You Have the Right to Remain Silent. Please, I Beg of You, Donald, Do!

I realize that Donald Trump is a successful man, but it is difficult for me to take him seriously.  First, there is the hair. .Whatever does he see when he looks in the mirror?  He cannot possibly see what the rest of us see.  Maybe that topper he wears keeps sanity from seeping in, because for a man who has made gazillions of dollars, he says some really crazy things.

Regardless of where you stand politically, the birther nonsense the Donald continues to promote is too fringe for the Republicans I count among family and friends.  How much conspiracy would it take for a mother to give birth to a son in Kenya, simultaneously convince a newspaper in Hawaii to print a birth announcement on that very day that her baby was born in Hawaii, and then keep all of this a secret until he decided to run for president four decades plus later?  There are reasons to argue about things President Obama should have done and could have done, but his not having been rom here has nothing to do with that.

 

President Obama finally caved into the birthers over a year ago and did release his long form birth certificate.  No other president has ever been harassed in this manner, and I wish the president had just ignored them.  I didn’t think it would change any of their minds.  Facts are of no concern to those kinds of people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it best:  “You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts?” But some of the fringe in the GOP now choose to have their own “facts.”  If they were no longer to accept that people who once spoke Spanish settled Florida and California, they would say, “Well that’s your opinion.  We do not believe that.” Remember, one of Romney’s campaign leaders proudly said that they were not going to be bothered with fact checkers.  Reality? No thanks.

In April, Trump tweeted the following: @realDonaldTrump

An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.

A credible and, as always, unnamed source who either does not exist or who is as crazy as the gullible who buy what he is saying, regardless of facts—

The real birth certificate sows that Obama was born August 4, 1961m in Honolulu’s Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.

"I know that there is going to be a segment of people for which no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest," Obama said. "But I am speaking for the vast majority of the American people as well as for the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve."

By May 29, 2012, Trump said in a CNBC phone interview that the document was not enough, and that "nothing has changed my mind." In a CNN interview on the same day, the "Celebrity Apprentice" host continued to press the issue, prompting Wolf Blitzer to say Trump was "beginning to sound a little ridiculous."

Trump upped the ante when he began to question President Obama’s academic record.  For the record, Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School and earned his Bachelor’s in international studies from Columbia.  He is sure that some document will list the President as a foreign student.  Trump has also implied that the President can’t be that smart. Even if affirmative action played a part in Obama;s acceptance to either of these prestigious schools, the assigning of Magna Cum Laude is only earned by academic achievement.  Obama was President of the Harvard Law Review.  This is an unarguable fact.  You do not have to agree with his politics to accept that.  For some reason, Barack Obama’s academic achievement just sticks in the craw of the Trumps and Limbaughs of this world.  Why is this?  In one breath, they accuse the president of sounding “too professorial.”  In the next, men like John Sununu suggest that Obama is lazy, or, in Sarah Palin’s view, the president “shucks and jives.”  Is this about anything but race?  About Obama’s being the other? One not like us?  I say it is.

Trump’s most recent rant borders on publicly extorting the President of the United States.  He demanded that the president release his college records and passport applications to see if they note his place of birth. 

“Donald Trump criticized President Obama on Thursday for not agreeing to release his college records and passport application in return for a $5-million donation to a charity of the president's choice.

“The real estate magnate and TV personality announced last week that he was extending the offer to the president, and that Mr. Obama had until Wednesday to comply. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, he extended the deadline to noon Thursday.

“After the deadline came and went, Mr. Trump posted a video on YouTube calling it a "very, very sad day for the United States of America." He suggested that the president's snub prevented him from giving $5 million to a group such as the Wounded Warrior Project, American Cancer Society or to the families of victims from the embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya.

“’Someday those papers will come out, and people will say, 'You know what? Donald Trump was right,'’ he said in a video.”

___________________________________________________________

Perhaps, Donald, someday people will say, “You know what?  Donald Trump was nuts!”

The President has maintained a sense of humor about all of this kerfuffle about his legitimacy.  When he appeared on The Tonight Show, he joked that he and Donald Trump had had bad blood dating back to their school days in Kenya. "We had constant run-ins on the soccer field," the president said. "He wasn't very good and resented it. When we finally moved to America, I thought it would be over." http://www.washingtontimes.com

Donald Trump, you have a right to remain silent.  Anything you say can be used against you.  If I hadn’t been brought up to be polite, I might just say, “Shut up!  You’re making an ass of yourself!”

War with Iran? Really!

It seems foolhardy to hear politicians rattling sabers at Iran, implying or even saying that they will go to war if Iran attempts to get nuclear weapons. There are definitely dangers inherent in Iran’s procuring nuclear weapons, but going to war with them does not seem to be the only answer.

The United Kingdom and France, our allies, are part of the nuclear club. Pakistan and India are nuclear, and while they frighten one another, we have not threatened to go to war with them. And, while it is not official, we all know that Israel has nuclear capabilities.

