Play to Win

Some people play politics with a deep understanding of the rules.  They know the differences between what is illegal and just fundamentally immoral.

They are more than happy to mobilize an army of lawyers to defend any and all questionable behavior.  They will vote early by the thousands to be available to watch polling places targeted solely because they are strongholds of their political opposition.  The goal here is voter suppression undertaken under the guise of "discouraging fraud."

There are many other techniques used to reduce participation in elections by many who have the most to lose by staying home.  Challenging the benefits of motor voter laws; Repeating the often wrong idea that convicted felons lose their voting rights forever; phoney flyers and leaflets; misleading robo-calls, and outrageous commercials and ads paid for with soft money from distant SuperPacs.

Then there are the legislative measures designed to carve out political advantages thru redistricting. It often takes years to sort these things out, and in the interim, stays often allow elections to take place "to maintain access to full participation" while the matters are resolved.

A friend suggested recently that we consider registering as independents in large numbers so we could choose unelectable candidates in the opposition's primary.  While that is legal, it is also under the heading of dirty tricks.

Richard Nixon manipulated an election 40 years ago.  12 years ago, lawyers found allies in the Florida courts and we wound up with eight years of Bizarre World non-leadership.

In 2012, you can bet that every tactic listed above will be used by candidates and their supporters committed to winning at any costs.

More than one million black men of voting age, perhaps eight percent of the population have been removed from the coting roles due to felony convictions.  What many do not know is that once they serve their time and complete any court ordered supervision, they could be eligible to have their voting rights restored. Challenged by poll watchers and election judges.

I'm very sensitive about voting rights. Perhaps it is because I remember relatives who could not vote because of poll taxes, literacy tests and other games that were totally legal before 1964, and survived out in the countryside into well into the 1970s.

Because I am pushing 60, I expect my generation to show some guidance and leadership on this issue. We remember the fight for voting rights firsthand. many of us went to college or spent time in military service in areas where we could not vote locally. We also know first-hand the dangers of having no political power in places where we have to survive.

So, giving some thought to the dangers of dirty tricks, I've got a few suggestions:

1) Talk often to anyone and everyone above the age of 17 about the importance of being registered to vote in time for the primaries in your state, or at least in time for the general election.

2) Understand the rules for franchise reinstatement in your state, and be able to explain them to any friend, relative, or runnin' dawg of your children or grandchildren's who may have had a fall in the past and may not know they could be eligible to have their voting rights restored.

3) Stick voter registration cards (available in most libraries, every department of motor vehicles office, and at your city hall and county courthouse) in the glove compartment or console of every vehicle you own, pay insurance on, or make the payments for. Ladies, get in the habit of carrying a dozen in your purse and men, stick three or four in your pocket because you never know when someone might need one.

4) Talk about politics as much as you talk about sports, reality T-V shows, the latest jam, or who's got the best deal on purses or hair. If you've got a church family, and your pastor is not active in civic affairs, talk about politics over social dinners. Commit to getting people fired up about local, national and world affairs one at a time, and touch different people each week or month to make a difference.

Even if you know you can count on them to vote for your presidential candidate, tell them who is running for Congress or your state legislative district. Tell them why they deserve your votes and tell them why the other guy could cause problems for their families and your neighborhood.

5) Don't accept the negative: Even if you do not say "all politicians are crooks, they are all crooks." Remember that can become an excuse for tuning out the whole process.

We know and remember so many people who voted for bigots and even campaigned for candidates they knew would do absolutely nothing to make their lives better. They did all of that because they knew there were even worse bigots and insensitive SOBs laying in the cut trying to seize as much power as possible.

Family members we respected cast their ballots holding our hands in the voting booths and never talked about the weaknesses of the people they voted for. They did it out of hope for better futures for us and our children. Many of us have known politicians who are not crooks. Consider the danger of accepting the fallacy that they all are.

6) Volunteer: You don't have to walk, or even show up at a phone bank anymore. Commit to sending a dozen e-mails, pass on an issues paper, or spend a few minutes talking to a grandchild and their friends about the importance of participation. Do any of those things and you can chalk them up to honoring the generations that fought and died to make those things possible. 

A friend says I live and breathe politics. That's not exactly true. For many years I dealt with politics as a trained observer. While people speak about the "liberal media," I can tell you that there are thousands of professionals covering politics every day who check their personal opinions at the door each day before they do their jobs. It is never easy, but their livelihoods depend upon watching and listening and reporting only what they observe without shading it in any direction.

I can tell you that lots of dumb things happen during political campaigns. Still, most newspeople do not go out of their ways to derail anybody's aspirations for high office.  I do not live and breathe politics. I just have a good idea of what can happen when people tune out, or fail to tune in early enough to really make a difference.

Consider the Foundations of Your Beliefs

I believe most people are predisposed to be good, social and caring. I don't think it is a naive point of view, because I understand that if people are led to believe that certain outlooks are acceptable, they will adopt that point of view.

When you teach a child, you repeat what you want them to learn again and again, and over time, they repeat it to you. Then you reinforce the image or action with words that best represent the concept and the meaning is imprinted.

This is what has been going on since Nov. 4, 2008. "If we never refer to 'him' as President Obama, he will never really be president."

There are people in this country who have dealt with the last election as though it were a bad dream. They want to believe that since Jan. 20, 2009, there has been no one in the White House and no one running the United States.

This is the fiction that has made it so easy for people named Wilson, Sensenbrenner and Brewer to get headlines over the past few years. Their actions have left lasting impressions, constantly reinforced by angry pundits, writers and in conversations held beyond the earshot or those warranting language that was "politically correct."

One thing Ihave learned in more than 40 years of being in the news business: Headlines make Page One and last forever.  Apologies are buried somewhere beyond page three and never receive the same attention.

I also know that for decades, no one confronting  a sitting president at any event ever got within fingerpointing distance of the leader of the Free World. These types of sad activities will forever change the nature of the U.S. Presidency.

