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Last Call – The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Daniel Okrent’s Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition is not an easy read. However, it is well worth the effort and the reader will be rewarded with a new perspective on an era of American history that shaped many of today’s institutions. The diifculty with Last Call is not with Okrent’s style or writing expertise but rather the breadth of the prohibition subject and his thorough treatment. The implementation of national prohibition, its enforcement and then repeal touched the entire nation (and international relations) cutting across economic segments for almost 14 years. It is still the only constitutional amendment (18th) to be repealed (21st).
Last Call is an enlightening account of how a small fringe organization (ASL, Anti-Saloon League) led by a savvy political operative (Wayne Wheeler) orchestrated a masterful prohibition strategy. The ASL strategy of targeting key congressional districts with vulnerable incumbents, alone, would not have swung the country. However, in politics timing is everything, Wayne Wheeler and the ASL happened on the scene at the right time to capitalize on historic changes sweeping the country.
For example, Wheeler expertly aligned the ASL with growing women’s suffrage movement. The 19th amendment was passed a year after prohibition. Further, the ASL was aided in the early campaigns against the large brewers (Pabst, Anheuser-Busch, and Schlitz) by anti-German (and later anti-immigarant) sentiments from WWI. Finally, the nation’s demographics were changing. Rural population was in dramatic decline as the cities grew at an unprecedented rate driven greatly by immigration. In summary, the confluence of all these forces makes for quite a compelling story.
Of course, the story only gets more interesting once prohibition takes affect in early 1919. For the next decade, battles between “wets” and “drys” were waged on the streets and US borders across the country. Again, it was a confluence of events that brought an end to prohibition. In 1927 the ASL lost its commanding force when Wayne Wheeler died. Of course, prohibition was the law by constitution amendment and no amendment had ever been repealed. But, gradually there was a recognition that prohibition was doing more harm than good. Large crime organizations were created and financed by the massive illegal trade. Millions of ordinary citizens were becoming criminals for simply wanting an easily obtained drink. The final death knell for prohibition was the stock market crash and economic depression. Prohibition and the 16th amendment had revolutionized government finances. Gone were excise taxes on alcohol to be replaced by income taxes. But, with the depression income tax revenue dropped precipitously and the Government needed all the revenue sources it could find. To put the financial implications in perspective, in 1929 “Canadian revenue liquor export tax revenues accounted for 20 percent of all Canadian revenue collections, both federal and provisional.” This represented twice as much as Canadian income taxes. Of course these revenues were coming from the pockets of American consumers in the purchase price of the illegally imported (but legally exported from Canada) alcohol.
Last Call is necessary reading for anyone that wishes to be knowledagble on the 20th century history of the US and the major forces that have shaped our country.   

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Proofiness – using bogus mathematical arguments


Proofiness is a particularly enlightening book and a must read for any discerning citizen in our democracy. As author Charles Seife explains, proofiness is the art of using bogus mathematical arguments. This book is a virtual catalog of bogus argument techniques. All having the common thread of using numbers of some sort for support.
Seife takes as his basic premise that the average person today is easily taken in by proofiness because of the old adage; ” Numbers don’t lie.” After reading this book you will become a convinced skeptic numerical evidence and more easily spot proofiness.
Seife’s catalog of proofiness includes:

  1. Potemkin numbers – aka fabricated statistics.
  2. Disestimation – intentionally understating or ignoring uncertainties of data
  3. Fruit packing – presentation of valid numbers in a way to cause proofiness including apple polishing, cherry picking and apples-to-oranges comparisons.
  4. Casuistry – making a misleading argument through seeming sound principles, for example, mixing correlation with causality.
  5. Randumbness – insisting there is order where there is only chaos.

Taken as a whole this catalog of disinformation techniques provides quite an array tools for nearly any organization or personnel with an ax to grind to “prove” their case.
Because voting and how we elect or representatives is at the heart of a democracy, Seife spends a significant part of the book addressing proofiness in voting. Two elections, Bush – Gore presidential election and Franken – Coleman senate election, provide a litany of proofiness. In the context of the Franken – Coleman contest Seife revealingly illustrates that depending on how you count votes in a “fair” election any of the candidates (including the third candidate, Dean Barkley) could have won!! Seife goes on to briefly introduce what constitutes a “fair” election and the mathematical truism that all elections are flawed with more than 2 candidates. This known as Arrow’s Theorem and attributed to Nobel economist, Dr. Kenneth Arrow.
In summary, Proofiness is a very interesting and revealing discussion on the state of disinformation today.

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Missing History Filled

I highly recommend this history of the early settlers in what was to become New York City. By reading this book you will become very sensitive as to how strong an English bias has developed around our early history. It is well known that history is written by the “winners” and this is never more true than regarding the history of New York City and contributions of Dutch settlers to America.

The contributions and history of the original Dutch settlers of Manhattan would have been lost had it not been for the singular translation efforts of Dr. Charles Gehring for the past 30 years! Dr. Gehring has translated more than 12,000 manuscript pages (18 volumes to date) of New Amsterdam historical documents. These documents laid untranslated in the archives of Albany, NY because of nearly undecipherable script as well as the archaic language until Dr. Gehring undertook the translation task.

Dr. Gehring’s efforts have disclosed a completely new perspective on the contributions of Dutch settlers to America. For example, religious freedom is commonly attributed to first English settlers when in fact the Puritans were completely intolerant of other religions. They persecuted all that were not of their faith. However, New Amsterdam settlers established an early pluralistic culture tolerant of nearly all faiths. This is but one example of the early establishment of what was to become of the most fundamental freedoms of America. These early Dutch settlers also established the concept of citizens petitioning grievances of the their government, and a singular law officer representing legal authority that developed into the attorney general of today.

Dutch contributions didn’t stop there. They were responsible for place names and language contributions such as Yonkers, NY; cole slaw, cookie, and boss.

In summary, this book is a must read for anyone interested in pre-colonial American history. You can’t consider yourself truly knowledgeable of American history without filling in the missing contributions of the Dutch to America.

Anyone interested in the ongoing research and study of pre-colonial New York City and visit the New Netherlands project at http://www.nnp.org

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