We ignored China until they detonated a nuclear bomb in 1964. Prior to that, we had not recognized the entirety of mainland China, calling Taiwan “China” after Mao Tse Tung and the Communists drove Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist forces onto that island. I always thought it a bit absurd that we did not “recognize” a land mass of 3696100 square miles (according to Britannica Encyclopedia), but that’s all we did when China went nuclear. We just didn’t officially notice them.

Because the former Soviet Union had actual weapons of mass destruction, we were engaged in a Cold War from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in1989. That Cold War period lasted four decades and countless lives were lost containing Communism. We fought wars in Korea and Vietnam ourselves and financed wars by surrogates across the continent of Africa and Latin America.

And how about North Korea with nuclear weapons? No one has ever accused their leaders of sanity, have they?

I’d just as soon no one had the kind of power to annihilate entire populations, but, as my grandmother always said: If wishes were horses, we’d all take a ride. Like it or not, several countries have nuclear weapons, and, therefore, we have to learn to co-exist with them. We have used diplomacy and sanctions as well as working with other nations to keep those we fear at bay. Iran’s Arab neighbors are keeping very vigilant about Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons, and so I hope that Israel does not get trigger happy too quickly. I fully understand why Israel is so leery about a nuclear-armed Iran, but I also hope that they do not start a war with Iran and drag us into it.

Let us not forget that we invaded Iraq on the unfounded belief that they had nuclear weapons. Remember President Bush’s speech to the United Nations? “Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year,” he told the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 2002. In September of that same year, National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice said on CNN: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” As it was, Iraq had no nuclear weapons, but nearly 45,000 Americans died in that war and thousands more were wounded. We’re still in Afghanistan. Do we really want to wade into another war in the Middle East unless there is absolutely no other way?

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Isn’t that how it goes? Wars have
unintended consequences. Iran’s new strength is partly a result of our having weakened their arch nemesis: Iraq. For decades, Iran and Iraq kept one another in check by fighting against or preparing to fight against one another. When we invaded Iraq, the U. S. and Iraqis had to concentrate on first squelching insurgents and then rebuilding a government and bombed-out buildings and infrastructure. With their eye off the Iranians, Iran grew stronger and more bombastic. There was no enemy on their border any more. We had seen to that.

Yes, Iran is a problem. But then so is North Korea with nukes and a crazy man at the helm, civil war and unrest in parts of the African continent, a weakening European market, a U. S. Congress who can’t play well with others, crumbling infrastructure in our own country, and so much more. Saber rattling and bellicose talk are of little use. As the old saying goes, talk is cheap. furthermore, loud talk is even less valuable. Dealing with the complex world in which we live requires a multiple pronged approach, not just guns blazing. Our foreign policy has to be more sophisticated than threats of war at every turn. We cannot afford to lose more lives and money to force our ideas on another country. How much of the world can we occupy? How many countries can we control? There are better ways. Instead of politicians standing around talking tough, we need statesmen and women, sitting around a table, thinking, reasoning, and strategizing. Please! More grownups in the room!

Have We Really Overcome?

It’s taken me a while to complete this piece as I wanted to sound rational and not as hyperbolically hysterical as I was initially when I heard and read about the events discussed herein. The Republican debate hosted by Fox News on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday exposed shocking behavior and commentary about the lack of racial sensitivity among the candidates as well as the audience. I refer to Fox News commentator Juan Williams asking Newt Gingrich about some of his recent statements referencing race.


Williams asked Gingrich about his having said that blacks have no work ethic and choose to be on food stamps. He asked the former Speaker about the Gingrich janitorial work plan for black children. Specifically, he asked Gingrich,” Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans but particularly to Black Americans?”

Gingrich shrugged and said, somewhat flippantly, “No, I don’t see that.”


The largely White audience gave him a standing ovation, cheering and whistling as Gingrich went on to underscore his plans for poor Blacks. Juan Williams, in contrast, was booed! Cheers and applause for proud racial insensitivity? Boos for Juan Williams when he asked again if Gingrich’s comments were meant to belittle the poor and racial minorities? Boos. More boos for Williams. Condescension from Newt. I felt that I had been transported back to the pre-Civil Rights Era of my youth and young adulthood.


Gingrich even doubled down and reiterated his “plan” to help poor children in general and black children in particular—who have no work ethic, according to him--and he laid out his plan. He suggested that poor black children work as janitors in their schools. He seemed nonplussed as he ignored long and humanely established Child Labor Laws and asserted that black children grow up without a strong work ethic because they don’t see anyone around them working. (I would urge Mr. Nasty to get up very early one morning, drive to a poor neighborhood, and see all the men and women lined up at the bus stops, waiting to report to work, many of them African-Americans. Or he could watch the night cleaning shifts, for example, who work when he is sleeping.)