By talking about the physique of the First Lady or suggesting for a moment that Brewer “felt a little bit threatened, if you will, in the attitude that he had,” is to play up to the basest stereotypes of the past.

This is likely to be significant as we head into the election cycle of 2012. Already, Newt Gringrich has been admonished for rattling the sensibilities of our Cubano cousins. I have said in recent days that the basest natures of "Willie Horton racism" will play out in the months ahead.

What I can tell you is that many people have been desensitized to racism and classism since 2008. They have been conditioned to believe that finger pointing, blaming and labeling is natural, normal and acceptable. Perhaps reminding them of what they are willing to accept as truth, could jar them back to reality.

Anger, distrust and resentment have become so ingrained that they are considered, normal and natural.Even as their parents came around to the inequity of those concepts as they existed in the past, perhaps they need to be reminded of the unfairness of it all. Should we have to fight the battles of the last generation again, simply because we are silent?

Inside, if the people accepting all of this believe in Jesus, and the fundamental truth that God created all men equal, can they really believe that anything like this could ever be acts of Christian kindness?

Perhaps there is more than the souls of political parties hanging here in the balance.

Let's Remember How We Got Here

While Republican hopefuls have been campaigning for months, and conservative pundits have been indoctrinating the impressionable for years, the President of the United States has been cleaning up a world class mess. 

When Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, the U.S. economy was in pretty good shape. Then we had eight years of leadership straight out of Bizarro World.  Tax cuts and deregulation were the watchwords for better government.

The Sept. 11 attacks occurred, and we justifiably went to Afghanistan.  But somewhere along the line, Iraq became our first priority. Rather than going in to win, the president decided to fight his daddy's war.  That made Iraq a short-term limited conflict.  Even though he declared "Mission Accomplished!"  U.S. troops kept serving and dying there for ten more years.

On housing, President Bush unveiled his Blueprint for the American Dream in 2002.  That initiative led Fannie Mae to pursue a goal of helping six million first time homebuyers, including about two million minorities purchase homes before 2014.

Then, in love with the free market, the Bush Administration failed to act on what by 2006 was a looming economic course adjustment of worldwide proportions.   The results included massive job losses, the near collapse of the banking system and stalled manufacturing that prompted the disappearances of a number of great brand names that had been around for most of the last century.

While it all cannot be blamed on George W. Bush, there is no doubt that the economy was a basket case in January of 2009.  We know that TARP and TANF were ideas pushed through to stave off economic Armageddon.

Conservative revisionists may try to put those programs on President Obama, but that is revisionist nonsense.

In the three years President Obama has been in office, most of the TARP money has been paid back, American manufacturing is in the rebound, and private sector jobs are up by more than 3 million in 22 months. We are also out of Iraq, Osama Bin Laden and dozens of other top terrorists are dead and the Taliban are ready to talk about peace.

Now we have the 2012 presidential campaign. Vying for the Republican nomination are one man who made millions picking the bones of troubled companies. The other major GOP candidate is made big money lobbying for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and mouthing off for conservative media outlets.  The State of the Union is behind us. The choices are already relatively clear.

A Generation of Anger

I could have called this column "Why They're Pissed Off."

Basic stump speeches talk about how candidates will help the nation return to American values. Those speeches often embrace themes of how we have gotten away from the Constitution and what the founding fathers intended. They continue to blame most of the problems in the country on so-called radical deviations from the "American way of life."

I had an exchange recently with someone who assured me that an ancestor of theirs was really a Republican, even though he was elected governor of a great state as a Democrat. He told me the guy was only a Democrat because Republicans could not get elected in that state back then.

History is a wonderful thing. You can actually look back and give context to a lot of attitudes that exists decades or generations later.

There was a time, after the Civil War, when most voters in the 11 states that made of the Confederacy were Democrats. They stayed Democrats for decades because they blamed Republicans and Abraham Lincoln for changing the way of life of their most privileged friends.

One hundred years later, Lyndon Johnson changed their way of life with the stroke of a pen.  What Johnson, the Texas Democrat, did was sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But getting to the point where he had that option was not easy. It took months of negotiation, weeks of debate, and a lot of public attention to make that happen.

The one time that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. ever met face to face was March 26, 1964. They were in the gallery of the Senate Chamber of the U.S. Capitol to observe the Senate debate of the Civil Rights Act. A Democrat named Robert Byrd of West Virginia unsuccessfully had filibustered to block the vote.

When the final votes were tallied, the Democrats in the House voted 153 to 91 and Republicans voted 136 to 35 for passage. In the Senate, the vote was 44 to 23 for the Democrats and 23 to six for the Republicans.

President Johnson said on July 2, 1964 that American values made passage inevitable. It also cleared the way for a raft of changes that many people believe made America stronger. While passage of laws and inaction of regulations set standards for compliance, working toward institutional change and overcoming generations of injustice has been a constant struggle ever since.

In 1967, older and younger workers gained protections  under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Provisions of that law helped protect members of the World War II generation from upstart Baby Boomers as they reached the ends of their working lives.

In 1975, Congress passed the Sex Discrimination Act, and within 20 years or so, the game of grab ass became politically incorrect in the workplace. Seventeen years later, women of every age and every description and some men still have to struggle against workplace harassment and disparate treatment.

In 1978, the Ethics in Government Act passed and with the help of the federal courts, government workers gained a variety of protections designed to give them the same protections available to those in the private sector.

These were followed by the Americans with Disabilities Act  and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990. Those laws gave disabled people access to jobs and facilities that most Americans continue to take for granted and made it illegal to just pick up the bones and belongings of long dead people who were here in ancient times.

When people rail about what's wrong with America and talk about the special interests who have ruined the country and radically changed what the founding fathers created as a perfect ideal, what are they really saying?

