Month: July 2022

This is a continuation of a “Sunday Story” – about car stories.  No politics here, but lots of “stops” along the highway!!

The VW Life

The Squareback (Volkswagen Station Wagon – not a “Hippie Van”, that will come later) was the car of my college days.  For a ten-year old car it held up well, only completely breaking down a couple of times.  I did drive it around Washington, DC without a battery for a couple of months. But I found parking lots with slopes – and as long as I could park at the top, I could push the car into position, get it going downhill, then jump in the driver’s seat and “pop the clutch”.  Once the engine was going – who needed a battery anyway?

Besides, traffic was crazy and parking expensive in DC.  So I generally took the bus or the brand new Metro (subway) to work on Capitol Hill at the Longworth House Office Building.  Driving the rest of the time wasn’t a problem – as long as I didn’t want to stop.

In the winter of my junior year of college the engine blew again.  I was giving a ride to a friend from Cincinnati back to school at Denison on a sub-zero Sunday afternoon.  All of a sudden, the entire car was filled with smoke, and I quickly pulled over to the side of I-71, just past Fort Ancient where the Ku Klux Klan had their “training farm”.  I walked to the back, opened the door, and lifted up the engine hatch (remember, the engine was in the back).  Flames leaped out at me, and I quickly slammed the hatch shut.

A Cold Day

Sure the engine was on fire.  But the immediate issue was the freezing cold.  Ten below was serious, and while the fire warmed us for a minute, it wouldn’t last long.  We stood huddled on the side of the road, trying to decide whether to jump the fence and deal with the KKK guys, or walk the five miles to the nearest exit.  Luckily, a passing trucker noticed our plight, and pulled over to offer us a ride.  He took us in his eighteen-wheeler to the next truck stop.  My passenger called for another ride, and I arranged to have the Squareback towed back to Mom and Dad’s house.

It was right in the middle of the Winter Olympics.  I remember this, because Carlos (from next door) was a former professional skier.  So while we worked on the engine in the garage, we also kept track of the skiing competition on TV.  In fact, there were various engine parts that migrated into the family room as we worked.  It was warmer in there anyway.  

Cooking Engine Parts

Mom wasn’t too concerned about that.  But then, there were these two parts that were a very “close” fit.  In fact, it was so close that the “hole” had to be heated to make it bigger, and the “peg” iced to shrink it, so it would slide in the hole.  So when Mom found the pistons in the oven, and the wrist pins in the freezer, we finally reached the end of her patience.  We were banned to the garage fulltime. But we got the engine going once again.

It wasn’t mechanics that finally doomed the Squareback – it was rust.  After I graduated from Denison and began working at Watkins Memorial High School in Pataskala, there were these open holes in the floor.  That might have worked for Fred Flintstone, but winter in Ohio was too cold for that kind of ventilation.   I  even got frostbite on my accelerator foot on one long trip. So I started looking for my next “luxury” car.

Riding in Style

And I found it; a nine-year old Volvo.  It was the height of luxury; cloth seats, a big four door sedan, a trunk as big as my apartment; but still with a “stick shift” that could make it drive like a sports car.  And I now had another reason to want a bigger car – I was coaching, and needed to haul kids to meets from time to time.  No longer would I put nine in the car, but the Volvo could comfortably (and legally) hold six.

And the Volvo served me well for four years. Sure there was that one time when I was sitting in my apartment, watching the black and white TV, when someone urgently knocked on my door.  When I answered, they asked if the black Volvo was mine.  I said yes, then they calmly said it was smoking in the parking lot.  I ran down to find the entire wiring harness was burning out, a $700 fix for a $1000 car.  That was how I learned the lesson of “bad money after good”.  When you own used cars, you need to know when it’s time to “let it go”.  But I stuck with the Volvo for another two years.

The Last Trip

It was on a track trip that the Volvo finally convinced me it was done.  We were going to a meet in Dayton, a couple of high school kids and an eighth grader running in the Junior Olympics at Trotwood.  As we were passing through downtown Columbus, we hit a bump, and hard a big bang.  All of a sudden, the Volvo was much louder – part of the exhaust system was in the middle of I-70.  There wasn’t much to do, so we kept heading to Dayton.

When we reached the track, I noticed a huge “bubble” on the side of the tire.  The exhaust was now blowing directly on it, and partially melted the tire down.  But we had a meet to run, so I decided to deal with that later.  After the meet, I changed the tire, and bent the exhaust away from the wheel.  Then it was back in the Volvo for the trip home.  But something else was wrong.  The Volvo engine had two carburetors, but one of them decided not to work.  That meant that instead of four cylinders generating power, we were driving on two, about the size of a motorcycle engine.

We took the back way home, averaging forty.  When we finally got back to school, I knew it was time to go car shopping once again.  This time, it was different.  This time, I was looking for a “new” car.  

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22

To Spite Your Face

So here’s an old tale from the British Isles. Viking raiders landed in Scotland in 867 A.D., and were headed south. Saint Ebba was the Mother Superior of the convent at Coldingham, and was desperately worried that the Vikings would “defile” her nuns when they arrived. So, she urged them to cut their noses and upper lips, so that the Vikings wouldn’t find them attractive, and wouldn’t take their virginity. It worked; the Vikings found the disfigured nuns disgusting. So instead of any defiling, they trapped them all in the convent, and burnt the building, and them, to the ground. (I’m hoping getting her nuns immolated wasn’t how Ebba earned her sainthood, but I bet it was).

So that horrible tale is how we got the expression that my English mother often used:  “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”.   Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell must not have had an English mother.  Last week, he found the perfect way to “cut off his nose”, and, like the tragic nuns of Coldingham, he managed to burn his whole Party.

Holding the Bag

The sequence of events went like this. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a deal with the House Progressives back in October. The Progressives agreed to vote for the Biden infrastructure plan. In return Schumer and the Senate Democrats agreed to pass the Progressive supported Build-Back-Better plan by “budget reconciliation”. That allows the fifty Democrats in the Senate and the Vice President to bypass the inevitable Republican filibuster.

The House Progressives voted, and the infrastructure bill became law.  But when Build-Back-Better reached the Senate, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia balked and refused to vote for it.  Since the Democrats have exactly fifty votes and depend on every Democrat to pass legislation, Manchin’s refusal meant that Build-Back-Better was dead.  The House Progressives, got left holding “the bag”. (So that’s another expression from England – when a bunch of thieves stole things and got caught – there was always one in possession of the stolen stuff – left “holding the bag”. That was the one the went to jail or the gallows.)

Progressives were, to use a more modern expression, “salty”, but still continued to support the rest of the Democratic agenda.  Their noses “remained intact”.  (“Salty” is a US expression, supposedly from the 1920’s referring to sailors with hot tempers who become “unexpectedly enraged”. They worked in the sea, therefore they were “salty”). 

Wrench in the Works

Meanwhile, Schumer, Manchin and Biden continued to negotiate to find some way to pass parts of Build-Back-Better, even if Manchin couldn’t agree to the whole package.  Several times in the past few months they’ve been close to a deal, but Manchin always “torpedoed” it in the end.  Democrats all over the country began to look at Manchin as the biggest block to the Democratic agenda, though there were fifty Republicans who also served that purpose.  But somehow Manchin always was the one “throwing a wrench in the works”.  (I figure torpedoes and wrenches are pretty self-explanatory). 

That all came to a head a few weeks ago.  Biden publicly rebuked Manchin, but Schumer remained quiet, still trying to get something done.  Then Schumer and Manchin had a public rupture, each angrily telling the press their side of the story.  It seemed, this time for sure, all the pieces of Build-Back-Better were done for, at least until after the November elections.  That put a black cloud over the entire Democratic Congressional body. Historically, the Party that wins the White House loses ground in the Congress two years later.  With the Senate tied, and the House narrowly Democratic by five votes, any losses would mean Republicans take control.   No Build-Back-Better, No possibility of a Democratic majority, at least in the House.

No Brainer

Democrats desperately needed some legislative “wins” to campaign on.  But Manchin seemed entrenched in his opposition to any Build-Back-Better proposals.

In order to solidify Manchin’s intransigence,  McConnell made it clear that Senate Republicans wouldn’t support anything, even bills they themselves wanted to pass, if Schumer tried to pass any Build-Back-Better proposals by budget reconciliation.  So Manchin and Schumer went silent.  The Senate passed the Pact Act, a bill for US veterans who were victims of the military “burn pits” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it went to the House for approval.  

Schumer then proposed the “Chips Act”, giving companies incentives to build computer chips in the United States.  It was a “no-brainer” bill for both parties.  Democrats got jobs in the United States, Republicans got money to corporations.  Everyone was happy.  They could go out and tell their constituents they “helped”. (No Brainer – a problem or situation that does not require any thought or use of brain matter to come to the correct conclusion).

Who’s Salty Now

Then Manchin and Schumer pulled an “upset”.  The day the Chips Act passed the Senate, they reached an agreement for a $700 billion “baby” Build-Back-Better.  It was written as a finance bill, making it eligible for the fifty vote budget reconciliation process, and was exactly what McConnell wanted to prevent.  But Chips was already going to the House for confirmation.  This time McConnell was left “holding the bag”.  

So it was McConnell’s turn to be “salty”.  Now McConnell is known as a brilliant tactician, and no one; not Schumer, not Biden, not Manchin expected McConnell to “cut off his nose”.  But that’s what he did.

The House made minor changes in the Pact Act, requiring the Senate to reconfirm its passage. McConnell had forty-one Republicans vote against it, filibustering its approval. He got Republicans to vote against American veterans who were disabled because they were in contact with poisonous fumes during war. To be clear: the Leader of the Republican Party led his Senators to vote against American warfighters, as those veterans, dying of cancer, stood on the Capitol steps. McConnell didn’t just slit a nostril, he removed the entire orifice.

Burn It Down

The veterans were more than “salty”; they were besides themselves (a Biblical reference, Acts 26:24 meaning really, really, angry).  And they were represented by comedian Jon Stewart, who was quick to profanely point out how two-faced the Republicans were (a reference to the Roman God Janus, who had two faces and could say two different things at the same time). 

So for the past four days, McConnell and the Republicans have had their “feet held to the fire” (you get that one).  Stewart and members of the Veterans’ groups put enormous pressure on the Republican Senators to change their vote on the Pact Act.  And not surprisingly, Schumer will give them the chance to do so, on Tuesday.  

If Republicans switch and vote for the bill, they caved into pressure. If they stand firm, they estrange themselves from veterans throughout the country, and give Democrats another talking point.  McConnell has already “cut off his nose to spite his face”.  Now he has to decide whether to let veterans burn his whole party down too.

Promises

Joe Biden won the Presidency by campaigning for a list of issues.  One of the biggest complaints about Biden’s Administration is that, so far, he hasn’t “come through” on his promises.  There’s lots of reasons: narrow margins in Congress, ongoing Covid pandemic, Covid and international economic dislocations, the machinations of a rabidly conservative Supreme Court.  But Biden fell prey to a politician’s greatest weakness. He made promises he couldn’t keep.

Of course, that’s not completely fair.  Biden kept his promises about Covid recovery.  In one of his first acts, he managed to squeak a final Covid relief bill through. It cost $1.9 trillion and every single Republican voting against it.  And he also came through on every legislator’s favorite – infrastructure.  Even some Republicans jumped onboard the infrastructure bill, worth $1 trillion for improvements throughout the United States.

The List

Check off Covid relief and infrastructure.  So what other issues are on the list?

Voting rights are perhaps the most important, and the biggest Biden Administration failure (so far).  Two companion voting rights acts passed the House of Representatives. Those bills would undo much of the Republican retrogressive restrictions passed in the states.   A full fifty Democrat (plus the Vice President) majority in the Senate were in favor of passage of part of those bills. But there were two Democrats who refused to “break the filibuster” to get them done.

In the end voting rights were a “big fail”.  Not only will many Americans not be able to vote because of that failure. But on a practical political level, many of the Americans left out would vote Democrat.  