The Gingrich plan for impoverished black youths goes something like this: Fire the “union” janitor and let the children clean the school. There, they would develop a work ethic and earn money. “The average salary for a school janitor is $18,000.”* If we use the Gingrich number of 30 children for each janitorial position—“Hire 30 kids for the price of one janitor. They’d be getting money which is a good thing for the poor. Only the elites despise earning money.”—each of those children would net $600 a year and miss getting an education, thereby trapping them into a life of poverty in perpetuity.

School janitors’ jobs are more than sweeping floors and cleaning restrooms. They must know how to use and dispose of dangerous chemicals for stripping floors and cleaning problem areas. They clean up science labs, repair equipment, use heavy machinery for that cleaning and repair, move heavy furniture and equipment, etc. Janitors arrive before the school opens and are there afterward. They have to be certified in several safety and chemical use procedures. These are not jobs suitable for children! For a complete look at requirements and jobs for a school janitor,
consult this website:

http://www.mymajors.com/careers-and-jobs/School-Janitor


Next, note that Gingrich gleefully called President Obama the “Food Stamp President.” He then added that “Black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps.” First, I agree that more people are on food stamps. That is a fact. But that has a lot to do with a shrinking middle class as well as disasters like fires, floods, and devastating tornados and storms, most recently in Alabama. Food stamps are just one of the safety nets when disaster strikes. If you want facts, look it up. Here is just one site:

http://www.dailyjobsupdate.com/public/food-stamps-charts


As Gingrich continually attempts to don the Regan mantle, it might be interesting to see what Ronald Regan himself said about food stamps. In this one case, Gingrich is somewhat correct. The usually pleasant demeanor of the former president was not in play when, in 1976, he referred to “welfare queens,” saying these women defrauded the government by applying under multiple names for Medicaid, food stamps, and any other free program. That may have been true in a few cases, but certainly not in all cases.


Extrapolating on his comment that President Obama is the Food Stamp President, Gingrich tied Blacks to food stamps as if they were the only people in need of this aid. This belies facts, facts being something with which Gingrich plays pretty fast and loose. One need for increased numbers of people on food stamps is the increased rate of poverty in this country, something that has been occurring for about 10 years plus. Politifact rated the statement about President Obama’s being responsible for the increased number of people receiving food stamps—food stamps being the term still used although food stamps are actually SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—as half true. Here is their conclusion, but you can read the entire
decision at http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/17


“.…One last point: The number of food stamp beneficiaries had started to head upward under President George W. Bush, partly because of more aggressive efforts to get eligible Americans to apply for benefits, and partly because of changes in the rules that had the effect of broadening
eligibility. The experts we spoke to agreed that both policies began under Bush but were retained by Obama.

“Our ruling

“The number of SNAP beneficiaries is at a record level, and it has risen in most months of the Obama presidency. But Gingrich oversimplifies when he suggests that Obama is the root cause. Much of the reason for the increase was a combination of the economic problems Obama inherited combined with a longstanding upward trend from policy changes. But Obama has supported those policies. On balance, we rate Gingrich’s statement Half True.”



It is impossible for me to overlook the Gingrich comments because I continually hope that race relations in the United States will continue to improve. For decades, I have been teaching young people about the history of race in this country, and what I see and hear from them is so heartening that I become convinced that all is going to be well. I refuse to believe that that is delusional of me, and I continue to believe that the hope lies in this next generation since members of my generation represented on the debate stage seemed not to have evolved very much on the question of racial equality. Much of what Gingrich said about people of color was not just code for the racists in the audience. It was blatant racism. If Gingrich wanted to delve into the issue of food stamps, he could just as easily said that he wanted people—not black people—to demand jobs, not food stamps. His comment was not at all subtle. And yet, not one other candidate on the stage commented that Gingrich was making racist statements or said the GOP should not engage in racial divisive comments. No, they were silent and now Gingrich is
raising money on clips of what he said to Williams at that debate. It should make South Carolinians angry about what Newt Gingrich is saying about them.


To make matters even more clear that we had entered a time warp and fallen back into another era, a white woman in the audience of a Gingrich rally the following day told the former Speaker that she was proud that Gingrich had put Williams “in his place.” I hadn’t heard that kind of openly racist statement in years. Where is the place of a black news commentator in that woman’s estimation? Gingrich just smiled, and the audiencecheered and clapped. Yikes!


This country has made progress since our Constitution counted blacks as 3/5 of a person. Real servitude ended after the Civil War with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made the economic servitude resultant from Jim Crow laws illegal. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it illegal to keep people of color from the ballot box.


After the Supreme Court finally overturned the “separate but equal” decision of Plessey v. Ferguson, our country witnessed a violent reaction in some parts of the country. Who can forget Alabama Governor Wallace’s proclamation of “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”? After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, we’d watched and read about the murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. We’dseen the beaten and jailed college students attempting to integrate lunch counters. We’d witnessed beatings and murder of some trying to integrate interstate bus transportation. We’d seen the murder of three Civil Rights workers attempting to register blacks to vote. We must remember those church bombings, those lynchings, the fire hoses and police dogs attacking children, the marches and peaceful demonstrations. We have come far since the march across the Pettus Bridge that led President Johnson to underscore the 15th Amendment with the Voting Rights Act. But when I hear things like the utterances of Gingrich and the responses of some in the South Carolina audiences, I wonder just how far we have come after all.

