Time for Action

     I've written about campaign finance before and this piece pertains somewhat to the subject. Our elections suffer greatly because how much money a candidate can raise supersedes what new ideas he can come up with. Our election process is in this state because nothing has been done  to address this problem. Both parties are at fault.  In the fifty years since Rep. Wright called for campaign finance reform in his Harpers Magazine article in 1967, politicians have devoted all their efforts in regard to campaign finance reform to getting an edge rather than solving the problem.
     
     But it is also about learning a bigger lesson: Fix problems when they are still fixable.
 

Time for Action

 

     Former U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright recently died. He was expelled from the House for shady money dealings, coincidently at the hand of Newt Gingrich, who would himself be tied to shady money dealings. Prior to his expulsion, I never paid much attention to Wright, even though he had served in the House for over thirty years.

I have to admit when Wright’s problems first surfaced, I concluded for myself that he was nothing more than another crook who had used the system for his own personal gain.  But then I read an article written by him for Harper’s Magazine in 1967 and was impressed by this quote.

“No facet of American life cries our more loudly for reform than the dingy gray area of political campaign financing, which casts a lengthening shadow across all else we do in our elective political institutions…The price of campaigning has risen so high that it actually imperils the integrity of our political institutions.  Big contributors more and more hold the keys to the gates of public service.  This is choking off the wellsprings of fresh, new thought and severely limiting the field of choice available to the public…One curious by-product of big money in politics is the slick, shallow public-relations approach with its nauseating emphasis on ‘image’ at the expense of substance.”

After reading that quote, I decided I might have been wrong. Maybe he was not so much a bad man who had used the system, as he was a weak man who had let the system destroy him.

Keep in mind this quote is from 1967.

Kennedy and Nixon spent a total of $20-million in their 1960 campaign, one that was so close, probably every nickel spent was necessary.

The 2012 presidential election cost about $2.5-billion.

The 2016 presidential spend-off is predicted to exceed five billion dollars with one billion coming from just two guys. It is helpful to remember that actual expenditures in this country for almost anything, almost always go beyond predictions.

At this rate, a trillion-dollar election cannot be too far down the road. That’s a lot of 30-second ads, balloons, and yard signs—all for a job offering $400,000 and all the abuse you can stand.

It should be clear to everyone that all three branches of government have failed in their effort to reform campaign spending. Reform has never been the goal; only getting an edge. I don’t even know if it’s possible to stop this train wreck we call the election process.

Maybe we shouldn’t even try. Perhaps we should write it off as the cost of doing business. That would be the business approach to throwing that much money down the toilet.

Possibly there is a lesson to be learned from Speaker Wright’s experience.  Maybe we can find another area where this “slick, shallow public-relations approach with its nauseating emphasis on ‘image’ at the expense of substance” is actually causing the nation more harm than good.

Whatever the cost of addressing global warming—and I’m not a scientist, so I am going to defer to the scientist on this one—wouldn’t it be better, and cheaper, to act now rather than later. As with campaign finance reform, the cost of doing nothing far exceeds the price of doing something in a timely manner.

 

For that matter, wouldn’t it be better to approach every problem facing our nation this way: immigration reform, rebuilding our infra-structure, addressing student debt, and yes, improving Obamacare instead of continually trying to dismantle it. Our politicians talks about American exceptionalism, but everything they do speaks to mediocrity.    

It's time for them to embrace that ‘can-do’ spirit they are always talking about—the one our forefathers had, which they seem to lack? With all the problems facing our nation and the world, wouldn’t this be a good time to do something—something besides giving the people that are buying our elections a tax break?

If they did this, and I know it is a big if, but if they did, maybe, just maybe politicians wouldn’t have to spend a billion dollars telling us what a good job they do.

 

Kathmandu

As some of you may know, I recently spent two weeks in Kathmandu with my daughter, Jessica. It was an amazing trip, and as one might expect, an enlightening one. I learned a great deal—both by reading up on Nepal in preparation for the trip and by my own observations once I arrived there.

Kathmandu is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, 50,000 inhabitants per square mile. That is a fact I read.