The other issue on the list that so far has been missing in action is student debt relief.  Forty-three million Americans own $1.6 trillion in student debt.  The weight of that debt holds back the economy, with thirty-somethings making loan payments instead of mortgage payments.  And while there’s plenty of argument; “they had their eyes open when they signed for those loans in the first place”, it is generally agreed that student loans were made at near predatory rates, without regard for any future ability to repay.   There has been some forgiveness for the most egregious “for profit” universities. And the promise of loan forgiveness for community service is finally being fulfilled.  But for the vast majority of debt holders, there’s still the monthly payments to Sofi, Mohela, Great Lakes, or the other servicers.

Build-Back-Better

And until yesterday there seemed little hope for lowering drug prices, raising taxes on corporations, improving the environment, reducing the national debt, or reducing other costs in health care.  All of those ideas were popular, and part of Biden’s big plan, “Build-Back-Better”.  But they also fell to the filibuster and two Democrats unwilling to change that “tradition”.  

There have been ongoing negotiations between one of the two Democratic roadblocks, Senator Manchin of West Virginia, and the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  But a couple of weeks ago, it seemed that Manchin walked away, dooming any further advancement of the Biden agenda in 2022.

Meanwhile, there was a bipartisan bill called the “Chips Act”, that would increase incentives for corporations to build computer chips (and other electronics) in the United States.  This came about after Covid, when China shutdown production of computer chips, and the US found there were no alternative sources.  It wasn’t only economically inconvenient, but was a national security issue.  The United States needs to have domestic sources for computer chips.

Surprise Deal

Minority Leader McConnell threatened to filibuster the Chips Act if Schumer put forward any part of “Build-Back-Better” as a “budget reconciliation” bill that could not be filibustered.  But with the failure of the Manchin negotiations, that point was moot.  So yesterday the Senate passed the Chips Act. Seventeen Republicans joining almost all of the Democrats (Bernie Sanders was opposed).  

Then the big surprise – Manchin and Schumer reached an agreement on a “baby Build-Back-Better”. 

Instead of the $2 trillion cost of original Build-Back-Better, it actually raises revenue by over $300 billion.  It does that through a 15% corporate minimum tax, closing interest loopholes, increasing IRS enforcement, and most importantly, allowing the Government to negotiate Medicare drug prices (like every insurance company does).  It reduces the government deficit by $300 billion, even after it pays for the other provisions.  

And what gets done?  It extends the Affordable Care Act subsidies through 2024.  And it budgets $370 billion towards energy infrastructure and climate, with a $4000 tax credit for low and middle income individuals to buy electric cars.  And there’s tax credits for energy saving home improvements, and $60 billion for clean energy incentives to corporations.

Chips and More

Is it everything Biden wanted in Build-Back-Better?  Of course it’s not.  But it does start to check the boxes.  It lowers health care costs, addresses environmental concerns, and gets corporations (like Amazon that paid $0 income tax) to pay their fair share of taxes.  And it will pass through budget reconciliation. There’s no opportunity for a Republican filibuster.

And since the Chips Act is already passed in the Senate, McConnell can’t hold it hostage.

It was just lucky happenstance that Manchin and Schumer reached their agreement, hours after the Chips Act was passed.  I’m sure everyone was acting (performing?) in good faith when Manchin walked away from negotiations.  

Nothing is final.  Senator Sinema of Arizona still will have her say.  And Republican Senators are now calling of Republican House Members to vote against the Chips Act.  Of course, Democrats have a clear majority there, and there is no filibustering in the House.  So, if everything holds together, “…the good Lord willing and the river don’t rise”, Biden will get to sign the Chips Act, and the “Inflation Reduction Act”, baby Build-Back-Better.  

Computer chips, health care costs, corporate taxation, climate change, even government deficit:  Biden will get to check a whole lot of boxes.

It couldn’t happen at a better time.

Democratic Choice

There’s lots of reason that the election of 2020 was critical, and that weren’t all about Donald Trump.  Say what they might, but Democrats had a wide choice of candidates.  They had the old “radical”, Bernie Sanders, who surprisingly appealed to the younger members of the Party.  There was the “shining star” candidate, Pete Buttigieg, the brilliant young mayor, veteran and gay man who represented “the future”.  There were the tech-millionaires, Andrew Yang and Tom Styer.  And there were all the Senators; Klobuchar, Bennet, Booker, Harris, Warren and the others who “legitimized” the field with their traditional experience. Of course, since we’re Democrats, we had our “far-out” candidates, Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson.

And then there was the most traditional candidate, the thirty-six year Senator, eight-year Vice President Joe Biden.  Tradition is the world – he represented the “next in line” in old order politics, the “President in waiting”.  He had three problems:  he was old, he always stumbled, and he was “old order” in a “new world”.  

But that’s who we nominated, the “old (and old)  order” candidate.  Regardless of all the lies and the nonsense of “Stop the Steal” by the Trump campaign, that’s who won the election by seven million votes.  The best argument that we can make – Americans wanted to go back to “normal”, choosing a Warren G Harding type candidate (elected in 1920 after all of the upheaval of Woodrow Wilson, the first World War, and the League of Nations debate).  America wanted to “return to normalcy”. 

Old Order

That’s not necessarily what Biden wanted to do.  He entered office with a transformational Franklin Roosevelt type New Deal program.  But that wasn’t “normal”, and the narrow Democratic margin in the Senate allowed the prototypical “old order” Democrat, Joe Manchin, the power to stop anything (and everything).  That’s the definition of “normal” in American politics.

But there are “new order” Democrats who are tired of operating under the “old order” rules.  One of them is Sean Patrick Maloney, the Congressman from New York, and Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  His job is to maintain the Democratic majority in the House, a daunting task.  Tradition, the “old order” way, says that the Party that wins the Presidency loses seats in the House in the next election.  And since Democrats only have a five vote majority, it wouldn’t take much to lose control of the House.

Maloney is a prime mover in the plan to not only choose good Democratic candidates for Congress, but to also help Republicans choose “bad” candidates to run against them.  The idea is this:  if Republicans run “normal” candidates, then the “normal” history will happen, and the Republicans will end up in the majority and Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker of the House.  

Electoral Equations

Something out of the normal has to happen. In mathematical terms, you have to change the equation to get a different answer.  And here’s how some Democrats are doing it.

The 2021 Governor’s election in Virginia was the primer.  The Republican, Glenn Youngkin, ran on a traditional Republican platform.  He distanced himself from Donald Trump, even as he still campaigned on many of the issues that were “Trumpian”.  He came across as a “old order” Republican.  And he was running against an “old order” Democrat, former Virginia Governor and Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe.  So the “old order” equation held firm:  the winning party of the Presidency traditionally loses the Virginia race in the next year.  And Democrats lost.

How to change the equation?  Don’t let the Republicans run “old order” candidates.  And how could Democrats possibly impact who Republicans are going to nominate for office?  Help out the ones they want to run against.

The Republican Party is smaller than it once was.  Some “old order” Republicans have eschewed the Party of Donald Trump, and are now “Republican leaning” Independents.  So they don’t vote in Republican primaries anymore.  The majority of the current Republican voters still support Donald Trump and all of the ideas that come with him.  

But the majority of all the voters weren’t willing to vote for Trump in 2020.  The theory goes:  if Republican run avowed Trump acolytes, they’ll win in the primary, but they lose in the general election, if faced by a “normal” Democrat.  So to change “the equation”, Democrats are helping the most extreme Republican “Trumpers” get nominated.  

Choose The Opponent

The House election for the Western District of Michigan is a good example.  Republican Congressman Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Insurrection.  Meijer is an “old order” Republican, conservative but definitely not a Trumper.  He is running in the primary against John Gibbs, an acknowledged Trumper.  Democrats are “on the air”, paying for ads saying that Gibbs is “too conservative” and “too close to Trump” to represent Western Michigan.  Of course, in the general election against a Democrat, that’s a completely legitimate ad.  But it’s running now, in the primary, and is likely to motivate Trump-supporting Republicans to come out and vote for Gibbs against Meijer.  

Democrats don’t want to run against Meijer.  They want to change the equation, and run against the extremist, Gibbs.  Democrats are putting their “money where their mouth is” and paying for ads to run in Western Michigan, now.  And that same kind of effort is happening in many districts all over the country.

And it’s not just the House elections.  John Fetterman of Pennsylvania (a “new order” Democrat) is running for Senate against “Dr Oz”, supported by Donald Trump.  Tim Ryan of Ohio (another “new order” Democrat) is running for Senate against financial manager and author JD Vance, supported by Donald Trump.  They got what they wanted, a fierce contest with a “Trump Republican”, not an “old order” Republican.

(Need an example of an “old order” election – look at Ohio’s gubernatorial election, with “new order” Democrat former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, against “old order” Republican Governor Mike DeWine. DeWine is heavily favored).

That’s not the “old order” way, nor the “normal” way to win elections.  There are many who would say it’s not even “fair”. But it’s not “normal” times, no matter how badly we wanted to “return to normalcy”.  It’s a high stakes gamble:  run against the most extreme to maximize the chance of winning.  

For the sake of the nation, just hope they don’t lose.

World Market

The United States has the largest economy in the world.  And our economy is completely integrated into the world market.  The keyboard I’m banging was made in China, the t-shirt I’m wearing in Honduras, the LL Bean “wicked good” moccasins that I live in are from Australia.  And the Starbucks coffee that is permanently attached to my right hand (or by intravenous connection to my right arm) is grown in Costa Rica.

It’s easy for Americans to focus on our internal issues.  From gas prices to the fate of our Democracy, we worry about ourselves first; the rest of the world second.  But  the fact is that everything happening in the world impacts us as well.  So while we think a lot more about Roe v Wade or the rise in gun violence in our cities, we can’t just ignore what’s happening outside of our borders.

Wheat and Maize

Let’s talk about wheat.  Wheat is a basic food source. Whether “they” eat bread or cake, “they” need wheat to do it.  The world top exporters of wheat are:  Russia (20% of the export market), Canada (14%), the US (14%), France (9%) and Ukraine (9%).  The world’s top importers of wheat:  Egypt (10% of the world market), China (7%), Turkey (5%), Nigeria (4%) and Indonesia (4%) (OEC).

The war Russia is waging in Ukraine impacts everyone.  Many nations are boycotting Russian goods, and Russia is doing its best to keep Ukrainian wheat from going onto the market.  That impacts 29% of the world wheat market.  And since wheat is a basic world commodity, it impacts the cost of the piece of toast I just ate for breakfast, or the bun on that McDonald’s cheese burger you had for lunch.  Less wheat on the market, means the cost of wheat for everyone goes up.

Corn (some call it maize) is even more critical.  The United States leads world exports with 37%.  But Ukraine is third with 11.4% of exports (Russia is less than 2%) (World Top Exports).  And corn doesn’t just go on the table for human consumption.  As you drive across Ohio, most of the corn (now elbow high by the end of July) is feed corn, meant for livestock not your dining room table.  Take 11.4% of the corn off the world market – and prices go up for that, and all of the other food commodities that eat it to get to your refrigerator.

Covid Continues

China is still battling Covid.  Just this month, the Chinese government shutdown the city of Xian (population – thirteen million) because of the new Covid Omicron BA 5.2 variant (CNN).  Xian is a major exporter of computer software, lighting equipment and auto parts.  And there largest trading partner is, the United States.  So Covid is still driving economic dislocation.  Maybe it’s why your car is still in the shop waiting on parts, or your paying premium prices for the new light fixtures for the remodeling you started during the Covid crisis here.

The Russian War

The war in Ukraine is grinding on.  The Russian strategy seems to be to wait for the rest of the world to “grow weary” of the cost of supporting Ukraine.  That cost isn’t just the price for artillery or rockets, it’s the cost to the citizens of the United States (and the rest of the world) for their basic goods.  We are all sharing in the battle to stop the Russian invasion of a sovereign nation.

The Russian economy is wrecked from the sanctions, but Russian propaganda is doing its best to keep the world, and its own citizens, from talking about that.  Instead, they make “a deal” to let Ukraine get their wheat on the world market, then launch a missile attack on the docks where that grain is stored.  Or they hold an American athlete hostage.  Anything to distract from the real price the Russian people are paying for Putin’s “adventure” in Ukraine, 15,000 troops killed, perhaps three times that many wounded (WAPO).

