Month: August 2022

Probable Cause

So let’s say the police have probable cause to believe there are illegal drugs in my home.  Probable cause is simple – they have good evidence to show that the drugs are there.  They get a judge to sign a warrant, allowing them to search for those drugs.  That is the essence of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, we have a right “…to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures…”.  A reasonable search is one supported by a warrant based on “…probable cause supported by Oath or Affirmation”.  

So the police come in my house, and they search.  They look in my office, they go through my desk drawers, and find bricks of heroin.  In order to demonstrate that the bricks were found in the desk, they take pictures of them in the drawers, and then more pictures of the bricks stacked on the floor of my office.

So what’s the likelihood that the police take the bricks, give me a receipt, then just leave the house?  It’s more likely that they take the bricks, handcuff me, and we all go “away”. 

Need to Know

I am not the former President of the United States, and the documents pictured on the floor of Donald Trump office weren’t bricks of heroin.  They are much more dangerous to the United States, documents of the highest classification, held by the former President at his Florida country club against government subpoena and Federal law.  Some of the documents are so sensitive that, even if there is a trial, they will never be placed in evidence.  A jury can’t see them.  They are just that secret.

I’ve never handled government “secret” documents, but as a teacher, coach and administrator, I’ve known information that was confidential.  Knowing confidential information is a responsibility and a burden.  It required recognition that I “need to know” to make decisions and do my job, but I also need to make sure others don’t.  I guess being “in the know” was a privilege, but it was also a liability.  Often, “not knowing” would have been easier.

But once I retired, I no longer “needed” to know.  And that raises the question:  what did Donald Trump “need to know” as former President of the United States?  Why was he keeping these secrets, clearly some of the most classified secrets of the Nation? 

Having Secrets

There are only a few reasons to have them.

Let’s be clear about one thing – Donald Trump isn’t keeping these secrets to write his memoir.  He’s not a writer.  All the books with his name as the author were written by “ghosts”.  Back in the Watergate era, Richard Nixon “bugged” his whole White House.  He did that, so he would have exact transcripts of what was said and what was done when he wrote his memoirs.  Unfortunately for him, he recorded himself and his staff committing felonies.  So maybe Trump is keeping stuff “away” from the rest of the world, incriminating information of some sort.  

Or, perhaps as part of Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results, he simply kept them because they are what “Presidents have”.  There’s a delusional issue there that makes it clear he shouldn’t have them.

Maybe the former President simply wants to demonstrate that he still is “in the know”, even though the actual President of the United States, Joe Biden, revoked his access to security briefings and secure documents a few weeks after he took office.  And potentially there is some form of “kompromat”, secure information that could be used against the former President’s enemies.  A heading in the document list of secret information about the French President comes to mind.  Or the legendary files of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, with “dirt” on any politician that got in his way.

Finally, information, particularly highly secret information, has monetary value.  Donald Trump has always recognized “how to make a buck”.  Maybe he sees the documents as a way to “cash in”.  

Obstruction

So if the police found bricks of heroin in my office, there wasn’t any question that I violated the law.  My possessing the bricks, for any reason, is in fact illegal.  And if I heard the police at the door, and went and tried to hide the bricks before they came in, I was simply adding to the violations.  I was committing the crime of “obstruction of justice”. 

Maybe I had the bricks  “for a friend”.  Maybe I was keeping them to “study”.  Or maybe they were just for my own personal use.  But most likely, I had the bricks to sell, to make a profit.  But all of that really doesn’t matter.  The fact that I was in possession, and the fact that I obstructed the search, was far and away enough to take me off to the jail.  

In the same way, there really is no need to have a “reason” for the former President to have the secret documents.  He was knowingly in possession, without having a legal right.  And, as we are discovering, he went to great lengths to hide them from the government.  And the government bent over backwards to accommodate the former President.  They asked, nicely, over and over again.  They subpoenaed the documents.  Then they sent the head of the FBI national security detail to his home.  The former President and his staff assured the Justice Department that all of the documents were returned.  But they weren’t.