...if Legos were earth tone

What I learned from observation is that those people live in a city that is constructed much the way a child would build a Lego village. Area wise, Kathmandu is not that big. Rooms are continually being added to current living space by simply building out and up from existing structures.

I also observed some of the most crowded streets imaginable. I’ve walked the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Saigon, and San Jose. They were crowded but for the most part the vehicles stayed in the streets and the people stayed on the sidewalks. This was not the case in Kathmandu. There were only streets—narrow streets at that—and everyone used those— pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, Pedi-cabs, animals. The shops came right out to the streets, oftentimes with their wares stacked alongside the curbs, which were not really curbs but rather ditches for the rain to run off.

The honking of horns and ringing of bells never ceased, not for a moment. Vehicles turned corners blindly with only a horn to alert anyone in their way. They would pull up within inches of those in front of them—whether approaching or coming from behind—and use their horn to announce their presence. Motorcycles literally pulled into shops to make way for larger vehicles.

What I noticed, with all this congestion and continual noise around me, was that no one ever seemed to lose their temper. I never saw anyone flip someone the finger. I never heard anyone curse. I heard no threats. I didn’t even see dirty looks. People just got out of the way or waited for the other to get out of the way.

It was the same with merchants—who like merchants round the globe, did everything in their power to make a sale. They would follow you on the street, initiate conversations that never seemed to end, promised the moon, good luck or everlasting salvation if I bought their product. But when a sale was obviously not going to happen, they simply walked away. No parting remarks, no bad feelings.

The people of Kathmandu are very friendly and helpful—almost to a fault.  

This driver definitely did not know
where he was going.

Jessica and I rode in Pedi-cab once when the streets became so difficult to navigate, the driver got out and pull his vehicle along, with us in it. The first time this happened we were so caught off guard that we stayed in our seats, probably thinking the driver was simply getting the cab out of traffic. The second time it happened, we got out, paid the driver and walked alongside him.

There were times where the drivers seemed to be driving around in circles—it is not farfetched to think even they could get lost in a city so crowded—but they never gave up. A lot of businesses say they aim to please and customer satisfaction is their only goal. These drivers didn’t have to say it. They’d drive through hell to get you where you wanted to go.

School children walking arm-in-arm filled the streets at all hours of the day and were always smiling.

I met some very nice people in Kathmandu. I came away with a strange notion that maybe there is something mystical about growing up in the shadow of the Himalayas. The people I met weren’t full of themselves. They seemed down to earth, satisfied, and at peace living in what I viewed as a hectic and demanding world.

All these observation led me to the conclusion the people of Nepal are very special people indeed.

No one deserves a tragedy such as the one that struck Nepal last week. And yet, sometimes that is the only reaction we can come up with. Of course they need monetary aid, medical assistance, food, and water. Rebuilding will take years, decades perhaps. They will get all that, and I know for a fact they will appreciate it.

Still, I can’t help thinking. These people did not deserve this.

 

 

Many of these thousand year old temples have been destroyed.

Let's Talk About Speech

A version of this piece appeared in The Virginian-Pilot, on Sunday, April 5. under the title, "The Price of Free Speech." The only substantial difference between both pieces is this version illustrates what three billion dollars worth of 30-second political ads look like.

There’s speech, and there’s free speech, and then there’s really expensive speech—speech only money can buy.

In its 2002 Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court essentially upheld the idea that corporations are people—people entitled to free speech. They got around the obvious problem of corporations lacking vocal cords by falling back on the age old premise that money talks.

The only question then became how far would corporations/people run with this idea? Current estimates seem to indicate pretty far.

The Koch brothers, who are in and of themselves two people and happen to own numerous corporations, making them a whole bunch of people, have elected to allow their corporation’s money to speak for them. They plan to speak—no shout—almost a billion dollars into the 2016 election cycle, much of it in the form of miss-quoted and taken out of context sound bites.

For those of you who might have difficulty comprehending a billions dollars’ worth of 30-second ads, picture a pile of horse dung stretching from the earth to the moon and back again. Now picture that stack pouring out of your wide-screen HD TV into your family room.

The money the Koch brothers intend to spend is equivalent to a five dollar donation by every registered voter in the country. We have all experienced situations where a single shouting individual in confined quarters is able to drown out everyone else. It’s frustrating, unfair and generally unproductive. But two brothers drowning out 200 million voters is ridiculous—only because we have made it so.