Yes. We Still Need Black History Month.

February is officially Black History Month; some celebrate, many trivialize and others disparage the need. Why do we need a specific time to remember that ordinary and extraordinary African-Americans have been a part of our history since the beginning?


It is evident that a set-aside Black History Month has not taught us much. Even now, a few politicians use suggestions of secession, literacy tests, interposition, and nullification to gin up their crowds.. These are words freighted with historic pain and should not be made carelessly or deliberately
to score points against an adversary. If they knew anything about the history of race in America, they would never make some of the statements they make.

Secession is not taken lightly by those of us who know anything at all about the Civil War, a war that bloodied our soil with the loss of over 600,000 lives. It supposedly taught us that “all men are created equal” means what it says. After the Civil War, Lincoln’s dream that we would not be a house divided supposedly came true. No one should trivialize the price that far too many paid by tossing out threats of secession to score political points, whether the word secession is meant literally or metaphorically.


Texas' former Governor Rick Perrydid--on several occasions--talk of the secession of Texas to the roaring applause and delight of those at his rallies. Did he mean it? It may have been  a veiled reference to score points with some or a metaphor for get-the-government-our-of-Texas for others. Next time Texans say they want to secede, tell them, “Done. You’re out.” Call their bluff. I’m
surethey’ll think twice before scolding the federal government about its role in state affairs. Where would Texas be without it?


It might be good for the U. S. bottom line if we grant Texas secessionists their  wish. As of 2005, the federal government paid Texas $.96 for every tax dollar Texas paid. We could surely make up the four cents without too much trouble. Whatever could we do with the 23 military bases and installations located in Texas? I’ll bet the other 49 states would be happy to divvy up those installations as they would benefit from the 195,000 jobs no longer manned by people paying taxes in Texas. Another coastal state could snatch up the Houston Space Center. Poor Texas, they are so burdened by paying taxes. Please. Texas ranked third in government procurements, receiving well over $20,639,000,000 in 2005 alone. They like to play cowboy so much. Let them shoulder the cost of border patrol and illegal immigration entering the U. S. through Texas. We could build the border fence above Texas instead of below it if they want out so badly.


And now a note to former Representative Tom Tancredo: What exactly did he imply when suggested a need for literacy tests in order to vote? Tancredo’s remarks at the opening address of the Tea Party Convention received thundering approval. Since he is old enough to know better, I have to assume that he knew exactly what he was saying when he said that voters who couldn’t
even say the word vote elected a committed socialist to the office of the presidency. It is reprehensible to suggest we return to the Jim Crow laws that denied many citizens of color the vote. And, the ugliness aside, may I remind Tancredo just who elected Barack Obama? According to www.carnegieendowment.org, Obama won the college-educated voters by 62-38%. I’m pretty sure that means that they could read and say the word “vote.”


What do the words literacy tests invoke to anyone who knows or lived through that history? Literacy tests were a part of the same Jim Crow laws that came after the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876, a compromise that ended Reconstruction. The real servitude the Civil War had been fought to end was replaced with economic and social servitude that endured until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 said, “And we really mean what the 14th Amendment says.” By 1968, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the 15th Amendment was once again enforced. Many people, perhaps Tancredo himself, would fail some of those literacy tests. Before one could register to vote, a registrar administered a literacy tests to qualify a potential voter. That consisted of an interpretation of a section of a state’s constitution “to the satisfaction of the registrar.” First, those excerpts from the state constitution are awkwardly worded and full of convoluted legalese. Next, the test was scored by a registrar who probably could not have passed himself. Whites always passed. Blacks never did.


After the beatings of peaceful Civil Rights marchers on Bloody Sunday as they crossed the Pettus Bridge in their march from Selma to Miami, President Johnson was able to pass the Voting Rights Act, saying, “And we shall overcome.” But have we conquered over two centuries of racial hatred? If we have, why then would Tom Tancredo suggest that we should return those Jim Crow days? He and those who cheered as he said it obviously don’t know much about Black History
or history of any hue, for that matter.


And then, just when I thought I couldn’t be any more shocked by veiled or purposeful racism, I heard something that catapulted me once again into the Jim Crow Era. Debra Medina, while running for governor of Texas—what is wrong with these people?--suggested that Texas should use interposition and nullification as much as they could to fight federal interference in her state. This harkens back to George Wallace standing at the door of the University of Alabama to block two black students from entering. He had begun that year by proclaiming, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever” in his inaugural speech. Who still thinks those were the Good Old Days? If so, grab your hood.