If you listen to the words of President Johnson from July 2, 1964, they are are speaking out against measures taken as America and its people evolved. Johnson and Congress, both Republicans and Democrats saw that they nation had to evolve. The promise of America had to grow closer to the literal meanings of the Constitution.

If you really think about it, the anger that has built up over 48 years and intensified over the election of a mixed-race president, could be based upon the changes that have occurred in since 1964. People passionate about rolling back the clock recall hearing about how much better things were "in the good old days."

 
The problem with that is context? Who reaped the benefits of a time when so many Americans were considered socially, sexually, racially and physically outside the concerns of a privileged few.

The Nation Needs Great Works

"When more and more people are thrown out of work , unemployment results."-- Calvin Coolidge, U.S. President, 1923-1929

 

Those words made headlines in the Roaring Twenties, they were uttered by a committed deregulator in an era when irrational exuberance dominated the mood of investors, large and small.  Did I mention that the quote came shortly before the Wall Street Crash that led to the Great Depression?

(Photo By: Debra Davis-Holly)

I had really good history teachers in school and my love of the subject has helped me during more than 40 years as a journalist. While the technology changes from one era to the next, many of the problems are basically the same.  

Lessons Learned: When you turn the nation's future over to business, you roll the dice with leaders who are only accountable to their major stockholders. If things don't work out, a lot of little people lose out. 

 

Over the next nine months, we will hear a lot about freeing up business to create jobs and put Americans back to work. I'd love to see more jobs and more Americans working, but the people talking about that don't have real track records of creating good, permanent private sector jobs here at home.  

I'm not talking about part-time positions with no benefits, and I am definitely not talking about contract opportunities that pay by the day and leave workers twisting in the wind on taxes, unemployment insurance and healthcare.

 

Yes, lots of people need jobs, but the Great Recession has ended. Banks that were on the ropes are stabilizing and big manufacturing is rebounding. General Motors is once again the number one manufacturer of automobiles,  less than four years after a government bailout. Most of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds have been paid back, but there's still a lot of work to be done, and much of that work could be projects literally right in your own backyards.

Drive through your community, or most any community in the nation, and you will see the results of bold infrastructure projects begun or completed as a result of public investment with the help of private labor. 

Examples? The interstate Highway System,  most major commercial airports, courthouses, schools, canals, ports, railroads, bridges, tunnels and water and sewage systems.

Photo By: Derrill Holly

When we have not invested in such things, the nation has suffered. When the world economy has stalled, those projects, financed by debt have kept people working and kept the nation moving forward.  They are productive pursuits that reap huge public benefits and tangible results.

Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton were builders. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and two guys named Bush were not.  

 

My conservative friends will note that this is a bipartisan list. It includes visionaries who saw value in using the nation's infrastructure needs to put idle people to work. It also includes a number of "stand patters" who saw no need to modernize. One group looked ahead and the other sought savings that now clearly were not reinvested in the nation's future.

There are obviously no guarantees in life, but if business leaders-- you know, the ones throwing all of  that money into Super PACs-- aren't ready to hire Americans for full-time permanent jobs, I just don't see giving them the reins to the future.

At Risk: 75 Years of Progress

The 2012 elections are about the future. There are alternate versions of that future that could well be determined by one national election and 468 House and Senate races. 

People really need to think about what the vision so-called fiscal conservatives have for the nation. They do not see a role for Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, or universal access to health care. They envision a nation where people can do business with whom they choose, have different pricing structures for different types of customers and refuse to serve areas for any reason they choose, even without explaining it.

Some of them speak openly of limiting or even eliminating the rights of victims to turn to the courts for justice and relief when they've been injured through negligence or circumstance. Some would even shift control of federal money, raised through taxes we all pay into the hands of people in the states, and try to limit the ability of federal judges to intervene under the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Already, we are hearing candidates label such jurists as "bad judges" because some of their rulings consider Equal Protection central to U.S. laws. They would reduce or eliminate Pell Grants , in favor of loan programs that would turn our children into indentured servants for decades to come. They would privatize Social Security, and look coldly at those whose future security was lost in a system rife with marketplace flaws.

In the age of Super PACs, with unlimited corporate money flowing in to support candidates who would place business ahead of fairness, we have to do more than just focus on the presidency. The prevent defense that's stifled work on Capitol Hill in recent years could be on the beginning. We could see a new "Contract With America" that winds up being a contract on the working man.

Thirty years ago, President Reagan led the charge to turn community block grants over to the states. Now some of those cities that used to receive them contain residential dead zones. They are entire neighborhoods, of abandoned houses, broken glass and decaying streets that rival the brownfields of long-dormant industrial sites we've been dealing with for decades.

Between 1980 and 1997, 27 percent of the nation's public hospitals closed, eliminating 66,000 beds. As Baby Boomers age, Medicare, becomes our problem. Free market healthcare could well jeopardize any retirement we are able to salvage from the Great Recession, and frankly, most of us do not have time to build a financial cushion to protect us from that risk.

Rest, assured, there are many problems, and of course there are limits to what the taxpayers and the nation can afford, but when it comes to programs I know my parents and grandparents depended on and found comfort in, I am just not willing to risk everything on a crapshoot with the profit mongers and speculators.

Who occupies the White House and who does the work on Capitol Hill could well determine if more of that is part of America's vision of the future. Everything from FDR's New Deal to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society is hanging in the balance.


They may say "beating Obama is the most important thing," but believe me, they've got bigger plans than that, and if their vision of "returning to American values" does not include you, then finding that out in 2013 could be a truly costly mistake.

The Great Recession: We Survived

The economic downturn that began in 2007 statistically ended in 2009. While the human suffering and the struggle to recover has continued, somewhere along the line, that two-year period became a defining era.

The Associated Press, arbiters of journalistic style, and the hardest working collective group of 4,500  journalists in the world now refers to the period as the Great Recession. That means it is on a par with other benchmark events of the past 160 years. Those include the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression and World War II.