 

On face value, it is easy to see why the courts have compared corporations to people and their money to speech. It's called representation. And it is easy to understand how corporations have abused their right to free speech at everyone else's expense. It's called, "Whataya gonna do about it?"

What is harder to understand is why we let them get away with this travesty.

I’m currently reading two books. The historical biography, With Malice Toward None, The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates, depicts one of our most revered presidents being mercilessly ridiculed and portrayed as an imbecile by the opposition party when he was in office.

The other, That’s Not What They Meant by Michael Austin is a political rebuttal to what Austin sees as the misrepresentation of the Founding Fathers by the political right wing.

But what struck me most in both books was the role speech has played in our history—back when it was just speech.

In the 1780s, there was a heated debate regarding states’ rights versus a strong central government. The opposing sides spoke directly to their opponent’s arguments by publishing and circulating their own positions in pamphlets and newspapers for everyone to read.

Approximately three score and give or take a few years later, as Lincoln would say, the nation was still deeply divided over this question of states’ rights. While campaigning at a political rally in Chicago, Stephen Douglas, a powerful political voice in a country, was taunted relentlessly but rather than give in or drop out he decided to take his message to the people. He crisscrossed the state speaking anywhere and everywhere to get his message out.

His opponent, Abraham Lincoln, decided to follow him and address the same people with his own message. Neither man spoke only to friendly audiences or forced anyone to listen to them. But the people came and they did listen. Their face-offs became known as the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

A 30-second ad is nothing more than a tidbit of banality crammed alongside several other tasty but otherwise nasty ads, all randomly tossed between mindless sitcoms like a juicy portabella mushroom-bacon-cheeseburger sandwiched between two deep-fried chicken breasts. It differs from an actual exchange of ideas because with discourse, you actually have to say something.

True, a speech can also contain a lot of jibber-jabber but that’s because jibber-jabber is also an inalienable right. Still the simple act of writing something down on paper or saying something that can be transcribed on paper forces people on both sides of the issue, as well as those reading the arguments to be a little more reflective.

The question is not, why do we let the Koch brothers spend millions and soon billions on effective yet expensive, senseless TV ads? The question is why do we make these ads worth their money?

Maybe money is the same as speech. If so, our country is suffering through a period of speech inflation right now. Speech has gotten way too expensive, to the point where 30 seconds is all anyone can afford—and only billionaires can afford that.

But if money is speech and speech is money, so also, time is money. There's no reason why the voter's time can't be money better spent. Voters make a serious mistake if they put any stock into any 30-second ad promoting any politician or policy, without first investing a little of his own time to learn the facts that might lead to a better understanding of the issues. Voters are also the only ones who can turn the investment in that ad into a serious mistake by the big spender who thought it was a good thing to put his money where his mouth should have been.

 

Meaningless car ads might be the best way to get us into a showroom but they shouldn’t be what gets us into a voting booth nor be the basis for what we do in a voting booth.

Electing leaders and choosing policy is too important. It should take more effort and cost less money, because free speech ain’t worth nothing unless it’s free.   

 

 

 

Eastward Ho!

This story was written in 1977, shortly after Kath and I arrived in Kill Devil Hills, NC. Since then we have both made numerous more trips, together and separately, by plane and by car. But this particular journey was the biggest one of all—the one that changed everything.

This trip took place in February 1977. Married just two months and unable to find work in Long Beach we had packed all our belonging—a sofa, a table, a desk and a lot of other stuff, and headed east.

 

   In 1804, President Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to explore and create a trail to the West Coast through the newly purchased Louisiana Territory.  In 1806, some 28 months after they had left civilization behind, they completed their journey.

   Settlers traveling in wagon trains later used the trail they created.  They made the same journey—under favorable conditions—in a matter of just months.  Later, the railroads would cut the time even more.  But even as the length of time was shortened, one factor remained the same.  The country still had to be crossed.  It had to be seen, felt, endured, and finally conquered.