Those who wanted the good old days of the Whites Only policy and segregation now and forever resorted to the claim of States’ Rights, referring to the 10th Amendment. However, the 10th Amendment is quite clear where it stands on the separation of powers between the state and federal government. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Jim
Crow States’ Righters chose to ignore that “the United States” means the federal government or that the amendments after the 10th Amendment created federal law they had to follow, laws that allowed Blacks equal treatment as well as voting rights.

Debra Medina threatened interposition. This doctrine was used by segregationists and was another State’s Rights argument. Interposition, according to www.dictionary.com, notes that states “used this doctrine to say that any individual state of the U. S. could oppose any federal action it believes to encroach on its sovereignty.” The doctrine of nullification was the “refusal of a U. S. state to aid in enforcement of federal laws within its limits, especially on Constitutional grounds.” Both of these doctrines that Debra Medina cited imply that a state can do whatever it wants and federal law be damned. What kind of country would this be if all states could do just that? We resolved that issue after the failure of the Articles of Confederation didn’t we?


Martin Luther King, Jr. in his stirring Dream Speech reminded us of the ugliness of these policies: “….I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right here in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” Study your history, Ms. Medina, Mr. Tancredo, and Rick Perry. Please. You may not be a racist, but why do you want to use words so heavily laden with America’s ugly racist past?

When this country elected Barack Obama by a healthy majority, I naively thought we had turned the page on an issue that had divided us since our nation’s very beginnings. Let us not forget that our Founding Fathers chose to compromise on the slavery issue by counting slaves as 3/5 of a person so that the slave-holding states could have more representatives. The Founders tabled the issue of slavery until later. That “later” led us to a horrific Civil War that nearly destroyed us. Even after that, Jim Crow laws maintained our racist past until late in the 20th century. But 53% of our registered voters elected a man or color whose wife’s ancestors were slaves. I want to believe Dr. King’s dream: One day—today, even—we will come to realize that the freedom of all citizens, citizens of every color, is “inextricably bound to our freedom.” We all need to remember the web of mutuality about which he spoke.


It’s not that I disagree with Morgan Freeman who contends that Black History Month trivializes the contribution of African-Americans in our history and undermines the fact that “black history is American history.” I happen to think that he makes a very good point. However, as long as men and women are willing to throw around words like secession, interposition, nullification and suggest a need for literacy tests or carry placards of Barack Obama in white-face or photo-shopped with a bone through his nose, it is clear that we do need Black History Month. Better yet, we all need to know our history, not just what a blogger—including me—writes or what some pundit or politician claims. Please read the Constitution yourself. It’s a very short document. Know your country’s history. We have the potential to be everything our Founding Fathers dreamed we
could and would be, even if they didn’t always practice it themselves. To paraphrase everyone’s mother: We should act as they said we should act, not as they sometimes did.

In Defense of Liberal and Fine Arts

In Defense of Liberal and Fine Arts

I just heard a piece on NPR’s “Fresh Air” about Steve Jobs’ belief in the interrelatedness of technology and liberal arts.  As a graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky with a major in History and English, I remain convinced that my education’s broad-based knowledge has served me well.  Those of us in the College of Arts and Science had to take a number of hours in physical and biological sciences, arts and humanities, mathematics, philosophy, and languages along with many more hours in our major field.  This broad-based knowledge has allowed me to find interests in many things, not just my own majors.  It has allowed me to think in complex ways using both sides of my brain, and that alone has further enriched my life.

My friends, fellow high school teachers in the fields of higer mathematics and science, are also talented in music and/or art.  My daughter, a PhD in micro-biology, was as gifted in music and composition as she was in science.  My brother-in-law's major in English did not impede him in any way when he and his friend created LexJet, a company focused on technology.  Their creative ways of implementing new ideas have made LexJet one of the fastest growing small companies in Florida.

I am always saddened when I hear politicians say we need to stress only technology, math, and science and go on to say or imply that anything in the arts is either a luxury we can’t afford or simply superfluous.  We need arts, science, and technology.  Steve Jobs’ iPhone, iPad, and Macintosh computer have revolutionized technology, and he did this by applying the arts and employing both kinds of experts in the design of his projects.  If one studies the great past civilizations--from the Greeks and Romans to the Renaissance--one thing is a constant: arts and science were honored equally.   

 

The Greeks were both scientists and scholars and created or invented many things we continue to use.  Philosophy was valued as highly as mathematics; art was as honored as much as science.  Research in all of these fields was supported by the government.

·         Anaximander, a philosopher from Miletus, is historically accepted as the creator of the first map of the world, and the creation of the map greatly improved navigation and trade.

·         Greek dramatists included Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Lysistrata; plays like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

·         Masks used in the enactment of dramas were designed to maximize acoustics and the theatres were architectural wonders built on hillsides and arced to allow many to see the plays well and to hear the actors perform. The grand Greek amphitheaters were constructed so as to transmit even the smallest sound to any seat.  Art, therefore, produced science and technology.

