Tag: New York State

S is for Sorry…and Second Chances

How DO we give someone a second chance after an apology?

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal recently: I’m Very, Very, Very Sorry … Really? We Apologize More to Strangers Than Family, and Why Women Ask for Forgiveness More by ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN. Fascinating stuff. Also intriguing is this graphic indicating the hierarchy of apologies, from most to least effective.

There was a sidebar called “Saying ‘I’m Sorry'” which declares, “A ‘comprehensive’ apology is more likely to win forgiveness, researchers say. There are eight elements,” according to the University of Waterloo:
Remorse
Acceptance of responsibility
Admission of wrongdoing
Acknowledgment of harm
Promise to behave better
Request for forgiveness
Offer of repair
Explanation

Probably the apology I hate the most is the one that goes, “I’m sorry if you’re feeling bad,” (or whatever) as though it is MY fault that THEIR inappropriate behavior bothered me. In general, a bad apology – usually followed by the sentence, “Let’s move on” – is about as bad as no apology at all.

So how DO we give someone a second chance after an apology? I think about this, a lot.


Eliot Spitzer was governor of New York State. As state Attorney General and as governor, he slept with expensive call girls; he was designated as “Client 9.” He had to resign as governor, not because he cheated on his wife, but because the “sheriff of Wall Street” was a hypocrite, prosecuting the very laws he was breaking. They’ve even made a movie called “Client 9”: The Eliot Spitzer case: How we were bamboozled. “An intriguing new movie dissects the thicket of money, lies, and rumors around the governor’s downfall.” Now he has a TV news show with Kathleen Parker. Should he be given a second chance? I say: Yes. He apologized and lost his office. And from sources I trust, he is good at what he does.


Michael Vick was the very talented quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons in the National Football League. “In April 2007, Vick was implicated in an illegal interstate dogfighting ring that had operated over five years [some of it on property he owned]. In August 2007, he pleaded guilty to federal felony charges and served 21 months in prison, followed by two months in home confinement.” He has subsequently: filed for bankruptcy, and has been picked up as the Philadelphia Eagles’ backup quarterback, playing as the starter (when healthy) after the Eagles traded former starter, Donovan McNabb, to Washington. Should he be given a second chance? I say: Yes. He has also been mandated to be involved in making others aware of the wrongness of animal cruelty.

I’m sure there are other examples, such as actor Mel Gibson, who got booted from the movie The Hangover 2 because of several incidents, some involving him seeming to threaten the mother of his youngest child, that you can discuss. From a purely business decision, they might have thought Gibson would have been box office poison.

What do YOU think, about these and any other examples you can think of?

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Traveling to Canada?

I was the target market for the Enhanced DMV card, but I declined.

My family will be going to Canada, specifically Ontario, in the summer of 2011 for an international reunion of my wife’s people. This will be the fourth quinquennial event – in 1996, it was in Fargo, ND; in 2001, in Binghamton, NY; and in 2006, in eastern Washington state.

As it turns out, my passport expires about a month before the trip. Initially, I was interested in getting those Enhanced Licenses and Non-Drivers’ IDs for the daughter and me from DMV, which would meet the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative guidelines. Only four U.S. states have actually done this, and, shockingly, given the inertia of Empire State government, New York State is one of them, along with Michigan, Vermont and Washington, all border states with Canada.

There was an article in my local newspaper in early June, indicating that sales of new enhanced driver’s licenses had fallen far below projections. The theory was that the card failed as a result of “the poor economy and reduced travel to other countries.” That’s not why I didn’t get a couple of them.

Rather, there were two other factors, especially the latter:
1) getting the enhanced card would have involved actually going to DMV, whereas renewing my old card, which expired on my last birthday, I processed either by mail or online.
2) The enhanced card is specifically designed for cross-border travel into the U.S. by land or sea.

This means no air travel, only entry by car, truck, train, boat, or presumably, on foot. Thus, if we were to fly to Vancouver, British Columbia in the near future, the daughter and I would STILL need our passports. (So would my wife, but hers doesn’t expire for a few years.)

I was the target market for this product, and I declined, not because I’m homebound, but because the product simply proved insufficient for my needs, unfortunately.
***
Meanwhile, there is the G-20 meeting going on this week in Toronto. The U.S. President wants the other governments to spend more to stimulate the ecnomy, but at least the G-8 leaders are looking like the Republicans in the U.S. in opposising more spending, the tension over which is currently doing a job on the stock markets.

I’m a big supporter of protest – peaceful protest – but I’m unclear as to the efficacy of breaking building windows and setting at least one police car on fire. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
***
HAPPY CANADA DAY!

S for Severed States

The part of Missouri Compromise allowing Congress control of slavery in the newly emerging territories was declared unconstitutional.


I saw this article recently in the Wall Street Journal about some people on Long Island wanting to secede from the rest of New York State for a bunch of reasons; it won’t happen, BTW, because the state legislature wouldn’t allow it. But it reminded me that the 50 states in the US were not always the size that they are currently.

Even before there was a United States, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York all insisted that Vermont was a part of their state. That’s why Vermont declared itself a kingdom in 1777, and Vermonters to this day refer to the state as the “Northeast Kingdom”, though it became the first state after the original 13.

In the early days of the Union:
Connecticut laid claim on a piece of what is now northern Ohio
Kentucky would be carved out of what was part of Virginia
*Georgia included the northern portions of what is now both Alabama and Mississippi

Of course, the Louisiana Purchase changed the equation, with the federal government attempting to control all the unincorporated territories of the country, sometimes with resistance at the state level.

Read about the Wisconsin-Michigan kerfluffle.

What is now Maine was once part of Massachusetts, plus some territory claimed by Britain as part of Canada. Maine (free) and Missouri (slave) became states in 1820 and 1821, respectively, I remember from my American history, as a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which “stipulated that all the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri, except Missouri, would be free, and the territory below that line would be slave.”

The Missouri Compromise was repealed by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which brought those states into the Union but eliminated the provision limiting slavery. Indeed, the part of the Missouri Compromise that allowing Congress to control slavery in the newly emerging territories was declared unconstitutional in the horrific 1857 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court.

This led to the American Civil War, during which the northwest counties of Virginia seceded from Virginia to become West Virginia. (WV is the answer to the trivia question: “Which state east of the Mississippi River was the last to join the union?”

Read about some of the United States’ international boundary disputes here, and about the curious case of the Republic of Texas here.


ABC Wednesday

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