   Such is not always the case today.  Such was not the case in 1972 when I took my last cross-country jet flight.  Under the auspices of the United States Army, I was flying at half fare.  Everything in the military is either half-rate, half-mast, or double time, but that is another story.  The point is that with the Army paying and American Airlines flying, I was afforded the opportunity to cross the country in nearly five hours.  Lewis and Clark spent more time feeding their horses—the first day.

   That is how it is today.  Businessmen joke about leaving a Holiday Inn in New York and flying to Los Angeles where they stay in another Holiday Inn.  They don’t miss a meal and they don’t lose any sleep.  And never once do they see a road sign, stoplight, or detour.  It’s like going to the opening day baseball game and then six months later reading in the paper the final standings and missing all that happened in between.

   It was for this reason that my wife and I looked upon our upcoming journey with particular excitement.  We were moving from Long Beach, California to Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.  Possibly no one else in the history of mankind had done such a thing.  But more important than the destination or the fact that it was a cross-country trip, was that we were doing it cross-country.

   Like a Depression era documentary being shown in reverse, we were loading our treasures into a trailer and crossing the country to what we hoped would be a better future.

CSI - Christmas Season Investigations

Attacks against obnoxious but nevertheless defenseless inflatables occur daily in the streets of our great city. These are the stories of the dedicated men and women of the Christmas Season Crime squad who investigate these hideous crimes against these helpless… whatever you wanna call them. This is what they do.

CSI – Christmas Season Investigation

Saturday, December 13

When investigator Bob Sawyer arrived at the crime scene, he found his partner Judy Brown already there.

“What do we have here, Judy?” he asked, surveying the area as he spoke.

“It looks like a massacre, if you ask me.”

“How many vics do we have?”

“Three. They’re all in a pile over here.”

She led Sawyer to a pile of what appeared to be stack of official NFPA/CSFM Fire Retardant, weather resistant PVC coated rip stop nylon crap of all different colors but mostly blood red.   

“Can we I.D. any of them?”   

“I won’t know for sure until we get them back to the lab and I’m able to pump some air into them. But I’m guessing that this one is Santa and this one's probably some kind of a snowman.”

“How many kinds of snowman are there?” he asked, trying to relieve the tension.

She ignored him so he got back to business.   

“Do we know what took the wind out of their sails?”

She wanted to ignore him again but this was a fairly legitimate question, given the circumstances.

“Someone pulled the plug would be my guess. But who would do this? And why?”

“Who called it in?”

“A mailman. Said he was driving through the neighborhood and something just didn’t seem right. And then he saw them…just lying there…slumped over in a heap.   

“I take it we don’t have any witnesses.”

“No one’s talking but we’ve got some uniforms canvassing the neighborhood. The family wasn’t much help. They said that the last time they saw them, around three hours ago, everything looked fine. They were bouncing around, had big smiles on their faces, looked real cheery, you know…all Christmassy.”

“You believe them?”   

“I don’t know. You know as well as I that it’s usually someone close to the victim. But why would they do it? This neighborhood is pretty heavily decorated. Why would anyone take out their own Santa?”

“That’s our job to find out.”   

“I know one thing for sure.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ll be no rockin’ round the Christmas tree, tonight.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get the scrooges who did this.”

Sawyer directed the uniforms to put plastic caution tape around the plastic crime scene and went into the house to talk to the family. Judy Brown loaded the victims into her trunk and proceeded downtown to continue her investigation.

Several hours later Sawyer returned to headquarters. He entered the room where Lab Tech Brown was poised over one of the victims.

“It’s funny,” she said, “but I couldn’t help thinking…” her voice trailed off as if unable to organize her thoughts.

“What is it, Judy?”

“Well, I was just thinking how when I work on a human I put plastic gloves on to protect me…and I guess to protect the evidence and here I am working on a piece of plastic and I’m still putting on plastic gloves for whatever reason…I don’t know…you know.”

She looked quizzedly at Sawyer who looked just as confused as she did.

“I got a feeling that this is just the beginning of many strange things we are going to encounter with this case,” Sawyer said, sensing that she might be letting the case get the better of her. 

“It’s not going to be easy on any of us but our job is to speak for the victims. These guys will tell us what we need to know. We’ve just got to go where the evidence takes us. So what have we got so far?”