·         The love of art did not hinder the Greeks in their development of the modern weapons of their day, including the catapult, the best “weapon of mass destruction” for more than a thousand years.  

 

The Romans, like the Greeks, valued art, music, philosophy, and science in equal measure. 

·         Pythagoras, 5^th century B. C. Italian philosopher--someone most of us learned about in math class when we were introduced to the Pythagorean Theorem-- exposited that mathematics was everywhere, and that music depended upon math.

·         The Roman Colosseum and the Pantheon; sculpture like Apollo Belvedere; landscape paintings and elaborate mural; Media, Oedipus, and Agamemnon —these are but a few of Rome’s artistic wonders.

·         The creative minds that produced the fine arts aided the development of aqueducts that delivered water to cities, indoor plumbing, dams, bridges, and vast systems of highways, not to mention lipstick and umbrellas.

It goes without saying that Leonardo Da Vinci is the epitome of the marriage of art and science as he not only painted The Last Supper but also designed an airplane.  To Leonardo, Mr. Renaissance, art and science were one.

 And so, it seems counterproductive to say that we, in the U. S., must have either math science, technology or the arts.  We should value all of these.  A wealth of information allows for a thinking outside the box so needed in planning for the future. 

It is because I see value in the arts as well as the sciences that I view funding cuts in art and music in elementary and high schools as very short-sighted.  Creative thinking is not only a skill used by painters and writers, it is also a skill vital to dreaming up new concepts in technology.  Florida’s Governor Scott has disparaged college majors like anthropology, having said it was a useless skill.  This just shows that he has a limited awareness of anthropology as a discipline.  Does he not see merit in demography, an understanding of cultures? It is this lack of vision in Scott and others that could doom us to a world of only technocrats.  Without fiction, movies, opera, live theatre, painting, sculpture, dance, and all forms of art, how drab our lives would be.  We’d be little more than automatons.

Yes, we do need young people who are very computer savvy, but who will dream up the next computer?  We do need doctors, mathematicians, and engineers well skilled in their fields; but as importantly, we must have the creative minds to discover new ways to cure diseases and questioning minds to lead us to a better understanding of our universe and a desire to explore others. 

To ensure that our country not only keeps apace with the rest of the world but also excels in all areas, we must have a generation who can use both sides of the brain, a brain that can look beyond the paradigm, to think over, under, and outside the box.  If we only focus on one kind of knowledge and devalue all else, we will be a second-rate nation that learns to use what other nations develop.  Yes, there is a place for the liberal and fine arts.  Don’t lose sight of that.

It's Time to Choose, and I Choose Government

It’s Time to Choose, and I Choose Government

Witnessing the recent Congressional debacle, it is apparent that the pro/con government debate is in full throttle. It’s time to choose a side, and I choose government.  A government small enough to drown in a teacup is not my cup of tea, if you’ll pardon their pun.  I like many of the things that government does, and I’ll bet many others do as well if they take the time to consider something else besides the rhetoric.

First of all, what is “government,” this word some use synonymously with all things horrid?  The legal definition of government—according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law (copyright 1996) is:
1 : the act or process of governing; specifically : authoritative direction or control
2 : the office, authority, or function of governing
3 : the continuous exercise of authority over and the performance of functions for a political unit : RULE
4 a : the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it b : the complex of political institutions, laws, and customs through which the function of governing is carried out
5 : the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization.

I am not sure what part of government all the naysayers abhor, but it is ironic that many of the “I hate government” people are actually a part of it, Actually, we all are.  Government  is us if we participate as voters, and we all need government whether we know it or not. The federal, state, and local governments make our lives manageable.

America is a great nation because fifty states function as one nation under a federal system.  No one state has the wherewithal to stand on its own—and yes, Gov. Rick Perry, this also means Texas--and our fifty states would be considerably weakened were we a European Union-like confederation. As a united group of states, we do need a federal government to govern.  The Founding Fathers envisioned things like interstate commerce in our earliest days.  They imagined a people who traveled from state to state as citizens of the same country, not tourists needing a visa to go from Kentucky to Ohio, from Georgia to Florida.  Yes, they did see a need for states’ rights, and they provided for those with the Tenth Amendment, but they did not set up states as independent countries.  Furthermore, this country fought a bloody Civil War to determine that we were a union of states making up one country.

And so, what can government do for you?  Thank the government that you have an interstate highway system that makes traversing this country much easier than it was before Eisenhower—yes, Eisenhower, a Republican—helped to make this a reality. If you commute by rail or transport or receive goods by rail, thank the government and Abraham Lincoln—another Republican—for that.  He had the foresight to continue building the transcontinental railroad even during the Civil War.  If you have visited a National Park, thank Teddy Roosevelt, another Republican. T. R. was a conservationist and proud of it.  He signed into law five areas into the National Park system. The Antiquities act—1906—allowed President T. Roosevelt and his successors to designate historic landmarks and structures so that they would be preserved for succeeding generations.  These important decisions by three Republican presidents depended on a government large enough and powerful enough to see beyond the moment and into our futures.  What would they think of the Republicans who want to diminish government  into tea-cup-drowning size.