When you look around the room take pride in the fact that despite your diminished circumstances, your derailed retirement plans and the assorted boomerang children you may still be harboring, the fact of the matter is that you survived.

Seventy-five years from now, when people start reviewing the personal data of the 2010 U.S. Census, the details of your survival will become more than statistics. It will be part of the historic record and available to anyone who cares to look.

One of my brothers is a retired journalist who has used his talents for genealogical research in recent years. He has been able to look back on census date from 1930 and learn a lot about how my own family weathered the Great Depression.

It turns out that my maternal grandfather once was a member of my maternal grandmother's father's household. While I only knew my grandfather as an old man and great provider, he was once a young man dependent upon his wife's family for his very survival.

It's funny what history and official documents will be able to tell future generations about you and the people in your life. Very few of us will look back upon the Great Recession as "the good old days," but it is likely some of our children will remember it as a time when people of all types rediscovered the meaning of family.

Climbing out of the misery, and slowly watching people we care about find jobs and hope for better futures, some of us can look back at the spiraling collapse of the first decade of the 21st century. As we turn our thoughts to God and all the strength he helped to pull from deep within our souls, we can give thanks, smile inwardly and breathe the fresh breezes of relief.

Confronted with the all too real hardships of the Great Recession, we survived.

By Any Means Necessary

A lot of us are in the habit of carrying voter registration applications around with us.  We give them to people who may not be registered or may have changed residences since the last election.

Maybe we should take the time to talk about things like voter intimidation and other dirty tricks they may encounter when they head to the polls.  Some people take politics that seriously.

They will lie about their opponents and smile while claiming their motivations are for the good of the country.  If people will destroy jobs to make money, blame the problems of the nation on "those people" and repeatedly desert sick wives for younger women, do you think they won't cheat you out of a vote against them?

Caucus results from eight precincts in Iowa are missing and will likely never be found.  Black people are being labeled as the prime recipients of food stamps even though only 22 percent of the recipients are black. 

If a man abandons sick wives, do you think he'll have much problem ignoring sick and suffering strangers? Then, there are the candidates who would use the courts to force their way onto ballots they neglected to qualify for.

Voter registration is only the beginning, voter education is the rest of the story.  When you talk to would be voters, encourage them to join the fight, then let them know there are people out there working everyday to keep them away from the polls.

Where Will the Money Go?

Mitt Romney is filthy rich.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.  But it appears there are huge differences between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives.  One type is preoccupied with tax policy, deregulation and spending as little on the public as possible. The other often wants government to define, restrict or codify its beliefs. 

While so-called liberal Democrats provide the muscle and the people to get their candidates elected, the liberal leadership understands that there is no money without the progressive wing of the party.  Wealthy Republicans have always been able to count on the party to ensure that a relatively moderate speaking candidate survives to carry the party's standard. 

This time, you have Romney seeking the nomination against several remaining candidates that many believe appeal to social conservatives. 

Romney is being branded with the "L" word.  The man believes corporations are people and admits to getting a rush from firing folks. 

Some wealthy Republicans believe he might be good for business.  They are reportedly not too clear about the prospects for candidates who would spend too much time on issues like civil unions, abortion, and creationism. 

When you think about the last ten Republican presidential nominees, win or lose, none of them did much to change national policy on those issues. From Eisenhower through McCain, not much was said or done beyond the lip service to the language in the party platform.

So, how much money will fiscal conservatives be willing to spend on those sideshow issues?  My guess is not very much with any enthusiasm if they think it is bad for business. 

South Carolina may be the battleground for now, but don't look for it to be the final meaningful battle.  Those with the deepest pockets are now fighting for the heart and soul of the Grand Old Party. If Romney cannot pull off a slam dunk, you can bet Republicans with money will try to bring a voice of reason to the nomination fight.

Wait for it, WAIT FOR IT... “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater, July 16, 1964

The preceding quote helped make The Great Society possible.

Three for Tuesday

The United States is a big country, and the political positions of the people who live here run the gamut. What plays well for Republican voters in South Carolina may completely miss the mark in neighboring Florida. 

This campaign season is shaping up to be full of outright lies and gross distortions.  Some people say all politicians lie.  I'd say that's sad. 

We are not talking about campaign promises here.  Those can be dismissed as hopeful agendas that don't materialize because of time and circumstances.  What I'm talking about is misleading statements about the historic record that many people won't take the time to investigate. 

Campaigning in the age of digital coverage could be different.  Instead of poring over old clippings and microfilms, anyone can sit at home and pull up a candidate's statements as he dashes from one state to the next, altering his position to suit the audience. Truth should not have a regional perspective. 

Speaking of truth and regionalism, Congress gets back to work today. 

The current approval rating is 13 percent.  Since any member of the House not planning on retiring is now in full blown campaign mode, don't expect much meaningful legislation to be passed.  Instead, we will see members posturing for the folks back home. 

They want to say they've been in Washington looking out for your interests.  If nothing gets done, it's those other guys' fault. Or "I worked overtime to keep them from doing that to you." 

The professional protesters will of course be active.  They come in all shapes, sizes, colors and embrace a plethora of causes.  They have a role to play in the system. They are the bones to which the flesh and muscle of dissent adhere.

In America, this is what democracy looks like.  It may not be a perfect system, but at least most of us can play.  Get in the game before those you disagree with run up the score.

Thinning Field

There is an ideological struggle underway as a back story to the race for the GOP nomination.

On the one-hand, you have very angry voters who have dug in their heels behind a vision of America where the people they disagree with do not matter.

On the other hand, you have Republicans who still perceive themselves as moderates. They control a lot of Grand Old Party money. They control a bunch of Political Action Committee donations, and they like to think they control what happens at the Republican National Committee Convention, especially when there is no incumbent seeking the nomination.