“I was right about Santa and the snowman. The other one appears to be a reindeer.”   

“Rudolph?”   

“I don’t think so. Look here,” she said, holding up the limp, lifeless plastic remains of what was once a charming fantasy deer. Sawyer tightened his lips and nodded, obviously impressed with his partner.

“No red nose. Good work.”

Suddenly the phone rang. Sawyer picked it up and Judy watched him grimace and shake his head as he listened. He put the phone down and just stared at the floor.

“What is it?”

“I think—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Sometimes, even for a seasoned Christmas Season veteran, it all gets to be too much.

“Come on, tell me. We’re a team aren’t we? So let me help.”

“I think…I think we have a serial killer on our hands. We won’t know for sure until we get all the facts but it looks like two more Santa’s, another reindeer, some elves and an Easter bunny.”

“An Easter bunny!”

“Yeah, go figure. All I know is we got to stop this insanity before no inflatable individual feels safe in suburbia.”

“I don’t know? An Easter bunny at Christmas time. We may already be at that point.”

“Is there anything else we know, anything at all that can help us get to the bottom of this massacre?”

“Well there doesn’t appear to be any cuts or tears. They don’t appear to be shot and I’m ruling out poison—just because. I think my first hunch may have been right. Someone pulled the plug on these guys—but who—and why?”

“If ever there was a case for a case going cold it would be this one. There just doesn’t seem to be much to go on.”

Just then, a patrolman burst in, ran over to a television set and turned it on.

“Sawyer, you gotta see this.”

Fox News was highlighting a rally just a few blocks from the crime scene. An evangelical minister, standing in front of a manger scene and holding up a Bible was protesting what he called the ongoing war on Christmas. He was calling for Christians to unite and fight back.

“Stand up for what you believe in,” he urged the crowd of spectators. “We have to take Christmas back and put it where it belongs—in the churches. We have to put Jesus back into Christmas and take Santa Claus and Rudolph and those lazy freeloading elves out. We have to rid our department stores of the false gods of Christmas.
“Once we succeed in saving Christmas we have to take back Easter…and All Saint's Day too.”

“Did you hear that, Judy? I understand where he’s coming from, I really do, but honestly no one else is even thinking about taking Easter back—not with twelve more shopping days to go in the Christmas season.”

“You might have something there, Bob. No one would even be talking about saving Easter in December unless they’d just recently had an encounter with an Easter bunny. I think we’re going to have to pay a visit to this community terrorist…ask him a few questions.”

“Well, if we’re right about the guy, I know one thing for sure. We won’t have to trick a confession out of him. My guess is he’ll be squealing like a pig about to become an Easter ham just to claim credit for this crime.”

“The stupid ones always do,” Judy agreed, shaking her head in disbelief.

Hippopotamuses sitting in a church in a jelly jar in a sewing basket

This past Sunday, the Virginian-Pilot published an article of mine. Among other things, I was critical of the Internet and the wrong or misleading information found on it. In the original draft I had an oft-quoted remark by Patrick Moynihan concerning facts and opinions, neither of which is in short supply on the Internet. This article came out of that article.

Everybody says we are living in the Information Age. 

More likely, the Opinion Age, I’d say because everyone has one.

I could be wrong about that, but I think I’m right. I dunno.

 

Recently I submitted an article to the paper for consideration. It included Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but they aren’t entitled to their own facts.”

 

The editor wrote back, “Lose the quote. Every submission I get uses it,” and then asked the question, “What’s up with that?”

 

Of course she was right. I myself had seen or read the quote a gazillion times. Maybe not that many. Maybe a hundred, fifty at least. No less than ten.

 

Fact is, hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t use the quote to discredit someone else’s opinion.  I fully expect Taylor Swift to release a new song any day now containing these or similar lyrics:

 

My boyfriend says I’m a bitch.

I tell him, “That’s your opinion.”

He says my exes all agree,

so it must be a fact.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Like Patrick Moynihan says,

“You jerks entitled to your opinion,

No one’s taking that away.

But a lot of jerks don’t make it a fact.”

So listen to what I say.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

 

I dunno. I think it’s pretty good. But that’s just my opinion.