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When you turn on your faucet to get water, don’t you want to be reasonably certain that you won’t be ingesting toxins and pollutants?  Don’t you want to feel safe eating fish caught in our lakes and rivers?  Don’t you want to know that you are not water skiing in sludge if you vacation on a lake shore?

By the1970’s, Lake Erie became so polluted because of the quantity of contaminated industrial waste that the Detroit River actually caught on fire. The beaches were filthy and laden with bacteria.  It was not safe to eat any fish caught in Lake Erie or its tributaries.  Time magazine reported in August, 1960:

“Each day, Detroit, Cleveland, and 120 other municipalities fill Erie with 1.5 billion gallons of ‘inadequately treated wastes, including nitrates and phosphates. These chemicals act as fertilizer for growths of algae that suck oxygen from lower depths and rise to the surface as odoriferous green scum. Commercial and game fish—blue pike, whitefish, sturgeon, northern pike—have nearly vanished, yielding the waters to trash fish that need less oxygen.  Weeds proliferate, turning water frontage into swamp.  In short, Lake Erie is in danger of dying.”

I remember seeing pictures of dead fish floating atop the once beautiful Great Lake.   Because of the Clean Water Act passed in 1972, water pollution limits were established.  Even though these controls worked to clean up our water, it took decades for the damage previously done to be mitigated. Not until the early 1990’s were some species not present since the days of the dying lakes seen to return.  I, for one, do not wish to return to those bad old days.  I am all for industries making a healthy profit but I don’t want those profits to be a result of their not taking the necessary precautions to properly dispose of their waste.  And so, I definitely want government regulations to see to it that they do just that. Businesses are there to make money, and many will take short cuts to do so unless there are---creepy music intro---regulations.  Our history is littered with the tragic results—human and environmental—caused by unregulated businesses.

Along with water, a basic need, we depend upon breathing air that won’t make us ill.  Again, Big Business is free to make a good profit but not at the expense of our lungs. The Clean Air Act of1970 did give the government the power to develop comprehensive standards for air quality, and I am happy that they did and do. The Clean Air Act governs the number of airborne contaminants that maybe released into the atmosphere. Some companies have protected their profits by outsourcing these kinds of operations, and critics blame the Clean Air Act for these job losses. However, the need for clean energy devices has also generated jobs and can generate more if they are incentivized.  It is incumbent upon all citizens—and this includes the owners of business and industry—to work within parameters that protect this country and its citizens. If that means government has to police their actions, so be it.  History has shown us that these corporate entities do not police themselves.

Aren’t you happy that you can be reasonably sure that the meat you purchase is safe to consume?  That the toothpaste you use doesn’t contain harmful ingredients?  Have you already forgotten the tainted foods and building materials that slipped into this country via China when the FDA and other federal regulators were fewer in number under the G. W. Bush administration? I just heard Arianna Huffington remarking that businesses were not expanding because of harmful government regulations.  Well, I want some of those regulations, and the businesses screaming the loudest about these regulations seem to be doing just fine.  Oil companies could indeed make more money without regulations about where they can drill and what precautions they must take when they do drill.  We saw what can happen even with these regulations with last summer’s sea of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  Can you even imagine what the land and sea would suffer with no regulations at all? 

This country has seen more than a century of reforms that have made our workplace safer, our transportation less treacherous, and our food less toxic.  We have restrictions on the length of the work day, on child labor, on work environment safety. We have communities that are more secure because of police and fire fighters. Guess what folks.  This is all government.

And finally, so many in Congress keep talking about “entitlements” and the need to cut them, but I don’t hear any of them talking about cutting all the entitlements they have.  Those who have been elected to Congress get excellent health  care benefits, a fabulous pension, travel expenses, and much more than any of those under the entitlements  they want to cut ever get.  Unless those in favor of entitlement-cutting can figure a way to means test Social Security and Medicare, cuts in these programs can result in devastating losses for fixed-income seniors and the disabled.  Many of them barely eke out a living on the Social Security benefits they now receive.  Furthermore, many seniors’ whose health insurance was once provided by their employers lost that when they reached Medicare eligibility.  What is to happen to America’s seniors in a health care market that is becoming ever more expensive at a time when their health care issues become more pronounced with less and less Medicare.  One of the suggestions was to cut funds for providers, not those on Medicare.  Guess what? If doctors lose money on Medicare patients, fewer doctors will accept Medicare patients.  Then what? In the meantime, while seniors lose some health care benefits and some of their Social Security, Congress people active and retired continue to live just fine, thank you very much tax payers.