Who’s to Blame

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is touring Africa, blaming the United States for rising wheat and corn prices.  If the United States would just lift economic sanctions on Russia, he says, then the cost of the wheat and corn would come back down.  And that’s true, but for the “cause and effect” of those sanctions.  If Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine, there would be no need for sanctions.  Lavrov hopes that the African nations will overlook that little factor.

It’s likely to get uglier before it gets better.  Just now, Russia is announcing that it will reduce the natural gas flow to Europe in half, to 20% of full capacity (Reuters).  The people of Europe are participating in the war against Russia, through their own financial sacrifices.  How long they, and we, are willing to hang on, may determine the fate of the Ukrainian people, just as much as Ukrainian victories on the battlefield.

Ukraine Crisis

• A Full Plate – 7/26/22
• Ukrainian Independence – 6/30/22
• No Victory Day – 5/10/22
• Desperate Moves – 4/27/22
• This is the Time – 4/20/22
• The Winning Message – 4/18/22
• Victory Day – 4/12/22
• Chapter Two – 4/11/22
• Zelenskyy’s Choice – 3/31/22
• The Gaffe – 3/28/22
• Putin’s Choice – 3/27/22
• Far Away From the Front – 3/20/22
• The Next Step – 3/17/22
• Thinking the Unthinkable – 3/14/22
• Russian Oil – 3/11/22
• Kyiv’s Choice – 3/8/22
• The Logic of Madness – 3/7/22
• Lights Out – 3/6/22
• Ante Up – 3/3/22
• State of the Union  3/2/22
• The Guns of March 3/1/22
• Sanctions 2/26/22
• What Happens Next 2/24/22
• The Games Begin  2/22/22
• Talking with a Friend 2/18/22
• Trip Wire 2/2/22
• On the Brink 1/23/22
• The Ukrainian Dilemma 12/5/19

Sit Rep

Monday, July 25^th:  it’s “Christmas in July” day – if that’s a thing for you.   Here’s the daily gas report.  For all those worried about inflation:  the cheapest gas within ten miles is $3.70, down over a dollar from two months ago (Sam’s Club).  And if you want to know a more “average” price, look here in Pataskala, the home of all those little Amazon vans driving the fuel demand up. It’s $4.29 just down the street, almost sixty cents more than Sam’s, but still down from the $5.00 mark –  Merry Christmas. 

Forty percent of the current inflationary pressure is from fuel costs.  So fuel going down is a good thing, even if you don’t drive.  It’s likely to mean that other prices will start to come down a bit as well.  But prices are “sticky”, they go up easier than they come down.  Everyone along the chain is happy to take a little bit more profit for a bit.  So don’t expect the price on sliced cheese or bread to drop right away, but it’ll happen eventually.

On the News

The cable news feels like all-Trump, all-the-time again.  The powerful information coming from the January 6^thCommittee is driving a lot of that, but in the back of my head I still hear the warnings of 2015.  Donald Trump said it; “(I)t’s better to be bad news than no news”.  His goal was to keep his name “up front”, that was his definition of “winning”.  On that basis, he’s definitely winning right now.  I had the forlorn hope that after the Biden inauguration somehow Trump would be like that “old soldier” and fade away.  But that won’t happen.  Instead, the United States must have a “truth and reconciliation” moment with the reality of not only Trump, but all of the ugliness he dredged up in American life.  

It’s not that he created anything, but he altered the “environment” to allow so much of that ugliness to the surface.  What was unacceptable behavior just a decade ago, now seems to be just fine.  Drive down Main Street in my Pataskala – and see the “F**K BIDEN” flags hanging on the porches.  People may have thought that about Bush or Obama, but they didn’t put it on the front porch for every eight-year-old to see.  

It’s Personal

I heard a bit of Pete Buttigieg’s interview from the Sunday news shows.  When asked how he felt about the Republican Congressmen who voted against putting gay marriage into actual law (instead of depending on the Supreme Court), he had an interesting answer.  Pete is gay,  married to Chasten, and they have two young children.  The Secretary of Transportation described how on Sunday morning he gave Chasten a break, and took care of the children’s breakfast.  It was a typical young parent scene:  the high chair tray wasn’t sitting just right, and Pete was trying to keep the cereal in the tray, as he sliced bananas and got milk ready.

He testified to Congress on Friday about highway funds and other transportation issues.  It was a bipartisan discussion:  Republicans and Democrats alike want the roads in their districts fixed.  Everyone was working together.  Then the Republicans he was working with, left that meeting and went to the floor of the House to vote against Pete’s marriage, against his family and against his life choices.  For him, and for many, it’s not just politics; it’s personal.

Courage under Fire

I also got to see snippets of Liz Cheney’s Sunday interview on Fox News.  There are few substantive political issues where I could say we agree, but she is absolutely a woman of courage.  The Fox commentator claimed that the Committee was unfair, without “real” Republican representation.  Point by point, Cheney laid out why “those” Republicans chose not to be a part of that process, and how the committee today was a result of that abrogation of duty.  And she made a telling point:  did anyone really think that former Attorney General Bill Barr or the other witnesses would somehow “wilt” under a Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz “cross examination”?  That didn’t seem likely.

Sunday on the Track

So Sunday was not necessarily and “uplifting” day for me.  That is, until Sunday night.  It was the final night of the World Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon.  Hayward Field has been the center of American track since the 1970’s, and Oregon alumni Phil Knight, Chairman of Nike, has made sure that the new facilities there are the best in the world. 

I was a head track coach, and like a father of a family, I had to love every event “equally”.  No kid on my team could feel that I didn’t care about their efforts and struggles.  But I have to admit, there were two events that always had my focus:  the pole vault, and the 4×400 relays.  And last night, for the final night of competition, was the finals in both of those events.

The United States Track team has been disappointing for a number of years.  Part of that is the world “catching up” with American track and field.  Eight athletes from eight different countries may line up for a race, but they all went to college here in the USA; UCLA, or Florida, or Arkansas (and of course, two of this year’s World medalists went to “little” Ashland University, just an hour up the road).  So American coaches and advantages are shared worldwide.

But the Tokyo Olympics were truly disappointing for the US team.  Only seven gold medal winners, and 26 total medals in the games just felt like a huge letdown, matching the silence of the pandemic Tokyo stadium.

Tracktown, USA

Hayward Field was the exact opposite these last two weeks.  The stands were packed, with seating strategically placed to support individual events venues within the stadium.  And the crowd was “stoked” and knowledgeable.  They (including some of my good friends – just a little jealous) knew when it was time to listen, and when it was time to cheer as hard as they could.

And the US team came through, thirteen golds and a record thirty-three total world medals.  Last night, was a perfect ending.  The American men literally ran away with the 4×400, the team coaches perfectly putting the right athlete in the right position.  A collegian ran the anchor leg, far out ahead of the rest of the field, to bring the baton home.  The best runner, 400 world champion Michael Norman, ran second, hammering out a lead that the rest of the field could never overcome.

And on the women’s side, they US made a last minute change as they came to the starting line.  Former 400 hurdle world record holder Dalilah Muhammad was injured during warmup.  Dublin, Ohio native Abby Steiner stepped in at the last minute to run the second leg of the race.  The US had the lead from the start, and Abby ran one of her best splits to hold up her end.  And on the final leg was perhaps the fastest woman in the world, current 400 hurdle record holder Sydney McLaughlin. She literally ran seconds faster than any other woman in the field to bring the baton home for gold.

The Final High

And what about the pole vault?  The American, Chris Nielsen, cleared 19’5” to earn the silver medal.  But it was twenty-two year old Mondo Duplantis, the pole vaulting prodigy raised in Louisiana and vaulting for Sweden, who took the gold.  He ended the night, and the championships, by clearing a height higher than any man had cleared before, 20’4 ½”.  That vault broke his own world record, and while it’s hard to see him wrapped in a Swedish flag instead of the Stars and Stripes, the Hayward Field crowd cheered just as loudly.   

For just a moment, politics weren’t front and center.  Sometimes we need some moments of joy, to interrupt our world.  The track championships had all that and more, a Christmas in July for me.

Here’s another in the “Sunday Story” series. A break from politics – just stories, this time about mechanics, cars, and driving adventures.

Oil Change

Yesterday I changed the oil on my 2004 Jeep Wrangler (or in “Jeep-speak” a TJ).  That’s not a big thing, I’ve been working on cars since I got a driver’s license.  I can still “turn a wrench”, at least for the simple maintenance stuff.  Most car mechanics left me behind when it required a computer to “diagnose” an engine, but changing oil hasn’t evolved much.  It was good to get my hands dirty.

I’ve never been a “new car” guy.  I owned thirteen cars in the almost fifty years I’ve been driving, and only two were new.  The rest were somebody else’s troubles.  Adventures with my cars (and vans, trucks, and SUV’s) often revolve around a piece falling off, or a critical part breaking, or, the worst, the engine catching on fire (twice).  

The Fury

It started with my first car, when I was sixteen years old.  In 1973, I paid my cousin $250 for his 1969 Plymouth Fury III. It seemed like an “old car”, and my cousin drove it hard, with over 200,000 miles on it. That was the result of his selling artificial flowers across a territory that stretched from Kansas to Indiana, Wisconsin to Missouri.  And it didn’t work, at least not well.  Starting the car created a cloud of dark smoke.  Even then, it felt like we were changing the environment for the worse each time I turned the key.

But our Cincinnati neighbors were more than happy to teach me the “fine art” of engine repair.  On one side was Carlos Phillips.  Carlos was a sales manager for Monsanto, but on the side was constantly repairing and refining his two, classic ‘356’ Porsches (1955 and 1956).  On the other side was Tom Morgan, a more practical Proctor and Gamble engineer.  Tom fixed cars all of his life, and was more than willing to pass on the knowledge to an eager young driver/mechanic.

So we rebuilt the Plymouth engine in Tom’s garage, with Carlos lending a hand, and my Dad falling asleep against a tire leaning on the wall.  I learned all about blown gaskets and warped heads, torque wrenches and “cheater” bars.  And, when things weren’t going just right, Tom had a P&G Engineering tool – a ballpeen hammer.  Sometimes a bolt just needed a little more persuasion – just a “rap” or two would do it.

Side note – it’s Dad’s birthday today. He would be 104. He’s been gone for six years now and I miss him still. He wasn’t a car guy – but he wanted to support what I was doing. Happy Birthday – Dad!!

Riding in Style

We put the Plymouth into driving shape, and it was my “ride” in high school, and the first year of college.  It drove like a “boat”, with two huge bench seats.  After my freshman year at Denison University, my summer job was a “day camp” for 11 and 12 year old boys.  I had as many as eight, but that was no problem for the “Fury”.  Five in the back, and four in the front, plus me, and we could go anywhere.  Seatbelts – well there were a couple in the front seat – none in the back. Cars only had to be equipped with them at all in 1968.  We cooked out at the local parks, and went on “road trips” to museums.  The “Fury” was our dependable ride.

During my college sophomore year the Fury’s engine blew again.  It was time to send it to “the car farm”; you can’t sell a broken car.  So I gave it to Dad, who donated it to the Goodwill and took a tax break.  The last ride of the Fury was from the house to the Goodwill, smoking enough to create global warming, and finally quitting just as I pulled into the parking lot.  I glided to a spot and handed over the keys.

The Squareback

Carlos let me “kibbitz in” on some of his Porsche work, and I fell in love with the four cylinder engines in the back that you could almost pick up by yourself. The four-speed stick shift on the floor made driving fun.  I could never afford a Porsche, and the next best thing was a Volkswagen.  But there were two problems with that.  First, I needed more room than the Beetle offered.  I had to move back and forth to school, and would spend my junior year of college doing a lot of travelling.  I worked for the Carter/Mondale Presidential campaign in the fall, then studied at American University in Washington, DC in the spring.

But Volkswagen made a “station wagon” that they called the Type III, a Squareback.  It was the perfect car for me, with enough room to put all of my dorm stuff inside (the couch was strapped to the roof).  And it still had that little air-cooled four cylinder engine in the back, almost just like Carlo’s Porsches, and “four on the floor”.  I found a white, 1967, all ready for me.