 

Nevertheless, a lot of opinions passing for facts and facts passing for opinions are floating around these days. I blame the Internet, where to misquote Roseanne Roseannadanna—and you can look it up—“You can always find something about something.”

 

I thought I’d prove my point by googling the most outlandish phrase I could think of. Despite my premise that anything can be found on the Internet, to be honest, I thought I could beat it. I thought I could come up with a phrase that wouldn’t produce a result. At that point I was prepared to get cute, use the phrase as the title of this piece and put it on my blog. Not only would the topic now turn up in all future Google searches but it would also draw attention to my blog. 

 

Before I had put a single word on paper, when this was just an idle idea floating in my head, I decided to go with the catchphrase, “Hippopotamuses sitting in a church.”

 

To my dismay I got quite a few hits. So I switched to, “Hippopotamuses in jelly jars,” which also pulled up many hits, as did “Hippopotamuses in sewing baskets.” I’m hesitant to show how far I will go to prove a point, but “Hippopotamuses in jelly jars in sewing baskets” turned up countless hits including a myriad of images depicting variations of hippopotamuses in jelly jars in sewing baskets.

 

In my opinion, it will not be global warming that does us in. It won’t be nuclear annihilation. It won’t be disease or pestilence or too many Big Macs. Mankind, in my opinion based on the facts, will be done in by information overload. We will simply shut down and just like Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put us together again.

 

But if, on the outside chance there is a way to save mankind from this fate, I know where you can find it. I just can’t bring myself to say the word.

 

Life isn't a high school debate

The Virginian-Pilot Sunday Forum, November 30, 2014

Endless debate is becoming the new favorite American pastime; inaction our nation’s worst nightmare.

Scholastic debates are all about taking a position, any position and defending it. Teams get points for doing this with style and poise. Get enough points and your team wins.
 

Public debate—about real issues having real consequences—should be about more than tallying up points. It should also be a search for truth. And the truth shouldn’t be that hard to find.

Two factors make arriving at the truth so difficult.

One is the shear abundance of information out there—some of it good, some of it bad, and much of it misleading. Once something is put out there—even a boldface lie, easily and continually disproven, it lives on forever. It is never going away.

Opposing views in the digital age are not discussed by two people staring each other in the eye trying to make the other one blink. An issue like global warming in today’s heated environment will most likely be argued by two people staring down at their iPhones, pulling facts off the Internet the way two people watching a movie at the cinema might pull popcorn out of a jumbo box.  

Just as the last bites are hardly ever as good as the first ones, most of those facts have been out there so long they are beginning to get stale. Many of them weren’t that good to begin with.

The second factor preventing us from arriving at the truth centers on where the debate is not taking place.

In a democracy, our representatives should make up the debate teams. But all too often, the big issues of the day are being addressed outside of Washington. Issues like immigration reform, global warming, building the economy, defense, health care, and education—are being fought by cable news networks, with an unhealthy dose of viewer tweets as to “what’s trending.”

This is generally self-serving because voters generally tune in to the facts they like from the folks they like getting them from. Our elected officials are listening to this debate, and then waiting for the polls to point them in the winning direction.

It shouldn’t always be about winning but it usually is. This is why true campaign-funding reform faces an uphill battle. The challenge is always to corner the money, never reduce it. This is because while money doesn’t make for better elections, sadly, it still does win elections.

But political victories don’t necessarily lead to solutions. In fact, most of the time they won’t lead to anything. They’ll merely keep the debate alive. Too many of our representatives seem content to simply keep the debate going if it improves their own chances of survival. Not arriving at an end game seems to be their game plan.

Arriving at the truth is difficult but it shouldn’t be impossible. The biggest obstacle to arriving at the truth isn’t that it’s not out there. It’s that no one seems to be looking for it.

Our leaders in Congress are unwilling to lead, electing instead to score points by arguing for the sake of argument. Meanwhile, across the nation their supporters vigorously take positions shaped around often false or misleading information.

Our nation is paralyzed, frozen by the inaction inside the government and misguided action by those living outside the Beltway. In the end, it shouldn’t be about doing what we like to do—debate. It shouldn’t matter what debate team we’re on. It should be about finding the truth and then doing something.