In the past, it was this faction of the party that deep-sixed the presidential aspirations of Pat Robertson and  twice got rid of Patrick Buchanan. They assured the first nomination of Ronald Reagan, brought us the compassionate conservatism of George Herbert Walker Bush, and financed the unsuccessful White House quests of Bob Dole and John McCain.

As the battle for the GOP nomination plays out,  the struggle between the angry wing of the party and its wealthy supporters will produce excellent drama. Some candidates will head out on the stump with varied speeches that seem to ask "who are we gonna hate or blame this week? Others will smile and talk about their electability and having the "best chance of beating Obama."

Neither of those themes offer much in the way of new ideas. As we watch the thinning field, just remember that it took the first 12 years of the 21st century to bring the nation to this point. What has happened in the last three was essentially just a few steps toward righting the mistakes of the previous decade.

Voters may be impatient for change, but life is not a sit-com or a made-for-TV movie. You cannot wrap up huge problems into a tidy solution in the last few minutes of a half-an-hour, or the final scenes of DVD.  That means whatever happens Nov. 6, we will still be in the midst of correcting a floundering course. 

So even if you don't have much interest in the opening act for Campaign 2012, tune in to the game from time to time. It will produce some great one-liners, a few interesting quotes, and hopefully, a lot of insight into what these people really think.

Think About Us

The United States is an evolving idea. If you think about it, it has always been that way.

Lately I have been thinking about the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. Even if the people who founded this country could not bring themselves to accept the concept that all men were truly equal, Congress eventually got around to it.

Civil Rights are Human Rights

After a bloody civil war, the 14th amendment became part of the law of the land. It opened the way for many things that made a difference in America for the next 150 years.

Great men and women think about the big picture. They consider not only the value of the change they help bring to themselves, but also the way those changes will affect future generations.

My wife and I spent  Jan. 14 on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C.  It's funny, but sandwiched between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials are two monuments to great thinkers and visionary men of the 20th Century.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States. Rev. Martin Luther King was a human rights activist.  Their monuments capture their times, but they also point toward hopeful images of a world that most people in their times could not have imagined.

Words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Roosevelt was perhaps the greatest disabled person in U.S. history. He was a friend to Helen Keller and a founder of the March of Dimes. He believed this was a country that could harness the strengths of all its people.

Martin Luther King, spoke out for peace, economic justice, and universal opportunity.. Quotes on their Memorial walls speak not of "those people," but of "all people".  They point to the tragedy of empathy and the pain shared by all who suffer injustice.

Words of Martin Luther King

Some people consider the MLK Holiday, just a black holiday. When you think about it, every law enacted in response to the civil rights movement of the past century has been blind to race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, age, disability and even sexual orientation.

The late congressman George "Mickey" Leland, D-Texas, was fond of saying that "America is a promise. It is not what the country has been or what it is now, but what we all work to make it in the future."

Over months and years, and decades, we continue to work to make it better. I wrote this week that "
Nothing makes a person change their mind about civil rights protections more quickly than reaching a point in life when theirs are violated."

It seems that when one winds up on the receiving end of institutionalized unfairness, their views on right and wrong often begin to resemble those of people who've fought the battles of the habitually or consistently oppressed.

The message I brought away from a day of walking through January's cold and looking at words from men who knew nothing of the 21st Century was that in the end, it is not about "us against them," it is really "all about us."

Lawyers Can't Do Everything

Lawyers have had a role in elections for decades, but ever since the presidential election of 2000, their role has been totally blown out of proportion.

For many years, they have been on hand to help ensure voting rights, for at least ten years, they have been stationed at polling places to discourage voting.  Assertive speech and accusations can chill the participation of some voters who don't particularly trust the legal process.

Now, some candidates who somehow never got around to building basic political organizations, have been trying to use lawyers to force their way onto the ballots in several states.

Even when people traveled by wagon and coach, somehow they managed to build support across the country to give themselves a shot at winning their parties' nominations. 

To circumvent the basics of politics is an insult to those who dedicate their time and resources to the system. Voters show up on election day, policy wonks and party activists move from one election cycle to the next with only a few days off. They are the people who prepare the nation for elections yet to come.

Everything from poll challengers to paid canvassers and court petitions designed to challenge qualification requirements are measures aimed at corrupting the system. It is sad that respect for the process has been tossed on the trash heap.

It's doubtful I will add to this blog this weekend. I will be celebrating the Martin Luther King Holiday weekend. For those of us who are passionate about civil rights, it commemorates something very special.  As I wrote this week in a basic tweet, "Nothing changes a person's mind about #civil_rights protections more quickly than having theirs #violated."

This is something many of my conservative friends don't seem to understand. Many of my other friends are of a generation that still remembers life without basic #equal_protections.

This is what makes the  #MLK_holiday and the memorial on the National Mall so important.

It took court rulings to force the issue of equal protection in commerce and accomodations. Then Congress wrote laws codifying it to remove the ambiguity for the public. And in the intervening years, the people have gradually come to accept the basic fairness of what the law requires.

I will leave challenging the basic nature of conservative ideology for another day, but I will leave you with this thought. 

If the ethos of America is the equal value of each of its people, then why rail against any laws passed with intent to ensure equal protection? Is it not human nature that keeps each man or woman from being measured equally?

The Business of Governing

While you can try to run a nation like a family, you really can't run one like a business.  The motivations are different.

Families take care of each other.  They recognize strengths and weaknesses and act with empathy on behalf of members in need.  They also keep a place for the rowdy and disagreeable even when it's not easy.

 Businesses try to make a profit. Now there's nothing wrong with profits, but often getting there means neglecting the weak and casting off the disagreeable.  Anybody whose ever worked for a company or in an industry forced to change its business model knows the drill.

"We are downsizing... it's a business decision."  One way businesses have prospered in recent years is to absorb struggling firms, sell off what doesn't work, compromise the old pension plan and contract out production.  "We'll keep the brand, but slap the nameplates on something we made overseas."

