Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Last night’s debates were striking both for the President’s flat performance and for his challenger’s breathtaking and repeated mendacity. I loved one of the post debate spinners who described Romney’s talk of taxes as “eat all the cake you like, you won’t get fat”.

But it’s not anywhere near the first time that a candidate has told serial porkies on the Presidential debate stage. And if we keep on structuring debates in more or less the same way it will happen again: The form seems to if not invite lies, at least make them too easy.

Can something be done to prevent lying in Presidential debates? I have a simple suggestion that will greatly reduce the opportunity for lies, admitting that nothing can eradicate them completely: The moderator’s key questions on the issues should be released to the candidates and the public 48 hours in advance of the debates.

It is silly to think that the element of surprise adds value to these events. Allow the candidates to do scripted talks and then have the surprises be the back and forth as they interact and ask each other followups. Allow followups from the moderator if you trust him or her to be less milquetoast than the hapless Jim Lehrer. But if you must have surprise as to the basic questions, reduce it to a fraction of the event.

Releasing at least a substantial fraction of the questions in advance will unleash the fact-checkers on all sides. It will promote debate. It will allow campaigns to set up web sites in which they give backup for their claims. In a more perfect world than we actually have, we could aim for a week in advance, and hope that a consensus dataset would evolve in real rather than nominal dollars, but I know that is just an academic pipe dream. It won’t happen, and a week is a long time in politics anyway.

But even 48 hours will allow the mobilization of enough external expertise that it would put candidates on notice that there are limits to what they can reasonably hope get away with.

My picks for winners and losers:

Pre-debate winner: James Fallows, who called it pretty well.

Post-debate winner: Paul Krugmann, A Test of the System and Romney’s Sick Joke

Post-debate losers: Jim Lehrer and all the rest of us too.

Posted in Politics | 9 Comments

Sears Feels the Power of the Press

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

Over the weekend a reporter from a major national newspaper got interested in my treadmill saga. He called Sears to get their side of the story. And in no time at all, on Monday Shirley from Sears corporate offices in Hoffman Estates, Ill. — the real corporate offices as opposed to the “executive offices” that house Stephanie — was on the phone to me sorting things out.

Yesterday Shirley called to tell me I’d have a treadmill by Monday — the “2013 model” — which was presented as a great favor because it has a larger LCD screen (like I care? My plan is to be walking at a constant pace, listening to my podcasts or maybe in the future watching DVR’s Daily Shows and Colbert Reports). Supposedly the 2013s too are currently on ‘backorder’ so getting one to Miami by then is an exceptional event.

Given that the Sears.com web page currently promises delivery to my zip code of the very same Sole F80 by 10/06/12 — Saturday — I’m not as impressed as Shirley might wish. Either this great favor isn’t a great favor or, at least as likely, the web page is misleading people. I asked Shirley about the delivery info online and she blamed the manufacturer, who she says loads the availability data directly onto the Sears site and, she seemed to imply, says goods are available when they are not. If that’s true, it seems an awesome failure on Sears’s part not to write contracts that would penalize suppliers for creating circumstances that pretty seriously trash Sears’s customer experience and brand. But what do I know, I teach law not marketing. No doubt the wizards of Bain could explain why this is really good business because it saves on an employee somewhere.

Shirley clearly has real power, though: the Sears bot did not call today. What a shame Sears cannot or will not empower its call center people to turn off the calls too. After all, if Sears will let an arms-length manufacturer write direct to the database that runs its web sales arm, why won’t it let its outsourced call center employees control the robocaller?

More importantly, why does it take the threat of unfavorable national publicity to get a company to honor its promise in what should have been a fairly routine consumer transaction? I would love to hear someone at Sears explain what went wrong in not just in their supply chain but more importantly in the delivery and post-sale customer support networks — and especially what they plan to do about it. Otherwise, it sounds like time to short Sears stock — surely no firm can survive doing business like this?

If the article appears, I gather it would run onNEXT Sunday. I’ll be sure to link to it if does.

[Next installment: A Quick Dispatch from the Treadmill Front]

Previously:

Posted in Shopping | 6 Comments

Vote NO on Florida Constitutional Amendment 4

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

Just in case you were wondering, proposed Amendment 4 to the Florida Constitution is a Really Bad Idea.

Have a look at this analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Florida’s “Amendment 4” Would Cause Tax Rate Increases and Deep Local Service Cuts, Likely Harming the State’s Economy.

Vote No on 4 — in fact, if you don’t want the details, just vote NO on all the proposed constitutional amendments this year.

If, on the other hand, you’d like some nuance when looking at what the Legislature has wrought, please see my analysis of the 2012 Florida Constitutional Amendments. The bottom line is you should vote No on all of them except 11 & 12. I can understand why someone would vote for 2 & 9, but I’m not sure you should encourage this pandering tendency of the legislature.