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Sunday, January 11, 2009

"This isn't about me or my position," [ex-Sen. ] Coleman said. "We're in the customer service business, and the customers are getting hurt."

We are talking about services, not goods, yet UCC Article 1, general definitions prove interesting guidance regarding Norm Coleman and his whining about the Dems summarily shutting his office down.

The above Crabgrass headline is Strib reporting on the situation, online Jan. 9; this context:

The former (for now) senator and Democratic leaders traded accusations on a plan to allow his staff to aid about 400 Minnesotans. -- By KEVIN DIAZ, Star Tribune

WASHINGTON - Norm Coleman said Friday that Senate Democratic leaders reneged on a deal to let his staff finish up constituent cases, leaving hundreds of Minnesotans "in the dark."

Jim Manley, spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said there was no such deal and that Democrats hands are tied because Coleman's Senate term ended last Saturday.

Coleman has sought to let his staff work on some 400 remaining constituent cases while he challenges the U.S. Senate recount in Minnesota, in which Democrat Al Franken had a 225-vote advantage. The legal contest is expected to last several months.

Senate Democrats forced Coleman to shut down his office on Monday, the same day the state Canvassing Board certified Franken the top vote-getter in the election. Coleman's Senate website has been frozen, and the nameplate on his office has been removed.


Lyndon Johnson would have been proud of Harry Reid in this instance. It is what LBJ would have done back when he was boss of the Senate. Strib adds:

With the election contest still pending, Coleman said that Democrats had agreed to give his staff more time for casework, which involves requests for help with veterans' benefits, Social Security, Medicare, immigration, adoption and passport problems.

"This isn't about me or my position," Coleman said. "We're in the customer service business, and the customers are getting hurt."

He said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has been trying to win Senate passage of a resolution that would keep Coleman's office open for non-legislative business. According to Coleman and a spokesman for McConnell, an agreement had been reached in recent weeks with Reid.

"There was a clear understanding," Coleman said. But as of Friday, the fourth day of the 111th Congress, no resolution had been brought up for a vote.

Republicans charged that the Democrats' turnaround is part of an effort to pressure Coleman to drop his electoral challenge, something that Reid has been urging him to do.


Strib continues onto a second web page, read it all there. I quote only this from the second page:

Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, currently the state's sole U.S. senator, has offered to take over some of Coleman's caseload.

But Coleman said his cases cannot readily be transferred to another senator because they typically involve confidentiality agreements. Coleman's staffers -- who have lost access to their offices -- would need to obtain permission from each constituent seeking help.


Fungible or nonfungible services, the concept is parallel as with goods, the UCC Sec. 1-201 generally defining:

(18) "Fungible goods" means: (A) goods of which any unit, by nature or usage of trade, is the equivalent of any other like unit; or (B) goods that by agreement are treated as equivalent.


So?

Readers, please tell me, of "requests for help with veterans' benefits, Social Security, Medicare, immigration, adoption and passport problems;" what is nonfungible about those things? What is unique to Norm, and why?

We all understand, Sen. Amy Klobuchar is gifted, and supposedly would hire gifted staff capable of handling any such routine things as "requests for help with veterans' benefits, Social Security, Medicare, immigration, adoption and passport problems." That is indisputable - the Klobuchar staff could handle routine, nonpartisan things for constituents - and has offered to do precisely that.

Conversely, Sen. Amy Klobuchar might not be as well-positioned as ex-Sen. Norm Coleman to handle needs and expectations of Nasser Kazeminy, (based on lesser mutual information, rapport, and understandings), but that kind of situation raises a whole host of questions that is far greater than the answers (and suggestions, if any) offered by Coleman in return.

What is unique about Norm, these involved 400 constitutents, or any subset of them, and the "customer services" ways-and-means expectations they hold in common with Norm Coleman?

To me, it seems some 'splaining is needed - the more public, and thorough, the better.

There already are many unanswered [aka ducked] public questions of the "customer service" arrangement between Nasser Kazeminy and Norm Coleman, (especially including circumsatances and allegations about how, or whether, the services were priced and paid for in an improper fashion).

I will bet Norm Coleman ducks all further 'splaining.

It's his nature to leave things half explained; offering either his way, or no way.

"Trust me," does not cut it, when I don't trust him. Nasser can trust him. I don't.

Am I wrong? Any reader thoughts, via a comment?

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It appears to me that if Coleman is truly concerned about having the most prompt service to his "customers" he could step aside so that Franken could take his seat and get up to speed, ASAP. Alternatively, if it is a batch of partisan "customers" it seems McConnell, instead of bloviating, could take over that part of the portfolio and be done with Norm's lame, incessant, and inessential whining.