And so I say: I choose government.  It’s not perfect and does need some reform, arguably a lot of reform.  But I’d rather fix those things that are broken rather than return to a time when we had fewer protections. I don’t mind paying taxes to have this security, and as a retired teacher, I pay a greater percentage of my income than most hedge fund managers and even some corporations.  And, I don’t mind it.  Whenever I see a traffic light, a policeman, a fireman, a soldier, an airport, a highway—you get the picture—I am quite happy to have contributed to the upkeep of a nation I love.

Words, Words, Words! But What Do They Mean?

Do any of us ever listen to what we are saying? Do any of us even know what we are hearing? All too often, the answer is: NO. In this Age of Information—an age of massive amounts of instant information—do we stop to think about the meaning of words?


Just yesterday, I heard a politician vow to his listeners that he would use the line item veto if he were president, and many in the crowd roared and clapped enthusiastically. That man is either ignorant of recent history or simply duping his audience. The Supreme Court answered that one once and for all 12 years ago. (In Clinton v. City of New York, the court ruled 6-3 that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated :”the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution” because it impermissibly gave the President power “to unilaterally amend or repeal parts of statutes that had been duly passed by the United States Congress.”) While many governors do have the power of the line item veto as their state constitutions allow, the U. S. Constitution does not. It is quite explicit about disallowing the executive branch to usurp the powers of the legislative branch. Furthermore, many who cry out for the line item veto also want a weaker executive while demanding a power for him that would give more muscle to the office. Reread Articles I and II of the U. S. Constitution. It is quite clear whose powers belong to whom.


Now let’s talk about another pundit/political candidate bugaboo: those earmarks made famous by (R-Alaska) Senator Ted Stevens’ “Bridge to No Where.” Would I like it better if there were fewer earmarks? Yes, but am I happy when my own Senators and U. S. Representative bring home money to my state for a much needed bridge, grant, or program? You bet! That’s why I voted for them. Naturally, every other state’s bacon is pork. Of course that which comes to my own state is necessary and worthy. Isn’t that what most of us think? We elect men and women to go to Washington to intercede on our state’s behalf and expect those in congress to be proactive in seeing that our state gets what it wants and needs.


Opposing politicians of both parties like to rant and rave over the length of the other party’s bill, as if shorter bills would be the cure-all for all of our problems. Bills are written to anticipate everything that may come up as a result of their passage and to anticipate and close every loop hole possible. I’ve worked with Kentucky Youth Assembly where students propose and write laws. This is no easy process and takes much research, all of which must be contained or referenced within the proposed law. If a bill that encompasses many aspects is over a thousand pages long, think how long the directions were for assembling a child’s bike and compare the two in their scope and magnitude.


When a decision is rendered in the Supreme Court, and we disagree with their interpretation, then the Court is being an “activist court.” What does that even mean? The Supreme Court admittedly has sent down decisions I have found abhorrent from time to time, decisions like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010, for example. But, the Supreme Court is an equal branch of government, a fact many seem to forget. The Court is there to interpret the laws as the justices see fit, according to what is written in the U. S. Constitution. Those who want “originalists” for justices surely don’t understand what that means. Some of the Constitution as originally written would value people of color as 3/5 of a person and make slavery legal (Article I Section ii). This same Article and Section also allows state legislatures—not the voters--to choose U. S. Senators. That was the original idea. Do originalists still want the ballot open only to males and property owners? Women did not get the vote until 1920 with the 19th Amendment. The Constitution is a beautiful doctrine, but it was written in 18th century America and ratified in 1788. Our Founding Fathers had the vision to know that our laws would have to be elastic enough to allow for changes through time. Specifically, Article I, Section viii, clause 8, sometimes called the “Elastic Clause,” states that “The Congress shall have Power—To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to execute the powers given to Congress. “Necessary and proper” allows for contingencies in an America and a period of time that the founders could never even imagine, but an America for which they prepared nonetheless.


While a few in the Tea Party reference the Boston Tea Party, they forget that the Tea Party occurred before the Constitution was ever written; furthermore, they were protesting paying a tax when they had no representatives in parliament. The Tea Party was about the lack of representation, not the specific paying of taxes. When the Constitution was penned, Article I, Section ii states that “direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union….” The Founders permitted taxation; therefore, it is not unconstitutional. Gripe about the amount you pay, but remember that taxation by the federal government is explicitly constitutional and so stated in the very first Article of the U. S. Constitution, not as an afterthought.


This is a large and complex country, and our problems are myriad and varied. There are no simple “sound bite” answers, and if that is all you are hearing, I suggest you stop to think for a moment about the probability of that simple solution’s becoming a reality. As citizens, it is our own responsibility to check the truth of what we see, read, and hear. Just because we read it in an e-mail does not make it true. Be careful when you hear some TV pundit make an allegation and then end it with a question. Example: Some say that aliens are now running the military. Is it true? Or be careful when you yourself say “I heard that….” if you are not absolutely certain of your own facts.


Yes, we live in the Age of Information. We network like meth head spiders. We tweet and Face Book, e-mail and text, talk and talk and chat and chat. But do we ever research anything? Not often enough. Maybe it’s time we did.