ houses.  According to an article in The Washington Post, the policy shift was “meant to protect employees’ safety due to the fear of potentially irate taxpayers answering the door.” 

The article quoted IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel as saying “[t]his is the right thing to do and the right time to end it.  We have the tools we need to successfully collect revenue without adding stress with unannounced visits.”

Trump Being Bad Doesn’t Make Biden Good

As with my last post, this is something I have said before that needs to be said again: Just because Donald Trump was not a good president (how’s that for understatement) and would be even worse in a second term (see, inter alia, here and here), that does not mean Joe Biden is doing a good job.  He’s not.  In President Biden’s case, I am not talking about his character (though some have done so).  I am talking about his policies.  Here is a short list of some of them (there are more):

• While supply chain disruptions from Vladimir Putin’s renewed invasion of Ukraine may have added to inflation, our inflation started long before Putin’s invasion.  It was a result of the huge Covid stimulus package in 2021 that we did not need.  The stimulus package in 2020 was necessary.  The one in 2021 was not.  All that money had a big role in the inflation that followed.  Some may say that people needed the money, but people always want free money from the government.

More Weapons; More Ammunition; More Defense. Now.

I have written about this before, but it needs to be said again: We need to spend more money on weapons; we need to spend more money on ammunition; we need to spend more money on defense.  Some of those weapons, a lot of that ammunition, need to go to Ukraine in the short run, but in the longer term, we need more supplies of weapons and ammunition for ourselves.  Plus, in any case, most of the increased spending is for us.  Actually, all of the spending is, in the end, for us because Ukraine beating Russia is for us.^1,2  Ukraine beating Russia makes the world a safer place.  Plus, Ukraine beating Russia may give China, and Xi Jinping, some pause with respect to how they pursue reunification with Taiwan, which is also good for the world, including us.³

The problem is how do we get agreement to increase spending for weapons, ammunition, and defense generally.  In an editorial last Tuesday, “America is Running Out of Ammo,” The Wall Street Journal suggested that President Joe Biden

Mike Royko and the Ex-Cubs Rule

Famed Chicago journalist Mike Royko had a rule that no team could win a World Series if they had three (or more) ex-Cubs on their roster.  While Mike was a Cubs fan, he also believed that playing for the Cubs either so jinxed players or taught them such bad habits, that any team with three or more of them on their roster couldn’t win a World Series (or at least that is what he said in his columns).  And it didn’t happen until the Arizona Diamondbacks won the World Series in 2001 with Mark Grace, Luis Gonzalez, and Miguel Batista on their roster.¹ 

In any case, watching the Cubs-Yankees game on Sunday made me wonder if there is some kind of a regular season too-many-ex-Cubs rule, too.  The Yankees were leading 4 to 1 after six 5innings.  But the Yankees had five ex-Cubs (or ex-Cubs organization) players in their starting lineup: Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu², Gleyber Torres³, Josh Donaldson⁴, and Billy McKinney⁵.

Consequences of Prigozhin’s Mutiny Against Putin

Two and a half weeks ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group led a mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov.  Within a day or so, the mutiny ended, but it almost seemed to end more because Prigozhin chose to stop than because he was being stopped.  In any case, all kinds of questions arose.

Those questions have not been answered, and won’t be for quite a while, but a few indications may be starting to come in.  Yesterday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan released several high-level Ukrainian prisoners of war, leaders of the Ukrainian defense of Mariupol last year, that Russia had previously transferred to Turkey on the understanding that they would not be released until the war was over. The Russians objected the release, but apparently President Erdogan didn’t care.

Terry Francona is Still Managing Cleveland. Where is Joe Maddon?

I went to the Cubs/Cleveland Guardians (f/k/a Indians) game today, and I am going tomorrow, too.  When I saw Terry Francona was still managing Cleveland, I thought back to the 2016 World Series: the Cubs managed by Joe Maddon versus the Indians (now Guardians) managed by Terry Francona.  Joe Maddon left the Cubs a long time ago (mostly because the Cubs wanted him to go).  Terry Francona, however, is still managing Cleveland.

So remind me: Which manager won the 2016 World Series and which manager lost?

“A Foreign Policy for the Middle Class”

Martin Wolf wrote a column in yesterday’s Financial Times about President Biden’s new foreign policy.  Mr. Wolf’s general view can probably be summed up in the headline on his article: “US has buyer’s remorse for the world it built”.  However, in describing the economic world the United States helped create after World War II, including Bretton Woods, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, etc. Mr. Wolf, however, fails to mention the reasoning and motivation behind the policy: By protecting peace and promoting growth in other countries, we would be helping and protecting the United States.  And it worked. 

While Mr. Wolf may say the United States is having buyer’s remorse, if we are, it is because people aren’t remembering where the world was in 1945 and how far we have come in the last almost eighty years and because our leaders see more political gain in complaining about problems than explaining about progress.

An Unusual Encounter With a Bicyclist

I had an unusual experience recently while driving in South Haven, Michigan.  I was coming up to a three-way stop.  It was a “T” intersection, so all the lanes had to stop.  Once I stopped and it was my turn to go, I noticed a bicyclist coming up on my left.  Being from the Chicago area, I knew to keep my foot on the brake – because the bicyclist would keep going right through the intersection.  Except they didn’t.  The bicyclist actually stopped to wait their turn.  I was shocked.  That’s not the way it happens in the Chicago area.  Here, bicyclists go through stop signs, stop lights, and most anything else.  The rules of the road don’t seem to apply to bicyclists in Chicago.  So, a warning to Chicago drivers: Be careful when you are driving in other towns.  You might find bicyclists following the rules of the road and not know what to do.

PS: I can hear bicyclists out there screaming about how dangerous it is for them, about how motorists don’t pay attention to them, etc.  I understand, and I am not saying that what motorists do is right or proper – or safe.  I’m just commenting on a surprising thing that happened to me while I was driving outside of Chicagoland.
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UPDATE (7/3/23 7:35 am): A version if this post was published in the Chicago Tribune's "Letters" section today.  You can find it here.  It is the sixth letter.

"Why Legal Writing Is So Awful"

A recent issue of The Economist had an article on “Why legal writing is so awful”.  The article listed several possible reasons: (i) the “curse of knowledge”; i.e., lawyers don’t know how to write for non-lawyers; (ii) by writing complex stuff, you can charge more for it; etc.  The article concludes that the most likely reason is the “cut-and-paste” hypothesis.  It is easy to copy what others have already done and add extra language, thus making things more complex, to fit the new situation.

After practicing law for 39 years, much of it writing contracts and other documents, one a joke, one more serious.  The joke was that it was all part of an in-group game, sort of like the Scrabble®, we lawyers had going.  And in that game, “notwithstanding the aforegoing” was triple word score.

More seriously, my real thought was this: When I was asked to write up something in a rush, I would tell people (in the spirit of Blaise Pascal) that if it can be long, I can do it quickly.  Short and simple, however, will take longer.  It requires more work and more time.