Running the nation like a business is a scary approach.  Can you imagine selling off Cleveland, or Buffalo, or St. Louis just because aging urban centers are no longer profitable?

Coming out of the Great Depression, people did not have a lot of faith in bankers. They also expected businesses to change.  Very little of the change that followed was voluntary.

Much of the New Deal wound up before the Supreme Court. While everything the president came up with did not work. Those things that did, have worked well for more than sixty years.

I'm not ready to trust a banker. I also do not want to see the country run like a business.  That kind of mandate could lead to some very good people being declared surplus.

No Envy Here

It is hard being poor. You grow up sharing the little that you have, but you don't really mind that because you don't really know any other way of life.

People tell you that if you study and work hard, there's a chance you can make things better for yourself and your family. A lot of poor people do just that. They don't sit around waiting for gifts and free stuff and they take a lot of jobs that will never make them rich.

Most poor people love their country. Many of them sign up for the opportunity to defend it. If you've never been to a boot camp graduation ceremony, you really haven't met the people who believe in America the most.

They are ordinary people who use their free time to prepare for more opportunities. They take care of their parents, their children and their grandchildren. Then they go to their churches ans their synagogues and temples and thank God for the basics.

We're not talking about luxuries here. We're talking about  good health, shelter and food, and maybe a little extra for some ice cream, or a beer and a couple of dances at a neighborhood bar or sawdust covered, wood floor honkey-tonk, off the county road.

They are also the people who show up with a shovel, a mop and gallon of bleach when a neighbor's home floods or the sewer backs up. They smile and volunteer their time and their limited resources to help out in their communities. What they lack in money, they make up for with warm smiles and sincere desires that every nickel they help raise can help solve a problem for a family up against it.

People like that don't really have a lot of time to envy those fortunate to have a little or a lot more. They have entirely too much to do than to worry about who is rich and who is not.  And they really are too busy trying to stay focused on life and living their faith to hate or blame anyone branded with responsibility for what's wrong with the country.

The term "politics of envy" being thrown around like that is someone's reality. I think to dismiss the wants and needs of people who have struggled to help theiir family's survive the worst economic downturn in 70 years is just cold and heartless.  People want the best for their children.  Many want to give their young adults reasons to hope for a better future. 

While the one percent don't make the country work, it's these people, the ones with the pimples, the bad teeth, the worn shoes and good hearts, that keep faith in America.  They fill the military's ranks, they spend most of their money on basic consumer goods and they never give up hope that better days are ahead for their children and grandchildren. They are the ones who almost always play the hand they are dealt.  The decision makers owe them a fair shake. 

All About Jobs

The first ten years of the 21st Century will be remembered as the Decade of the Deep Hole.

After closing out the Clinton era with surpluses, huge job gains and solid consumer confidence, we hit some big bumps.  Besides two long wars and an unbridaled, irrational spending spree for domestic security, there were policy decisions made to neglect the cities, deregulate business and force the poor to find jobs with limited preparation.  Promises from corporate leaders to create jobs at home never happened.

Many of the offshore jobs they provided collapsed when Americans stopped spending and a worldwide recession took hold.  TARP was suggested and passed as a "Hail Mary" play by leaders who noticed the problems much too late.

The remnants of the 20th Century economy were dashed against the rocks.  Sears, Kmart, Pontiac, Merrill Lynch and dozens of other familiar brands either shrank dramatically or disappeared.

My conservative friends often tell me that government cannot create private sector jobs.  But when you think about it, government contracts in the last decade creates and sustained a whole lot of private sector companies.

It would be simplistic and perhaps unfair to blame the world's problems on Bush 43.  Presidents have power, but they are often at the mercy of world events.  President Obama took charge of a sick economy in a troubled world, but I can say "I am better off now than I was four years ago."  That's one question we won't likely hear asked by the opposition this election cycle.
 
The big issue during Campaign 2012 will be jobs: Getting them and keeping them.

Anyone who openly campaigns by saying they "like to fire people" makes me a little more than nervous.  It says to me that they believe in a world where investors have money and power, and workers and families don't matter.

I am all for change, but I think positive change should create opportunities.  We are now in decade two of the 21st Century.  Most of the TARP money has been paid back, more jobs are being created, and Congress is now in full blown campaign mode.

the one hand, we have a president who inherited the playbook mandated by TARP and made the best of it.  He is working against a recalcitrant Congress to offer leadership during a period of unproductive gridlock.

On the other hand you have six guys who have yet to outline any really better ideas.  Besides the guy who sees value in job elimination, there's the primary architect of 1990s welfare reform that never seemed to accomplish his stated goals.

There's another guy who wants to talk about welfare as those it is a "black thing," there's a guy from Utah who appears to be running because he looks presidential. And then there are my friends from Texas.

One has always been a little quirky but when he starts appealing to more than the fringe it stops being a laughing matter.  The other is a governor who doesn't seem to know the difference between a good job in the oil patch and spatula flipping at Whataburger. I think the difference is probably about 35 grand a year.

Let the campaign continue. America is watching, and some Americans are waiting for jobs.

Wild Cards

In 2012, grassroots activism could carry American politics into uncharted territory.  It may turn out that Tea Partiers and Occupiers are opposite sides of the same coin.   The question is, does either major party or any candidate really know these people?

Can these very diverse groups, with their smorgasbord of causes, actually deliver the votes they need to bring about the changes they seek? 

When we roll the video on what some are calling the "Age of New Activism" what will the story be?  Will it be one of class struggle or selfish individualism.  Will the nation and its leaders claim that individual rights can exist without guarantees or protections? Will we ignore the role the courts effectively play in balancing the rule of law? 

No revolution was ever decided by moderates.  In this case, we have lots of choices among the radicals.  But I have to wonder, "Who are these people, what do they stand for and what do they really believe."