The second problem was Mom.  Mom was British, and was a “spy” in World War II for the Special Operations Executive.  She still bore a grudge against the Germans, serious enough that I wasn’t sure I could bring a German-built car into the driveway and survive the experience.  We had to have some serious discussions about the War (after all, it was thirty years ago) and how some things changed.   She wasn’t happy, and seldom took a ride in the Squareback, but she grudgingly agreed it could have space in the driveway.

Blown Engines

The first time I “blew” the Volkswagen engine was on State Route 37 south of Granville.  I was passing a truck, going down the big hill.  A car was coming, faster than I thought, and I forgot to shift from third to fourth.  I got around the truck, then realized that I was “red-lined”.  The little engine was screaming, and I quickly popped it into fourth gear.  But it was too late.  The Squareback got me onto I-70 and ten miles west towards Columbus, but started smoking just at the Reynoldsburg exit.  I managed to pull of the Brice Road exit, and coast into the Shell station.  

Mr. Spangler, the owner, was about to head home for the night, but was willing to tow me back to Granville.  We stopped and got a twelve pack of beer on the way, and shared a couple as he told me about his home nearby in Pataskala. I didn’t know much about it at the time. He dropped the car in my dorm parking lot.  I called Cincinnati and told them I wasn’t going to make it home for dinner.

Advanced Study

Dad came up and got me the next day, and I borrowed his “back up” car, a red 1969 Cutlass, for a couple weeks.  That’s how I drove the Volkswagen engine parts to the store, as I rebuilt the four cylinder engine in my dorm room.  It probably wasn’t “acceptable” by the student code, but I wasn’t the first to do it.  A guy a few doors down rebuilt his engine, but while he was working on it, his car got “loose” and went down the hill into the woods behind our dorm.  So he was stuck with an engine as room furniture and no car to put it in.

It took three weeks, a week to tear things apart, a week to get the parts machined, and then a week to put it all back together.  And there was probably some studying going on too.  But the Squareback would “ride again”;  to Washington DC and back, through a blizzard in the Pennsylvania mountains, and even around the hookers in Times Square in New York City.  

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22

The Hallway

It is more than painful to watch.  Police officers, standing in the hallway, checking phones and equipment, conversing in whispers; as the shooter stands amid the dying and dead children behind the classroom door.  It took seventy-seven minutes to go through that door.  There were near four-hundred police officers at the school, but it took seventy-seven minutes to be “the good guys with guns against the bad guy with a gun”.  The Columbine lesson from more than two decades ago was known by every officer there:  don’t wait.  But wait they did, and kids and teachers died, that may well have lived if the “protocols” were followed and they went straight through the door.

Some claim it was a failure of courage, that every man in the hallway was a coward.  But, it’s never that simple.  One officer had his gun taken away and was escorted from the building.  His wife was dying in that classroom, and they were concerned he would “go in” without permission.  Of course, that’s exactly what they all were supposed to do.

Leadership

It wasn’t a failure of courage, of all three hundred and seventy-six officers.  It was a failure of leadership, at the highest levels.  Sure, the Chief of the Uvalde Independent School District Police, a force of six, should have taken charge.  He even wrote the policy that said it was his job.  But he failed to do so.  So it’s on him.  But it’s also on the dozens of Texas State Police who were on the scene in minutes.  Their chief, Steve McCraw, the grizzled old man so quick to place blame on a teacher for an open door that wasn’t, didn’t order his men in, not even the vaunted Texas Rangers.

And there were dozens or more of Federal Border Control agents.  They were used to being around the school.  Uvalde is at a major crossroads within 100 miles of the border.  Border Control was constantly in the area, looking for what they called “bailouts”, fleeing migrants.  In fact, there is now evidence that the Uvalde school was “locked down” so many times because of “bailouts”, that a “lock down” order lost its urgency. Where was their commander, ordering them through the one classroom door to take out one man?  

Teachers and children died because of a failure in leadership. All it took was one person, one “leader”, to say go, and those officers in the hallway would have done what they ultimately did anyway. They would have gone through the door, and “taken out” the shooter. There was no lack of courage, there was lack of leadership.

It’s called dereliction of duty, failing to do what you are by your “job”, supposed to do.  And we’ve seen it before.

The Insurrection

On January 6^th, Donald Trump, 45^th President of the United States, encouraged an armed mob to march on the Capitol Building.  His speech started at noon, and was over an hour long.  But before he was even done, the “mob” around the Capitol was breaking through the outdoor barriers.  Just after his speech ended, at 1:30, the final outdoor protections to the building were breeched.  Meanwhile, the Congress, in joint session, was meeting to confirm the electoral votes.

Just after 2:00 pm, the windows were broken, and the mob entered the Capitol.  Soon the Vice President and the Speaker were escorted from the Chambers, and the building went into “lockdown”.  But there was no locking down a building that was already breeched.  At 2:24 Donald Trump sent a tweet saying:  “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” It was gasoline on a fire.

At 3:36 the White House press secretary tweeted that, at the President’s direction the National Guard was on the way. But it wasn’t until 4:17 pm that the President “tweeted” a video, telling the mob:

“I know your pain. I know your hurt. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated. … I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.”

And, it wasn’t until 5:40 pm that the first National Guard troops arrive at the Capitol Building (NPR).

Preserve, Protect and Defend

It was three hours and seventeen minutes from the beginning of the attack until the President of the United States responded.  We watched all three hours and seventeen minutes “live” on television.  So did he.  But, like the leadership at Uvalde, he did nothing.  

There is plenty of evidence that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, intentionally caused the Insurrection at the Capitol.  And there’s even more proof that he tried to subvert the election, and the “peaceful transfer of power”.  But there is one, single, incontrovertible, damning fact.  The President takes an oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.  And for over three hours, he did not.

Like the Uvalde Chief and the Texas Director:  Donald Trump was derelict in his duty.  

 The Principal

The Secret Service has a long history of success.  They’ve been protecting the President of the United States, the “principal”, since 1901.  That President is the biggest “target” in the world, forced by his job to go out in the public, walk to crowds, stand in front of assemblies.  There is always a threat.  In the 120 plus years, they’ve failed once, spectacularly, in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. 

 But there have been several other “close calls”.  An assassin attacked FDR in an open car in Miami. Puerto Rican separatists tried to storm the Blair House where Truman was staying.  A Charles Manson follower shot at Ford in San Francisco.  And a crazed man shot Reagan as he left a Washington hotel.  

The Secret Service aren’t just “bodyguards”.   When the President of the United States comes into town, there is a weeks long process, mobilizing Federal agents from every agency.  A list of those who have threatened the President comes out, and every “potential” is “checked” to make sure they aren’t a threat at the moment.   Federal agents scout every possible Presidential route, determining the safest passage for the motorcade.  Every “sniper’s nest” is checked, every ambush site evaluated.  Each person who will be in contact with the President is vetted.

After all of that, they still know one thing.  If someone is willing to die, they can probably take the President with them.  They don’t need history to know that:  look at former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, assassinated in Japan a couple weeks ago, one of the safest countries in the world.  No matter how secure they try to make things, there’s always the potential for disaster.

Jimmy Carter

In 1976 I was a twenty-year old lowly Field Coordinator in the Carter/Mondale Campaign.  One of my many tasks was to help prepare when one of the Carter’s came into town.  Each time, I interacted with the Secret Service, both the local office and the direct protection details.  They were “pros”, cooperative but definitive about what they would and wouldn’t do.  And they also had a sense of humor.

Jimmy Carter himself came in to Cincinnati just one time that fall, on a day when the Reds were playing at home in the World Series.  The campaign had a long discussion about whether the Governor should go to the game.  There was concern that he would be booed and it would look bad on television.  I argued that if he put a Reds hat on, he’d be fine.  

I lost the argument, and Carter was brought into Lunken Airport, a smaller “business” airport near downtown.  There were several thousand people gathered to hear his speech from the tarmac, and our staff got the opportunity to have a few minutes to meet and talk to him in the small terminal building.  When I greeted the “Governor”, he made clear that it was “Jimmy”, not “Governor”.  It was exciting to meet the man whose name was on all the signs, buttons and bumper stickers.  Like most of those interactions, he looked smaller than I thought, almost my own five-seven.  All of the campaigning made him seem seven feet tall.

In the Crowd

Carter left our staff, and met with some local dignitaries in a private room.  Then he went out into the crowd to get back on his plane.  I went out ahead to help clear a path for him.  As I backed into the crowd, I bumped into a rough looking, middle-aged man.  He was around six-foot tall or so, and my elbow accidently bumped into his ribs.  I could feel the outline of something hard under his dirty army jacket.  It felt like a gun.

What should I do?  Carter was coming out of the terminal, there wasn’t time to get help.  I slowly turned and looked up at the man.  He smiled – then reached for the collar of his worn jacket.  He turned the collar over – and there was the security pin of the day.  Whew; he was Secret Service, put in the crowd to make sure nothing happened.  I’m sure he could see the concern, then relief in my face.  He nodded, then continued to scan the crowd.

Rosalynn

Rosalynn Carter (pronounced Rose-a-lin, not Ros-a-lin) came to open our downtown, street-front office in the old Sheraton-Gibson Hotel building on Fountain Square.  It was a crowd, in the small office, and in the street, as the always gracious Mrs. Carter (please call me Rosalynn) encouraged the staff and supporters to work even harder in the last few weeks before the vote.  We were headed back out onto Fifth Street across from the square, when a woman about my age stepped in front of me, struggling to get something out of her purse.

I nodded to the Secret Service agent behind me (and ahead of Mrs. Carter) and in a flash, the young lady was gone – out of the crowd and “safe” against a wall.  Her purse was quickly examined – and the pen she was searching for discovered.  Rosalynn came over and gave her and autograph, and an apology.  But the Secret Service was clear; don’t reach for something at the moment that the “principal” was coming.

The President

I should have learned that lesson myself.  In the last week of the campaign, President Ford was coming into town to give a speech from Fountain Square.  The Secret Service was really buzzing – the President himself is “the” big deal.  The Carter staff let the Service know that we were going to hang a Carter/Mondale banner from the top of the building where our street-front office was located.  They weren’t happy about it, but gave grudging approval.

The building was old and abandoned (torn down a year later), and the elevators didn’t work.  But we could go upstairs to the rooftop, and unfurl our sign from the side of the building moments before President Ford arrived.  So three of us, all “junior” staff, were up there, watching the final preparations on the Square.

As we leaned over, tying the sign to the side, we saw the Cincinnati Police officers pointing to the top of “our” building.  It looked like those scenes from Dallas in 1963, with folks pointing to the windows.  At that moment we saw several officers charge into the storefront office, and realized that the Secret Service didn’t want a sign up here.  They didn’t say “no” to us, but they didn’t tell the local cops about it.  

We started heading down the stairs, and met the officers about halfway up.  After we were “controlled”, frisked and cuffed, they started listening to our explanation.  It didn’t do much good, and they were marching us out of the door when a Secret Service agent finally gave them the word to let us go.  There was no Carter/Mondale sign when the President gave his speech.

Today

I have enormous respect for the Secret Service protection details.  They are all-business, until the “principal” leaves, and always prepared to take action.  They are trained not to hesitate, not to question, but to act.  I’m sure, even now, forty-six years later, they are the same.  

I wrote an essay the other day (Praetorian Guard) about the Secret Service deleting text messages from January 6^th.  The agents that day were in a “no-win” situation.  They had a single duty, to protect their principal.  And yet, on that day, the “principal” was acting in opposition to the Constitution, the basic foundation of our nation.  Each agent swore to “support and defend” the Constitution, not the “principal”. 

But in my experience, the Secret Service agents on the Protective Details are single-minded.  It wouldn’t be a surprise that they “crossed some lines” on January 6^th.  Now it seems, they crossed more lines in deleting the text messages from that day.  And their bosses, the leadership of the Secret Service, allowed them to do it.  

That single-minded “beyond” the law attitude, cannot be allowed to stand.

Rodney Dangerfield

Despicable, Disgusting, Shameful:  you’d think people were describing a child molester, or a serial killer.  But in the last forty-eight hours, these words were used to describe Joe Biden, the President of the United States.  And it wasn’t Republicans talking about the President. These were “fellow” Democrats describing the President of their own party.