Standards and Principles

Let's See. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Tawana Brawley.  These are all names that have  come up for years in discussions about the politics of Barrack Obama, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Politics can be a very unforgiving process.
People weigh your past voting records and statements. They examine your relationships ans associations. And they consider the actions of your family, your business associates and your high-profile supporters.

When you have to campaign in 50 states and five territories, everything you say, do or ever have done could have a shelf life.   People will remember insensitive positions you've taken against women or minorities. They will also remember your appearances made before or on behalf of organizations and institutions and your associations with individuals.

So, if Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan and Tawana Brawley can be forever linked to some politicians, then surely other politicians should face similar scruitiny. If public denouncements and repudiation are so critical to vindication, then perhaps such demands should be universally applied.

Would that not be holding everyone to the same standards?  Wouldn't that make clarifying where candidates stand on issues such as bigotry a matter of principle?

There Will Be Blood

 

“Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican. Henceforth, if any Republican has a grievance against another, that grievance is not to be bared publicly.” Gaylord Parkinson, Chairman of the California State Republican Party-- 1965 

Six men are running for the Republican presidential nomination. They are now in New Hampshire and looking ahead to South Carolina. 

Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon were fond of using variations of the Parkinson quote I  used today. 

Political campaigns used to be civil and even cordial, because politics used to be considered a gentleman's game.

Now, it is a no-holds-barred, free for all between small men with huge egos who are desperate to claw their way up from the bottom.  

The talk on the campaign trail is expected to get nasty, and the ads we are likely to see in the coming weeks may be  filled with charges and counter charges as hopefuls struggle for the spirit of the Grand Old Party. 

Republicans like to call themselves the party of Abe Lincoln. It appears that they are not even the party of Ronald Reagan anymore.

Anal Anger

I urge you to tune in for 15 minutes to the conservative diatribes, character assassinations and spin control orbiting little nuggets of the news. It will give you a reality check and may explain why the most anal, nasty, raisin-hearted individuals you cross paths with always seem angry.

For 1158 days, a cast of assorted characters has been incessantly wailing away at Barack Obama.  They rant about his birth certificate, insult his wife and then apologize, and completely ignore the reality of his lineage.

I won’t say that it is a 24/7 thing. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I would suggest that they take a Sabbath off from time to time.  But for nearly 243,000 hours there have been numerous angry people ranting about the current president and Democrats and independents who disagree with their outlook. 

Someone you work with, or someone you know has been buying into this crap day after day, week after week, and ingesting it hours at a time. They have been hearing from angry voices railing against what they believe is a seditious and conspiratorial threat against everything they hold sacred.

They have been spoon fed and force fed terms like “Utopiast,” “radical left-wing liberal,” “redistributors of wealth,” and other assorted labels that essentially mean “they disagree with us.”

Many of these people have accepted a constant diet of this for upwards of three years. It began when President Obama won election in 2008 and has intensified since then. I have been listening the last few days, and I can say without any doubt that there is not a bare space open and ready to receive a less strident perspective.

There are no comparable voices from a more moderate outlook. Perhaps it is because nobody can sound that angry day after day after day.  It is easy to imagine hearing this for so long and having your body lock up from the adrenaline rush. 

The results are either the most intense headache, or a feeling of fullness so extreme it makes you grind your teeth.

Now think about it? In your life, whether it is at work, or in your personal life, is there someone you know who has just bought into all the partisan labels? Are they so negative that they mutter and parrot all the claims that any American president is so dead-set on destroying the country that they would make it a matter of his national policy?

For them, it’s far too late for a chill pill. They may not even respond to a good laxative. Some of them have not had any ideological relief in nearly four years. They are locked up and bloated with impacted outlooks.

Let’s hope they go soon. If they don’t and things do not go their way Nov. 6, they may well explode. Then, we may ask the remnants of the Tea Party to clean up the mess. 

On to New Hampshire

Well, Michelle Bachman found out that the people of Iowa weren't buying what she's been selling.

Now there are five men running for the Republican nomination. By this time next week we could be down to four. John Huntsman could be the next to go, despite a big newspaper endorsement  from the Boston Globe aimed at boosting his support in the Granite State.

We could see some nastiness in the days ahead. Newt Gingrich will calmly look into the cameras and say it is necessary for the good of the country. If he says it with a straight enough face, he may not come off mean-spirited. Question is, will it sway enough support from Mitt Romney to make any ultimate difference.

Rick Perry is looking beyond New Hampshire to South Carolina. He could limp into the Palmetto State hoping for a boost.

Ron Paul? Look for him to remain the choice of mischief voters. He will continue to glean support from those who find the whole game of presidential politics amusing.

And Rick Santorum? It is a big country. Can his pandering to the conservative wing of the Republican Party be calm enough to woo a consensus? Iowa is over and now he has to pull some numbers in real primaries.

Early primaries can be fun to watch.

On a side note: Getting on the ballot is as grassroots as political gets. While some may hire canvassers to collect signatures for ballot initiatives, should anybody really hire people to gather 10,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot in Virginia or anywhere else?

You set up an organization, you inspire volunteers and you work the streets. Money can't buy happiness. And in the Commonwealth of Virginia it apparently can't buy enough valid petition signatures. Hiring lawyers to  try and override ta 100 year-old process is not going to sit well with some of Virginia's Republican Party Faithful.

I've been saying that it is important to hear what the other side believes, so, on the way home, I have started tuning in for about 15 minutes of conservative talk radio. Gotta see what the angry white male are ranting about tonight. Get to know the opposition well enough and the surprise just won't matter.

Let's Play

Action Gaming


How about we invite everybody we know to play this multimedia electronic game.  Everybody has a shot at battling people they know or total strangers clear across the country. 

We get to follow anyone of several assorted characters as they pursue a great and noble quest.  We get to join them in epic struggles for wondrous prizes that will help them along the way.  We can help plan strategies, raise treasures and recruit allies to great causes. 