Rodney Dangerfield was an American comedian who made an entire career out of getting “no respect”.  And Joe Biden has been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of the Democratic Party, ever since the hair plug transplants of the 1980’s and aborted runs for President two decades apart.  But he also was the overwhelming winner of the Democratic primaries in 2020, and seemed to be the only candidate that could defeat Donald Trump.  And he did.

(Democrats tend to forget that.  We remember the early primaries in New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada, when Mayor Pete and Bernie shined forward.  Then came South Carolina – the powerful Jim Clyburn and Biden juggernaut.  The next week, Biden won eight of ten major primaries – and the Covid pandemic began – burying every other news item of consequence, and more than a million Americans..  The rest of Biden’s primary wins seem lost in the lockdown).

Biden is, an always has been, a man in the middle of the Democratic Party.  And in reflection of our current polarization, the “middle” is scorned by both sides.  So it’s often the “progressives” who are using the most virulent terms against him.  From the “despicable” fist bump with MBS, to the “disgusting” failure to get more gun control legislation through, Biden can’t win with his own party.

Hyperbole

Meanwhile, of course, Republicans have their own unique vocabulary about Biden:  stumbling, gaffe prone, and sleepy.  And the ultimate GOP insults:  “Uncle Joe” (like an “Uncle Tom,” only white?) and, of course, “Brandon”. 

Hyperbole is a part of politics, as “baked-in”, as red-white and blue bunting, handshakes, and kissing babies (though in the era of Covid, the last two are frowned upon – Biden still does them).  But I do think that when our language becomes so immoderate, we lose the context.  Those powerful terms lose their strength – and become emasculated (hey – there’s a powerful word).

Despicable:  the Holocaust was despicable.  Hitler was despicable.  What Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine is despicable.  Surely Joe Biden fist bumping Mohammed bin Salman, the young power of Saudi Arabia, is not in the same “class”.  

Disgusting:  the slaughter of twenty-one children and teachers in their classroom is disgusting.  And we might argue that the Republican automatic denial that guns are part of that outrage, might be disgusting too.  But is it disgusting that President Biden is unable to fulfill the campaign promise of passing stronger gun control legislation?  I would argue that it’s sad; sad that Americans don’t recognize the danger of allowing weapons of war into our society, almost without restraint.  But it isn’t Joe Biden’s fault – he’s spent a career trying to restrict access to those exact kinds of guns.

Voting Wrongs

Shameful isn’t Biden failing to pass the voting rights act.  Shameful isn’t really even Joe Manchin, who is being exactly who Joe Manchin always has been – a “Blue Dog”, one of the last of the breeds of conservative Democrats.  What is shameful – that a political party in the United States used a knowing lie, the “Stop the Steal” nonsense, to justify disenfranchising voters of their opposition party.  The American tradition of “one person, one vote” isn’t even used as a “cover” anymore.  Republicans are creating a voting process where the rural and the rich have the power.  That better fits the definition of shameful.

Horrifying describes what the United States Supreme Court is doing to the rights of Americans.  It’s horrifying that women lost control of their own bodies.  And it’s just as horrifying that public schools can now legally be the center of religious indoctrination.  What comes next, from a legal sense, has all the tension of those horror movies that I can’t stand to watch.  Don’t go in the abandoned building, don’t go in the basement, don’t open that door.  Don’t let the Court rule on voting rights – they’ll make them voting wrongs.

Self Defeating

I’m certainly not saying that all Democrats need to “get in line” with Biden.  That’s never been the nature of the Democratic Party.  Unlike the current Republican Party, purging the Kinzinger’s and the Cheney’s; the Democrats have always suffered internal opposition gladly.  One only has to look at Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, in the same party with Joe Manchin and Henry Cuellar.  

Internal opposition is one thing. And using hyperbole against the leader of your own party isn’t “traitorous” – that’s hyperbolic.  But it is self-defeating.  And we aren’t in a time when we can afford to defeat ourselves.  There’s too much at stake — and that’s no hyperbole.

Ancient Rome

The Praetorian Guards were the private protectors of the Roman Emperors.  And they were more than just guardians of the Imperial lives.  They were the Emperors’ private intelligence service, keeping track of his enemies for over three centuries.  The Praetorian Guard also became a power unto themselves. They grew from protecting Emperors to determining who would actually wear the throne.  Finally, the Emperor Constantine disbanded the Praetorians, sending the remaining members to the far corners of the Roman Empire.  The inner wall of  their headquarters, the Castle Praetoria, was destroyed.

The term “Praetorian Guard” became synonymous with any force surrounding a leader to maintain his (or her) power.  It’s more than just physical protection, the term “Praetorian” symbolizes the political power to determine who that leader would be.

Secret Service

The United States Secret Service was founded at the end of the Civil War to protect the US Government’s most important asset:  American currency.  At that time, almost one-third of the paper money was counterfeit. The Treasury Department needed its own “policing force” to gain control of the money supply.  

The late 1800’s saw a series of American Presidents assassinated: Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, and McKinley in 1901.  While the Army and local police had informal protection duties, ultimately no one was directly responsible for protecting the President’s life.  After McKinley’s death, the Secret Service, still part of Treasury, was given the job.  (The Department of Justice didn’t have a “policing” agency until 1908, and the FBI wasn’t created until the 1920’s.)

No Fail

Since that time, the Service has had two missions:  to protect the US currency, and to protect America’s President and other leaders.  The balance of importance between those two missions tilted over the years, with the Protective Detail gaining importance.  Recently, the agency was moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security.  

The Presidential Protection detail is a “no fail” operation.  There are thousands of threats on the President every year, from cranks to organized conspiracies.  Success is determined by stopping every single one of those threats.  Failure is when just one gets through.  The Secret Service not only physically protects. It also acts as a law enforcement agency, investigating potential threats and gathering evidence to turn over to US Attorneys for prosecution. 

There have been a continuing series of assassination attempts on the President:   Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, and Reagan were all directly attacked.  Kennedy and Reagan were both hit by gunfire, with Kennedy killed.  In our current polarized environment, the threat to the President must be as intense as ever.  

The Secret Service does not “enforce the law” on its “protectees”.  Steve Ford (President Ford’s son) smoked marijuana in the White House. And we all know what Bill Clinton was doing in the hallways of the West Wing.  The Service needs to have the trust of their charges, so they step back from their law enforcement role to protect. 

And finally, the Secret Service agents on the Presidential protective detail would literally “take a bullet” for their protectee.  Agent Rufus Youngblood used his own body to shield Vice President Lyndon Johnson in the open limousine directly behind Kennedy’s as the shots rang out in Dallas.

Missing Evidence

As a law enforcement agency, the Secret Service is well aware of the importance of evidence.  So it’s incredulous to think that the agency would allow the destruction of their agents’ text messages sent during the greatest threat to the US Government since the Civil War.  But that’s exactly what they are saying:  that in a pre-scheduled technology “upgrade”, they erased many of the Presidential Protective detail messages from January 5^th and 6^th, 2021.

Everyone in the Secret Service is a law enforcement agent, a cop.  Everyone knew the gravity of what happened on January 6^th.  We know that the agents protecting Vice President Pence were just seconds ahead of the mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence”.  We also know that when they planned to whisk him away from the danger in the Capitol, Pence refused to go.  He told the head of the protective detail, “I know you, but I don’t know the driver of the limo”.  Was Pence just doing his duty to the Constitution, or did he suspect something more sinister?

Protect and Serve

Perhaps the Agency’s Director determined that revealing those texts would put their protective mission at risk.  If Presidential Detail agents are used as “evidence” against a “protectee”, then the Service won’t be trusted the next time.  Bill Clinton’s detail were ordered to testify about Monica Lewinsky (WAPO), a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.  By deleting the texts, there one less piece of evidence to talk about.

And we also know that Donald Trump, President of the United States, wanted to be with “his people” as they marched on the Capitol.  The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson revealed conversations about an altercation in the Presidential SUV, as the Commander-in-Chief was told that the Protective Detail would not take him to the march.  A Metro Police officer assigned to the motorcade substantiated the story.

But what were these Service agents saying to each other, on the “privacy” of government issued phones? That won’t be known.  And like Mike Pence, it leads the nation to ask:  were they protecting their charge, or enabling a threat to the Nation?

The Secret Service protects the President.  It is not, and cannot be, a Praetorian Guard.

Pole Vault Camp and Jeeps

A good friend of mine contacted my yesterday.  He’s one of the “pole vault guys” that I’ve known for decades, and he’s running a camp.  One of his coaches might not be available, and he wondered if I was interested.  

I’m always interested in coaching pole vault camps.  I’ve already done two this summer: the coaching is fun, and the conversation with other coaches makes me better every time.  My default answer (after talking to my wife, of course) is yes.  But there is one issue:  it’s four hundred miles away.

My 2004 Jeep Wrangler is awesome:  manual shift, four-wheel drive (when needed), soft top that can be completely removed, and a sound system that works, even at seventy miles an hour with the top off.  There’s one hang-up.  On a good day, in two-wheel drive on the highway, the Jeep gets about sixteen miles a gallon.  

Round trip is 800 miles. Divided by sixteen miles a gallon – that’s fifty gallons of gas.  At somewhere around $4.70 a gallon, that’s $230 in gas to get there and get home.  Now I don’t coach camp for free. And a “pit coach”, my position, is well paid in the Pole Vault Camp world.  Suffice to say though:  it’s a four day camp, and the first two days might pay for the gas.

Record Inflation

Yesterday the news world was all doom and gloom.  The inflation rate was over 9%, higher than it’s been in forty years.  The newscasters went through each item:  eggs, milk, airline tickets, bread, new houses, and, of course, gas prices.  I didn’t really need to watch the news to figure that out:  Wednesday I paid $12 for a pound of sliced deli ham and almost the same for a pound of sliced deli cheese; almost twice what I paid three months ago.

Like many Americans, I got a “pay raise” to my retirement this year, a 3% Cost of Living Allowance (COLA).  That sounded great:  but it looks like, at the moment, I’m down 6%, not up three.  

But when I looked at the “list” of everything that costs more, it seems to me that they all have one thing in common – airline tickets and eggs, new houses and deli ham.  All those things require, one way or another, gas.  The eggs, ham, and cheese are transported from the “farm” to the wholesaler to the store.  The biggest continuing cost for airlines is jet fuel.  And the materials for the new house came from the forest, to the processor, to the lumber yard, to the worksite.

In short, inflation isn’t about the cost of eggs, or the rest.  It’s all about the cost of the oil : oil made into the gas for the Jeep, or the diesel for the egg trucks, or the jet fuel for the Boeing 737’s.  The prime driver of our price increases is the increase in the cost of getting whatever it is to wherever it has to go.

Economics 101

And why it the price of oil so high?  Well, there’s still a war going on in Ukraine.  The Western world is boycotting Russian oil. The US had to replace 7% of our oil, and Europe is replacing 25% of theirs.  If Russian oil isn’t used, then the actual “supply” of oil on the world market gets smaller.  In Economics 101 our first lesson was the “mantra”:  when supply goes down, and demand remains the same, price goes up.  So the cost of oil increased. We know: by the incredible new prices on our local gas pump, and at our grocery store, and all the other items that are moved by oil.

That’s why President Biden is headed to Saudi Arabia today.  Sure, we are still mad about the butchering of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and the human catastrophe in Yemen.  But the Saudi’s have… 
“what the world (still) needs now: it’s oil, sweet oil.  It’s the only thing, that’s there just not enough of…” (sorry, Burt Bacharach, and all my global climate change friends). 

Biden needs the Saudis to boost their oil production. And in Riyadh – there’s always a way to make a deal.

Not Just Oil

There’s no doubt that there are multiple causes of our inflation.  The world virtually shut down during the Covid pandemic.  Nations did their best to help their citizens through the crisis, pumping lots of money into their economies.  And since those economies were slow, a lot of that money wasn’t spent while we isolated from Covid.  Once the economies opened back up, all of that “extra” money flooded back in.  Lesson two of Economics 101:  when the demand for goods goes up, and the supply of goods remains the same (or is low because production was slowed by Covid), prices will go up.

So we faced inflation anyway, no matter who was elected the President of the United States in 2020.  But what’s the difference between four or five percent and “record breaking” nine percent?  The cost of oil, that made the cost of gas at the pump sky-rocket. And it only feels worse by the contrast to the record setting lows of two years ago during the height of the pandemic shutdown. 

Gas prices are gradually coming back down.  Part of that is due to reallocating American oil production, part is pressure on the oil companies not to take exorbitant profits, and part is regular folks reacting to the high prices (reducing demand).  And with gas prices going down, we should see the other costs lower for: eggs, ham, cheeses, construction costs and airline tickets.  But, Lesson three of Econ 101:  prices go up fast, they come down slow.

But if we can keep pressure on Russia, cutting their oil profits, maybe we can slow their attack on Ukraine. That’s worth the cost.

I bet there’s no COLA for “Pit Coaches” this year.  I’ll probably go anyway.

Not a Trial

In yesterday’s essay, I presented the January 6^th Committee hearings as a cross between a criminal trial and a “mini-series”.  Information is being presented – but unlike a true court proceeding, much of that is a part of a narrative presented by the Congressmen, backed up by edited clips and snippets of  “evidence”.  And while we are familiar with that form of presentation, often used to further the plot in TV and movie trials; in a real courtroom that would not be allowed during witness questioning.  In a court, the whole information must come from the witness, not the attorney, “leading the witness”.  The attorneys can only elicit facts from the witnesses, not present those facts (“facts not in evidence”) themselves. 

And of course, in a courtroom there would be a defense, cross-examining the witnesses and presenting alternative theories of the “crime”.

The January 6^th Committee isn’t a “trial”.  It is an investigation, now presenting to the Congress, and the Nation, what they discovered about the events leading up to January 6^th.  The members of the Committee aren’t going to “convict”, at least not in the legal sense.  They are, in the most limited sense, telling the story of the Insurrection to the Congress, for the purpose of creating legislation to avoid one in the future. 

But the audience is much larger than that.  In the first night of Committee hearings, over twenty million Americans watched on television or cable.  Many more streamed the hearings online.  Over six million are watching the daytime hearings live, with millions more catching up in the evening recaps.

Grand Jury

The January 6^th Committee hearings aren’t a criminal trial.  They are more like a Grand Jury investigation.

A Grand Jury is one way our justice system investigates crime.  Much like the January 6^th Committee, a grand jury hears the “prosecutors” side of the case, without opportunity for defense.  They hear witnesses, presented by the prosecution.  And an investigative grand jury can, like the Committee, subpoena further witnesses and require them to testify under oath.  Grand juries do not determine guilt, their role is to decide whether there is “probable cause” to believe a crime has been committed.  If they find “probable cause”, they bring charges against the perpetrators, sending them to criminal trial.

So the January 6^th Committee is presenting their evidence to the Congress, and also to the American people.  In fact, they are serving the purpose of the prosecution for a grand jury of the American people, presenting the evidence of “probable cause” that crimes were committed, crimes even at the highest level, by the President of the United States.  And it’s up to the American people to determine whether to “indict” or not.

No Precedence

There is no legal precedence for indicting a former President.  The Department of  Justice is running a parallel investigation of the Insurrection right now.  Anecdotal evidence indicates that that the Department had not reached the White House, they seemed as surprised as everyone else at the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.  So the Committee is forcing Justice to move ahead, and look at the ultimate possibility:  bringing charges against a former United States President.

Americans have a saying:  all men are equal in the eyes of the law.  But, of course, that’s not really true.  We know throughout our history that the law is often enforced unequally.  Bill Cosby was treated differently than “Joe average”.  While we believe that our laws apply equally, we also not that “rank hath it’s privilege”. 

And there are good reasons why former Presidents of the United States require a higher standard for criminal indictment.  We watch the parade of other former world leaders who go from the pinnacle to the jail cell, and wonder how much of that is their conduct, or just their political opponents getting revenge.  The United States pardoned Richard Nixon, forgave Bill Clinton, and held no one responsible for the torture of the Bush Administration.

And there is the practical consideration of how a convicted former President would be punished.  Does he go to jail?  Does his Secret Service detail go with him?  What about all of the secrets he knows? How compromised would our national security be, even in a “country club” minimum security  “white-collar camp”?

Acceptable Behavior

But most importantly, what about the tens of millions of Americans who still believe in the former President.  It isn’t just creating a martyr, but literally putting their “hero” in jail.  As the Republicans in Congress have made it clear; they intend retribution.  If the Republicans retake the House, we expect a “reverse” January 6^thCommittee, searching for the “crimes” of Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and, of course, Liz Cheney.  If Donald Trump is convicted of crimes, should Joe Biden be wary?

Former prosecutors make it clear – they follow the evidence wherever it leads them.  The “grand jury” presentation of the January 6^th Committee is leading us, Americans, to indict the former President of the United States.  The Department of Justice will reach its own decision to bring charges or not.  For the sake of the future of our Nation, I hope they decide to indict Donald J Trump.  But if the Department of Justice doesn’t, it will be up to the American people to use the only “trial” they have available.  They must turn their back on him, and his supporters, at the ballot box.  There can be no middle-ground: a vote for a person who still supports Donald Trump, is a vote to allow all of the lawbreaking and anti-American actions of Trump to go unpunished.  

What kind of America do you want?

Trial

It’s the rhythm of a criminal trial.  The Prosecution begins the case with it’s “opening”.  They describe the “who, what, when, where and why”, and they tell the jury what the evidence will show.  Then the evidence itself is presented; building, piece by piece, the structure of the criminal acts.  And finally, after the Defense has had their chance, the Prosecution sums up what all the evidence “adds up to”.  If they did their job, it adds up to a finding of guilt.

The January 6^th Committee is not holding a criminal trial.  They are presenting the “intelligence”, the information, about the actions of former President Donald Trump and his cohorts leading to the Insurrection for which the committee is named.   Some of that “intelligence” rises to the level of evidence, some does not.  

But that’s not the January 6^th Committee’s problem.  All they can do is show what they’ve found.  They can “write the story” of the Insurrection, and they will ultimately propose legislation to try to “fix what’s broke”.  Oh, and they can lay out a case to the Department of Justice for indicting the former President of the United States.

Think of the January 6^th Committee as presenting a cross between a criminal trial and a mini-series.  They’ve been masterful in carefully building a story.  The Congressmen narrate, backed by video clips of witness statements, footage of the what the protagonists did or said, and those awful battle scenes on the steps of the Capitol.  And then they carefully present “live” witnesses to buttress each point of the day, the “episode”.  Tuesday’s presentation was no exception.

Hearsay

Remember, in our “last episode” we heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, the aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  Her position, both administratively and literally, was in the center of the action.  Meadows was the gateway to Trump, Hutchinson was the gateway to Meadows.  And she took us “inside” in the final days leading up to the Insurrection.  Her testimony was so damning of Trump and Meadows, that all that the unheard “defendants” could say was that much of her testimony was “hearsay”.  She was telling what someone said someone said.

So this week, the Committee brought in the “someone” who said much of it, former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.  He “had no problem” with her testimony, verifying most of it.  Her hearsay was verified by his direct testimony, admissible in any Court.  

Nexus of the Crime

And in this episode, the Committee also took us to the “nexus” of the crime, the moment when the Insurrection was put in motion.  It was after an hours long meeting with the President on December 18^th, 2020, four days after the electoral votes were confirmed by the States.  

It was in this meeting, filled with shouting and near physical violence, that President Trump was presented with two choices.  His White House staff, represented by Cipollone and Meadows, offered him reality.  They said the election was over, and that Trump should concede and rest on his successes in office.  But the outside “counsel”, Giuliani, Powell and Flynn; offered him an alternative, one that was tantamount to overthrowing the government.  

We knew about this meeting within hours of it happening.  I wrote an essay about it two days later (Seven Days in December).  But at the end of the hours of  screaming and shouting, Cipollone and Meadows walked out thinking that they had avoided the worst.  

But what we didn’t realize then, was that Trump’s next move was to call out the mob, the famous come to Washington for a “wild time” tweet.  That moment, that tweet, set in motion a chain of events from all of those groups that were following Trump’s earlier instructions of “stand back and stand by”.  They immediately began to organize. The President chose to launch an Insurrection.

Preserve, Protect and Defend

The committee still has not clearly tied Trump (or Meadows) directly to those groups.  What they have done is shown that the President knew there was an armed mob in front of him on January 6^th, the mob he summoned; and despite that knowledge, sent them to march on the Capitol to “fight” for him.  And as they headed down the Mall, Trump himself wanted to be “with them”.  We know that the Secret Service had to disobey the order of the President of the United States in the black SUV after the speech, and take him back to the White House.

What did Donald Trump do as the Capitol was breeched for the first time since 1814?  Why didn’t he call out the National Guard, or at least call the mob off?  Direct testimony from one man who actually broke into the building said that as soon as the President told him to, he left the building.

Our final episode:  what did Donald Trump do in the three hours that the Capitol was under siege?  How did Trump react to direct threats on the Vice President and the leadership of Congress?  What is the duty of the President to protect Congress and the Constitution, and what is the reality of Donald Trump’s inaction?

Tune in again, next week, to find out.

The January 6^th Essays

• The Summation
• The John Dean Moment
• Sinning and America
• Flashes of Hope
• Don’t Look Back
• For You, Republicans
• On the Tightrope
• A Television Moment

Georgetown Lawyer

Jeffrey Clark is an accomplished scholar and lawyer.  He earned his Bachelor’s Degree at Harvard (class of ’89), then a Masters in Urban Affairs at the University of Delaware.   Clark then went to law school at Georgetown, the class of ’95.  After graduating, he clerked for a Federal District Judge in Cincinnati.

Clark went to work at the firm of  Kirkland and Ellis in Washington, DC.  If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Kirkland and Ellis is the “supplier” of lawyers for Republican governments.  Here’s just some of their alumni in government service:  Alex Acosta*, Alex Azar*, William Barr*, John Bolton*, Robert Bork , Pat Cipollone* Jeffrey Clark*, John Eastman*, Brett Kavanaugh*, Pat Philbin*, Jeff Rosen*, Ken Starr (* served in the Trump Administration). And there are a few Democrats too: Richard Cordray, Sean Patrick Maloney, and Mikie Sherrill. (The last two both current Democratic US Congressmen).

At Kirkland he developed an expertise in environmental law.  He then moved into the Bush Department of Justice, and served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Environment and Natural Resources.  After 2005, the “revolving door” turned again, and he returned to Kirkland to continue his environmental law practice.  No surprise: he wasn’t a “green” guy.  He represented the US Chamber of Commerce challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions and British Petroleum in the Horizon oil spill case.

With Trump’s win in 2016, Clark moved back to Justice. This time he was the Assistant Attorney General for the same division.  Once in charge, he aggressively worked to protect businesses from environmental law enforcement. He was “Mr. Oil Spill”.

Off the Rails

Political appointees at Justice often try to impose their views of the law on their departments.  This is what happens, even in the law, when political control changes from one President to another.  While the Obama Justice Department strictly enforced environmental laws against polluters, the Trump Administration took a different view.  To make sure that view was reflected, guys like Clark were brought in.

I didn’t support the Trump pollution policies, but I understood that it was just one result of his election victory.  The line, “elections have consequences” fits; these are the kind of unseen outcomes of a change in Party.  The appointment of sympathetic Supreme Court Justices is a much more visible result of the same thing. 

Donald Trump had difficulty getting his appointees through Senate confirmation, even though Republicans had a majority.  So many of his appointments to office were “acting”; without Senate approval, who had a limited amount of time they could serve.  I wrote an essay about this back in 2019, The Acting Presidency.  In the last few months of the Trump Administration, Clark was appointed as Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.  In that job, Clark successfully got the government to support Trump in a personal lawsuit. (It was filed by a woman who claimed Trump, well before he was President, sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of Bergdorf-Goodman, an exclusive clothing store in New York City).

Acting-Acting

Clark was replacing another acting appointee whose time had expired.  After the election of 2020, Clark became steeped in the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy, thoroughly convinced that Trump had actually won the election, regardless of the lack of actual evidence of any kind of voter fraud.  He approached a friend, Republican Congressman William Perry, who put him in touch with the outgoing President.