We can fight off loud and angry demons, expose deceit and from time to time, join huge crowds in cheering for our champions.  We can also challenge wealthy evil interests whose greed might leave us weak? 

Does that sound like something you've seen your kids play or you've been playing on the game machine or computer?  Is it the kind of thing they play for hours and hours in the middle of the night? 

Well, this is not a game you'll find on the rack at your favorite big box store.  It's actually pretty old.  Some of us have been playing it for years, and at least every four years we get a bunch of new characters added to keep it all interesting. 

The game is called U-S Presidential Politics. The 2012 edition is coming to a state near you very soon.  Now's the time to get in the game.  You can join the fun long before Nov. 6. 

Get in the game as soon as you can and whatever you do, bring along your whole posse.  The future of the free world is at stake, and the outcome could depend on you.

The Big Game

The political preseason is over, NBA 2012 doesn't matter and, for many of us, battle for the Super Bowl has the relevance of Columbus Day.

The really big game begins tonight in Iowa.
 
Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, an independent or a non voter, what happens in the Heartland should matter.  One of the six candidates seeking the caucus votes in Iowa is likely to be on the ballot Nov. 6.

Whether you plan to vote for or against them then, you may want to spend a little time getting to know them.  In sports, scouting reports and game films can make a real difference.  The same holds true for politics.

What candidates say and what people respond to could have a bearing on the future of the world.  If you disagree with the opposition then you need reasons to be passionate about it.  You also need to push the unmotivated to join you on the sidelines before election day.

The work toward the first Tuesday in November is not just about electing a president.  It's also about filling every seat in the House and about a third of those in the Senate.

So, if I'm going to get to know the opposition, Iowa matters.

Pundits say that only about 17 percent of registered voters will actually participate in the Jan. 3 Iowa Caucuses, and with six candidates, 20 percent constitutes a win.

Next week, the action shifts to new Hampshire. if you don't know anybody there, you may need to know more about how they think.

Game On!

Shhhh The News is On

Remember when there were just three television networks and we saw the world in black and white? Most people only had one television in their homes and the radio in the car was AM only.  Still, it seemed like everybody, from housewives and janitors, to secretaries and factory workers shared one thing with their bosses. 

They read two newspapers a day Monday through Friday, at least one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Besides the morning and evening papers, that were gently read and refolded for respected adults who couldn't see them until later, there were ethnic papers that offered thoughtful and focused perspectives.

The people we depended on also heard real news on the radio.Whether they had limited or no education or the benefits of college and more, they got a view of the nation and the world that could never be gleaned from those rare long-distance calls to distant relatives who lived in other parts of the country.

Generations of children grew up understanding that news was information, even if it was less than complete. If it was slanted in one direction or another, having some information was so much better than being ignorant.

I remember sitting there quietly with my brothers or cousins and watching grainy film that was often days old, as middle aged men and their white male reporters offered their observations about world events. If you were anywhere on the block, you were expected to be there when the news came on.

The stories might be fodder for dinner table conversation, or something to be discussed between parents and their friends or siblings after Sunday dinner. I grew up thinking it was necessary and natural to know something about the world beyond my neighborhood.

Today, there may be fewer newspapers and quality radio news is something you have to search for, but national and international news is a 24/7 packaged product. It is presented in living color and nearly as instantly as it occurs.

Yet, children and many adults seem clueless about world events. Ask five of them individually, for the last names of three of the Republican presidential hopefuls and three may have a hard time coming up with right answers. Ask them if Americans are still fighting in Iraq and they may not know we left in December.  Ask them what's going on in the world and they may smile and tell you the NBA lockout is over.

I wonder what would happen if we tried a little something different. Instead of doing what our grandparents would do which was to hush us up and offer the look that meant "park it and learn something,." we tried an instructive but abrupt  approach.

It might be something like this "Don't leave, 'Sit down now, and shut up, the news is on! It's your world, you might learn something." 

DeHoll-- My World, My View, 01-02-2011

TV: It's Like an Education

Is it just me, or does Newt Gingrich's pragmatic style remind anyone else of Pat Buchanan in the run up to the 1996 campaign?

Say anything with enough conviction and years of too much exposure on a cable news show and you will sound more authoritative than most ordinary politicians.

We'll have to wait and see if GOP voters find much substance in his style.

Who Knows the Time?

It's 2012


“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord” – Psalms 27:14
--
I have no Mayan friends. Yet, I know the world has a fascination about academic translations of their ancient calendar. I am always open to learning and the older I get the less I dwell upon impermanence. I focus more on living life and enjoying the moments, hours and days that I breathe.
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“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” – Matthew 24:36

--

So, I will not live as though 12-21-2012 shall be “the end of days.” I will simply live. As I do it, I will try to be a better person and share compassion and understanding with those who cross my path.

--

“They ask you, [O Muhammad], about the Hour: when is its arrival? Say, "Its knowledge is only with my Lord. None will reveal its time except Him. It lays heavily upon the heavens and the earth. It will not come upon you except unexpectedly." Qur An 7:187

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I can strive to win, I can enjoy the companionship of family and friends, I can lead to move my family forward. I can also accept the opportunities arising from the impermanence of all things.
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Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world: a star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream. -- Sakyamuni Buddha

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No, I know no Mayans, but I know many types of people with many varied beliefs. So when the winter solstice of this waning year arrives, I will greet it hopefully, as I look ahead toward a future yet to be. DEH 01-01-2012

2011: 24 Words and Out

I had a lot of fun with the challenge to sum up the news of the year in 24 words. It gave me a chance to be back on Houston Radio. I also heard from a lot of folks whose talents have raised the bar for me over the years and I am thankful.

This is the verse below, and the audio from my Houston radio appearance is now on YouTube.

One percent served, recession curved
Capitol shaken, Bin Laden taken
Ghadafi’s reign ended, DADT rescinded
Wildfires burned, Iraq troops returned
Kardashian’s fling, Arab spring