Trump and his campaign legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, were searching for support anywhere they could find it.  That an Assistant Attorney General not only was “on board”, but willing to do anything to help, was a great plus.  The current Attorney General, William Barr, made it clear that the Department found no evidence of voter fraud.  And, once Barr resigned, his replacement as Acting Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, and the Acting Deputy, Richard Donaghue, continued to follow those facts.

So in late December as the January 6^th Congressional Electoral Vote certification loomed near, President Trump contemplated firing Rosen and Donaghue, and replacing them with Clark. In fact, Trump decided to actually do that, and for a few hours, Clark was “noted” as the Acting Attorney General in White House communications.  But in a pivotal meeting with Justice Department leaders and White House legal counsel, Trump was told that the majority of the senior leadership of the Department would resign if Clark was placed in charge.  As Rosen put it, “Clark would be leading a graveyard”.  Trump rescinded the order.

The Other Side of Justice

What other actions and involvement did Jeffrey Clark have with the “Stop the Steal” movement?  Did he have knowledge of plans for the Insurrection on January 6^th?  Those and more are questions the January 6^th Committee wanted to ask Clark.  He at first refused and was charged with contempt. Clark then ultimately appeared before the Committee. In that testimony, he exercised his 5^th Amendment right against self-incrimination over one hundred times.

The actions of several Trump attorneys not only gained the interest of the January 6^th Committee, but also the current Department of Justice investigation of the Insurrection. One Trump campaign attorney, John Eastman, was pulled over in his car, and served a search warrant for his cell phone.  When the FBI agents asked Eastman to raise his hands, the legal “scholar” didn’t quite seem to understand the question.  The helpful agent gently took Eastman’s arms and put them on top of his head. Then they did a cursory search to get the phone, and check for any weapons.

Subject of Interest

And, in the early morning hours, the FBI came calling on Jeffrey Clark as well.  He answered the door in his shirt and boxer shorts, to find agents on his front step. They had warrants to search for electronic devices; computers, phones and the like.  The FBI doesn’t search a house with the occupant inside, they make sure to control the situation by placing them in temporary custody outside by the FBI vehicles.  

And of course, once you answer the door, they aren’t going to let you go back inside.  You might destroy evidence.  So Jeffrey Clark, former Acting Assistant Attorney General, former Assistant Attorney General, former member of the vaunted Kirkland and Ellis law firm; was escorted to the street in his shirt and boxers.  

I used to watch a television show called “Cops”. The show had camera crews that travelled with active police officers, showing what happened during their patrol. There was a “rule of thumb” while watching cops: if a suspect didn’t have a shirt on, they were going to jail.

The moral of this story might be to believe the evidence that the Justice Department, Clark’s own Department, found.  It might be: don’t fall for the internet of lies and videos that made up Stop the Steal.  Or it might be to not get involved in a plot to overthrow the Constitution.

But it definitely is this:  if the FBI is knocking on your door – put your pants on.

Upset

The battle of Yorktown is marked as the victory that ended the American Revolution, and began the American experiment in democracy. (Yes, I know that it was two more years before a treaty actually ending the war – but Yorktown was the reason the treaty was signed). It was an overwhelming “upset”, to use a sports analogy.  It was like my alma mater, Denison University beating Ohio State on the football field, or the Toledo Mud Hens defeating the New York Yankees in baseball.  The British Army was perhaps the strongest in the world, and the British Navy was definitely the best.  

But that didn’t matter; General Cornwallis got his British forces backed into a corner.  And the British Navy wasn’t at the battle, the French Navy was.  They blocked Cornwallis from any extraction by sea.  After days of siege warfare, the unthinkable finally happened.  A white flag flew from the parapet, and Cornwallis marched his troops out to surrender.  But he couldn’t accept the loss himself, he sent his second in command to offer his sword to General Washington.  

Washington, the consummate military man, was always aware of protocol.  He instructed his second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln (no relation to Abraham), to accept the symbolic gesture.  As the British stacked their weapons and marched into captivity, their pipers played the old English ballad, “The World Turned Upside Down”.  

Today

The world feels pretty upside down today.

The former Prime Minister of Japan was assassinated, shot in the back with a homemade gun.  If that happened here in the US, it would be just “another brick in the wall” in this summer of mass shootings.  But in Japan, you can count the number of deaths from gun violence for a year on one hand.   Nothing more powerful, or cowardly, than an assassin with a plastic sawed-off shotgun.

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the United States is again leading a coalition of forces to oppose Russia.  A smaller democratic state, Ukraine, is under mass attack. Instead of letting the Russian autocrat Putin exercise his will un-challenged, the US is doing everything short of direct warfare to stop him.  It’s one of the few things that most Americans actually agree on.

That’s because the democracy that Washington helped create is also now under siege.  The essential tenet of our government, that the most votes wins, is under attack.  Perhaps as many as thirty percent of Americans believe that an election was stolen.  They think that Joe Biden usurped his position illegally, and that their only vindication is to “change the rules” so that they can decide the winner regardless of the vote count.

Trust No One

Our nation with all its blemishes and flaws, for more than half a century stood, “as the shining city on the hill” for the world.  It seems to be a bit dimmer right now.  We didn’t create the “post-truth” world, but our nation fully practices “post-truth”.  And its American companies:  Facebook and Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and Google, that intentionally or not, are the mechanisms of spreading the lies.

How crazy is this:  on the next update for my brand new IPhone (13 mini), Apple will offer a switch that will guarantee my phone cannot be hacked.  I guess that’s a good thing – but that also means the courts, the police, the FBI can’t get in my phone either.  I have nothing to hide on my phone, or computer, or anywhere else.  If the FBI needs to get into my phone, it’s probably because something bad happened to me.  But if I flick that switch – it erases itself rather than “give up” data.  And yet I’m still tempted to “protect” myself.

And what’s even more confusing, is that both sides, “MAGA” or “Blue”, would agree to that. There is fear of an unformed “them” that requires protection.

Moral Arc

Dr. King often used the phrase, “The arc of the moral universe may be long, but it bends toward justice”.  For most of my lifetime, it’s felt like we could actually see “the bend”, as it arced towards more freedom for Americans. But in recent years it seems like the arc just goes off into an unseen universe, far from a final just landing. Much of the work that so many Americans have done to bend it, seems to be lost.  Whether it’s about race, or gender, or identity; the America of today is less just than at any time that my sixty-five years can remember.

The world feels upside down. 

Struggle 

The American Revolution was a protracted struggle.  It took six long years from the town squares of Lexington and Concord to the white flag of Yorktown.  And for most of those years, the Continental Army lost.  They lost at Lexington and Concord, they lost at Brooklyn and Harlem, they lost Philadelphia, they lost 10,000 troops under Benjamin Lincoln who surrendered Charleston, just a year before Yorktown.  They suffered through the harsh winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, and three other winters in the nearby Watchung Mountains of Western New Jersey.  

Washington knew that the ultimate goal was for his army to survive.  Survive long enough that the British ran out of patience, and money, to maintain occupations forces.  Survive by avoiding a cataclysmic final battle, a “Gettysburg” that risked his entire force.  Washington kept his Army alive and fighting, for six long years, until he finally could capitalize on a British mistake.  The arc of his mission finally bent towards victory.

It feels like we are in a time of decision, of determining whether our world will remain upside down, or whether we will find a way to right ourselves, and our nation.  It’s not time for the white flags, or to give up our swords.  Like Washington and his second-in-command Lincoln, it’s time to redouble our efforts, so that we can drown out the British pipers with our own ditty, “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.  

This essay was originally published in July. The US Supreme Court will hear the case on Wednesday, December 7th, and it’s worth looking at again. IF the Supreme Court agrees with this radical theory, it could change the outcome of elections for years to come.

Back to Class

There is a bomb set to blow up the entire election of 2024. It could make the Presidential votes of the citizens of the United States unimportant. The gerrymandered state legislatures could decide the election, without referring to the popular vote count. And it would all be “legal”. The fuse is already lit.

To understand that panicky warning, there’s a lot of explaining to do. So I need to take you back to class, to that early morning American Government (or POD) class, with a chalk board and books instead of Smart Boards and computers.

The “School House Rock” version of our government is pretty simple.  There are three branches: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial.  The legislative writes the laws and the executive takes those laws and enforces them.  The Judiciary makes sure that those laws “fit” with other laws and the US Constitution, in a process called judicial review.  

If I was your teacher, you might remember a candle in a dark classroom, as President John Adams signed the documents creating the “midnight judges”.  That action started the sequence of events ending in the Supreme Court case Marbury v Madison. The Supreme Court took the ability to determine whether Congressional actions are Constitutional, judicial review.

But it doesn’t “have” to be that way.

Gerrymandering on Steroids

The process of drawing legislative districts so that one party is specifically advantaged is “Gerrymandering”.  It was named after Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts in 1812. He signed a bill creating a district that looked like a salamander to guarantee a Democratic/Republican (that’s the Party that evolved into today’s Democrats) victory.  The newspapers called it “Gerrymandering”, and it has been an American political tradition ever since.

Gerrymandering went on steroids with the development of advanced computing. It was no longer a matter of this section trends to one party or the other. Computer modeling could create absolutely specific maps to maximize advantage, down to the street level or even specific addresses. Want to dilute the other party’s power? Make sure that their supporters are divided into multiple districts. Want to strengthen your own power? Draw districts to guarantee your base is “in charge”. Need to see an example – check out the map of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District in 2020, represented by Jim Jordan.

After the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress, the US Supreme Court ruled that while districts could be Gerrymandered for political gain, they couldn’t be drawn to prevent racial minority candidates from winning elections. That was 1995 in Miller v Johnson. So the rule was pretty simple: when Ohio Republicans drew the Fourth District, it held up to Court scrutiny because it wasn’t “racially” based. But when it was demonstrated that North Carolina specifically divided black communities to weaken their voting power, it was unconstitutional, at least until 2019.

Saved in Court

In that year the Supreme Court majority, led by Chief Justice Roberts, stated that Federal Courts would no longer rule about Gerrymandering. He “kicked that” to State Court jurisdiction for judicial review. They would have final say over the actions of the state legislatures in drawing maps, and in making other election decisions.

After the 2020 election, both the state and federal courts confirmed the popular vote. The desperate Trump campaign went to them first. In more than sixty cases, “Stop the Steal” was debunked and dismissed. Even judges appointed by President Trump, including on the US Supreme Court, dismissed Trump’s claims against the valid election results. After Trump lost there, he went to the other tactics we heard about in the January 6th Committee hearings. One was to place Extreme pressure on election officials to change results. Another was to convince state legislatures to ignore the popular vote and replace Biden electors with Trump’s. That all lead to the Insurrection of January 6^th.

The Eastman Plan

But in that final push to overturn the election, lawyer John Eastman (of the “Green Bay Sweep” fame) put forward a radical theory of the American Constitution, called the “Independent State Legislature” (ISL).  It stated that the US Constitution gave state legislatures the exclusive power to determine how federal elections are conducted.  He based this concept on Article I, Section 4:

The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

Eastman theorized that the language was specific, and that the state courts or constitutions had no place in ruling on how the legislatures exercised that power. The argument is simple: if a state legislature, say Georgia, said that Donald Trump won, regardless of what the popular vote in the state was, then neither the Georgia state courts nor the Georgia state constitution could be used to overturn that decision.

(If you think a state legislature can’t ignore the state Supreme Court or the state Constitution – remember the DeRolph school funding decision in Ohio? The Court ruled the funding process unconstitutional- but the legislature refused to change it. That was twenty-five years ago, and the process still hasn’t changed).

School House Rock

Back to “School House Rock” for just a second. Eastman states that the Courts have no power of judicial review over elections, because the US Constitution doesn’t give them the specific power in Article I, Section 4 to review federal election decisions. So the three co-equal branches, aren’t; and the legislature is unchecked when it comes to those decisions.

The “ISL” theory flies in the face of traditional American government, and the precedent established by Marbury v Madison at the very beginnings of our Federal system.  It requires a restricted view of the US Constitution, only viewing the actual text in that section without looking at the rest of the document, or the history that followed it.  In any other time in our history, going all the way back to the Marshall Supreme Court in 1801, it would have been laughed out of the courtroom.

The Bomb

But we aren’t in any other time.  Today’s US Supreme Court is in the hands of “textualists” who are sympathetic to the “black and white” arguments that lawyers better than Eastman are making.  On Wednesday they will hear Moore v Harper, arguing that the North Carolina Courts have no place in deciding the legality of Gerrymandered districts in North Carolina.  They have no place, because, according to ISL, the legislature has the exclusive power to determine election decisions.

The decision will be published sometime in 2023.  It’s about Gerrymandering, but the ramifications would apply to election laws in every state.  And, as we now know, the current Supreme Court majority isn’t afraid of overturning precedent, or taking radical historic stands.  

What if those sixty courts didn’t have a chance to rule on “Stop the Steal”?  What if those few election officials who stood up against changing the results, didn’t have court backing?  The Trump/Republican Party tried to pack state legislatures and election offices with “Stop the Steal” believers in 2022.  They may be the legislators “in charge” in 2024.  They could decide that the election results are “wrong”, and send their own slate of electors, this time with legislative approval, to be counted in the House of Representatives.

Moore v Harper is the fuse.  If the Court rules for ISL, the bomb will go off in 2024.  By then, it will be far too late to avoid the blast.

Good Guys

Let’s get one thing straight.   As a teacher, coach, and an administrator; I spent much of my career working with law enforcement.  I found that almost every police officer, sheriff’s deputy, or state trooper I worked with was competent, motivated to protect people, and well aware of the potential risks they faced around every corner.  They were (and are) exactly the kind of men and women I wanted to “have my back” when things went crazy.

We place them in an incredibly difficult position.  They are supposed to protect us from crime; but if they try to act proactively, they are “interfering”.   We want them to make us safer, but resent it when they enforce the law on us.  And we ask, no, demand, that they risk their lives for us.  Sure, “it’s what they signed up for”.  But that doesn’t change their desire to go home to their families after work, like anyone else.  But they’re not anyone else, on duty or off.  They’re cops.

No Excuses

This isn’t an excuse for the excesses we saw in Minneapolis, or this week in Akron.  But the officers, deputies and troopers I knew wouldn’t do that.  The failure of a few shouldn’t indict them all.

And here’s the most impossible thing we ask:  protect us from the mass shooters; our wholly American problem.  We expect that they will run “to the shooting” rather than away from it.  And, honestly, most of them will.  But the United States seems to have a virtually unlimited supply of high powered weapons, available literally “on demand”.  Hundreds of shots fired in the Uvalde school, seventy some fired at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, fifty rounds shot in the Tops Market in Buffalo.   The “shooters” can act so quickly, there’s no way for the police to protect us.

Butcher’s Bill

No matter how fast the police get there (less than six minutes in Buffalo), the “butcher’s bill” is already written.  In Buffalo a retired police officer sacrificed his life.  In Uvalde,  conflict in the hallway among the nineteen officers, held back by the incident “commander”, will probably never be known.  If they were like the police officers I knew, I suspect it was more than intense. But many of the kids were already dead before they even arrived.

In Highland Park, Illinois, the target was a Fourth of July parade.  The police were on the scene, directing the procession.  They’re response was immediate and appropriate.  Watch the videos: the crowd, the parade participants, are running away from the gunfire.  The police are guiding, directing, sheltering the onlookers and victims, and searching for the shooter.  They are in the line of fire, doing their duty, their job.

Fall Guys

They are the “good guys with the guns”.  They are the ones willing to lay down their own lives to protect others.  And there’s not much they can do about the young white man with a gun on the rooftop of the building, or who storms into the supermarket, school, church, synagogue or nightclub.  So let’s stop making them the “solution”, for a problem they can’t possibly solve. 

Because, by making them the solution, we are really making them the “fall guys” for our national malady.  We can’t solve the two actual problems:  the ready availability of high powered, high capacity weapons; and the willingness of young, mostly white men to use them to commit atrocities.  Or more accurately, we won’t.

We won’t, because we’ve allowed common sense to be thrown out the window by political rhetoric.  

An American Solution

The United States has been here before.  In the 1920’s, fully automatic weapons flooded the American market.  We all know them, “Tommy Guns”, Thompson sub-machine guns.  If you don’t remember, find an old black and white gangster movie from the late 1940’s with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson or George Raft. 

Tommy Guns were designed as “trench sweepers” for  World War I type combat, with the rapid fire ability to clear the enemy at close range.   In the post-war world, with the passage of the 18^th Amendment banning alcohol use in the United States; crime became rampant.   The Tommy Gun lead the way as criminals provided society with booze.  

After Bonnie and Clyde’s crime spree in the Central United States, and the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, the US government regulated automatic weapons by licensing them and requiring a steep tax.  While it didn’t solve the problem right away, ultimately it limited the number and raised the cost of the fully automatic weapons available.  They stopped being the gangster “weapon of choice”. 

So the argument that there is no “legislative” solution that could cure our current assault weapon crisis is simply not true.  It was done in the 1930’s, and it could be done again, if there was a legislative “will” to do it.

The deeper question – why are some Americans, especially young, white, males: drawn to committing such terrible acts?  I don’t pretend to have an answer to that question, or a solution for the problem.  But I do know one thing – we could take the weapon of choice out of their hands.

If we only had the will to do it.

Mid-Life Crisis

It’s Independence Day, the Fourth of July, 2022.  The United States is two hundred and forty-six years old.  History is relative in the US, two hundred and forty-six seems like such a long time.  But, in the course of history, two and a half centuries really isn’t very long.  Just look at the history of the United Kingdom, or China, or France, or the Navajo.  While the United States is no longer a “young” country, we probably are just reaching “middle age”.

America is celebrating a birthday on a national scale, kind of like a man turning forty-seven.  It’s those years of “mid-life crisis”, when the identity and goals of young manhood are now in a wholly different perspective.  How do you know that your “younger life” is over?  I knew it when they put a stent in my heart (at forty-seven), though it took a few more years to sink in.  

So the United States is trying to buy a leather jacket and a Corvette.  We are, in fact, looking back to the “good old days” as if the future will never live up to the past.  We are a nation struggling with changes, wistfully wishing (for the privileged few) that we could be something we once thought we were.

False Utopia

In the first month of these “Our America” essays, I wrote an essay called “Trump World and the Beaver”.  It was all about the so-called utopia of the 1950’s, when I was born, and the world was simpler.  “Leave it to Beaver” was a show about the life of a white, suburban kid named Theodore, nicknamed “the Beaver”.  His Dad wore a suit and tie to work (he took the tie and suit coat off, and put a sweater on for dinner) and his Mom cleaned the house in a dress and pearls.  

It was an idyllic life of baseball games and adventures with brother Wally.  Mr. Cleaver always had the wise answer to the boys’ problems, and Mrs. Cleaver with never flustered, and always perfectly coiffed.  But that idyllic life was for the chosen few.  While Wally and the Beaver were growing up on TV,  young Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. Rosa Parks was refusing to sit in the back of the bus, and  Martin Luther King was emerging as the leader of a national movement.  

America was preparing for the dramatic changes of the 1960’s, from civil rights to opposition to the Vietnam War, to the whole “hippie” movement.  A decade after “the Beaver”, life in America was changed forever.

Life Changes

Like any life changes, it wasn’t all for the good, or for the bad. The United States became more diverse, more “free”, more willing to change.  We set out on a path whose ultimate result was an America that would be fully integrated, not just “technically” in schools and swimming pools, but in life.  Kids of all races would listen to music of all cultures, and the racial-cultural-religious background of a person would not matter. 

It would be easy here to insert Dr. King’s, “…judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.  It was a goal he established on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.  But fifty-nine years after that marker in history, we forget that in the speech he also said:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

America’s Promise

It’s Independence Day.  And the United States still hasn’t made that check good for so many of our citizens.  Instead of “doubling down” to clear that debt, a portion of our nation is trying to roll the clock back to no longer honor the bill.   So while we celebrate our birthday, Independence Day, we should realize that we are a nation defined by obligation.  The United States, was founded in concepts rather than in people.  The notably flawed Founding Fathers were able to create concepts beyond their personal failings.  And it is to those principles that we should look in our “mid-life” crisis.

Like Dr. King, we should look to the promise of the Declaration of Independence, our founding document: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  It was on this day, two hundred and forty-six years ago, that the founders of our nation agreed to our Independence, based on those words.

And we should look to the promise of the Constitution, establishing the fact and the goals of our Union eleven years later:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

More Perfect

It’s my favorite phrase in America’s founding documents: “…a more perfect Union”.  It’s the promise of America – that while our Union may be “perfect”, our goal is continually make it “more perfect”.  And it is in the “more perfecting” that we are committed to struggle, through war and rebellion, economic failure and success, and even the evil manipulations of men intent on gaining power. 

So America, blow out the candles, you’ve still got the “wind” to put out all two hundred and forty-six.  Forget the leather jacket and Corvette – the President already has them.  And make the wish, that we shall look to a future of “more perfecting”, rather than a past that really only existed for the few.  We are an America of the many, and we need to make our “checks” good.  

Happy Fourth of July.

This is a Sunday Story – not only because it’s Sunday – but this happened on a Sunday. You can bet on it!

Dog Racing

Wheeling Downs is a dog racing track on Wheeling  Island in the Ohio River. Specially bred greyhounds sprint around the course, chasing the mechanical “rabbit”.  Bettors  carefully read the statistics – wins, losses, splits; and sires, dames and trainers. The racing “form” is their guide and Bible. 

We used to wander onto Wheeling Island for a pleasant afternoon.  There’s a casino where you can feed the slot machines for a bit. Then maybe a few minutes at the five dollar blackjack table, and onto late lunch and betting on the brindle and black dogs. 

Now that we are in the rescue world, we don’t bet on the dogs anymore. Greyhounds live a tough life – their only enjoyment comes from those few seconds on the track . But we did have our own “Pataskala Downs” for an exciting few minutes in our fenced in backyard last Sunday morning.

To the Post

Three of our five dogs were hanging out with us on the back deck as we drank our late morning coffee. Jenn and I were on a slow start to the day. It was a late Saturday night of Fourth of July fireworks and libations. Then the fireworks began in the backyard. A bunny, just a teenager, made the mistake of getting inside the fence and sprinting along the back line. And, in a flash, the three dogs were through the deck gate: “they’re off!”

Sunday news on the outdoor TV was quickly left behind as the rabbit made his first circuit around the backyard course.  “Peter” had the agility advantage, taking the corners and u-turns with speed. But our bayou rescue Lou had the flat speed in the straightaways. Keelie, our Aussie mix would catch up at the bends, and our Lab Atticus gamely hung in as the older dog in the mix. 

Peter was desperately searching for any escape path. But, unfortunately for him, when we took on our newest rescue, CeCe, our “Baby Yoda” puppy (lucky for us, she was cooling off inside) we escape-proofed the barriers.  So it was onto lap two, with Lou closing in, almost enough to feel the brush of the cottontail. 

By a Whisker

They almost ended the pursuit in disaster (or success, depending on your point of view) as Peter desperately headed for a corner by our shed. But he managed to scoot through the legs and tails to double back and start lap number three.

Meanwhile the “crowd”, Jenn and I, were making our bets known by shouting “NO!!” at the top of our lungs, and actually entering the race course to somehow intervene. I once was a sprinter, almost half a century ago, but even back then I wouldn’t have been able to join in this chase.  I wandered behind though, for what looked like an inevitable scrum when the rabbit fur flew. 

It was on lap number four that, as Peter’s legs started to fail, he found the only weakness in “Fortress Dahlman”. There was just enough room for a teenaged rabbit with nothing to lose to slip under the back gate – quickly followed by the noses of Lou, Keelie and Atticus as they tracked his scent. But, thank goodness, the crack was too small and the gate held against the pressing dogs.

Win, Place and Show

Lou won by a half a length, with Keelie second and Atticus a close third. Lou paid out 3:1, three dollars on your one dollar bet. And, if you called the trifecta, the finish in order – you’d collect a fifty dollar win. Since CeCe and our eldest, Buddy, failed to make the post, there was no superfecta in this race.

 But the real winner was Peter, whose bunny heart must still be racing as I write this report.  Hopefully he’s learned his fence breeching lesson. Meanwhile – I’m reinforcing the “fort”. 

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22