He was in possession of national secrets of the highest classifications, without permission.  Those documents were stored in a careless and insecure manner.   And when he was asked, over and over and over to give then back, he refused to do so.  And he even tried to “hide” the documents from the government.

Patience

They didn’t handcuff anyone when they searched  Mara Lago.  And the FBI still hasn’t arrested anyone.  The Department of Justice is struggling.  Do they, for the first time in American history, arrest a former President of the United States?  And if they don’t, do they ignore a clear violation of American law, just because he was President?  Shouldn’t the law apply to everyone, regardless of former employment or financial standing?

It is a serious dilemma for the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland.  It’s likely they will, eventually, bring charges against Donald Trump, but forgive them if they want to wait.  The government needs “all its ducks in a row”, and they need to get it right.

We all need to show patience.

Dahlman Tennis

My parents spent the last decades of their lives “snow-birding” from Cincinnati to Florida.  Mom and Dad found a condo in a “tennis community” called Sea Oaks near Vero Beach on the Atlantic shore.  It had everything they wanted.  Mom had miles of ocean beach to walk, skirting the waves and giving her cheery British accented “Good Morning!” to all she encountered.  

And while Mom was walking, Dad was playing tennis, a regular in the daily Sea Oaks “Walking Wounded” game.  Dad had five bypasses on his heart, and his fellow players ranged from artificial knees and hips to even more serious heart conditions.  But they still played hard; Dahlman tennis we called it. No cheating – but winning was important.  This was not “gentleman’s tennis”; drop shots or a forehand slam to an opponent at the net who made a bad approach shot was expected.

And so was lunch at the tennis club after the game.  Mom would come off the beach, and meet up with the tennis crew.  Club sandwiches, maybe a drink or too, and lots of conversation.  Then walk back to the condo, for an afternoon nap.

Thanksgiving 2000

I was teaching school and coaching, but I tried to get down to see them as often as I could.  Mom was adamant about coming home for Christmas, but Thanksgiving became a Florida affair for them.  Mom was a good cook, but they always had to spend the rest of their required “allotment” at the “Club” around Thanksgiving.  So we dressed up and got in line at the Sea Oaks buffet. There was fresh carved turkey and prime rib, grilled fresh salmon, all of the fixings and, of course, Key lime pie.

Thanksgiving in Florida was always good, even when Dad chewed me out for not going for the “kill shot” in the Walking Wounded doubles game.  “But Dad, if I hit him in the chest, I might really kill him!” I whined.  “Well, we’d win the point, wouldn’t we?”, was my eighty-two year old father’s retort:  Dahlman tennis.  

Hanging Chads

So I was in Vero Beach for Thanksgiving in the year 2000.  Just eighty miles south the fate of the nation was being decided, at the Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Boards of Elections.   Democratic candidate for President, Al Gore, had a half-million more votes nationally than Republican candidate George W Bush.  But that half-million lead didn’t matter.  Electoral votes were all that mattered, and the winner of Florida would win the Presidency.  Our afternoons and evenings were spent dozing in front of the minute-to-minute television coverage. 

Out of almost six million votes cast in Florida, the margin between Bush and Gore was less than 500.  It was such a narrow difference, that even with recounts, the “winner” could swing based only on inevitable counting errors.  And in West Palm Beach, there was a ballot “snafu”.  Voting was by “punch card”:  voters had to physically punch out a pre-set hole in the ballot to cast their vote.  Some of the pre-set hole-fillers, called “chads”, didn’t fully come out.  In addition, the pre-set holes weren’t perfectly lined up.  Some voters thought they were voting for Gore, but instead voted for a third party candidate, Ralph Nader.

Count ‘til You Win

The election came down to those ballots where the decision was unclear.  Did they voter intend to vote for Gore, or Nader, or did they intend not to vote for President at all?  The phrases “hanging chad” and “dimpled chad” entered our speech – along with the pictures of a bleary eyed election officials trying to make the determination.  Farther south, in the Miami-Dade Board of Elections, they were preparing to do a hand recount of every ballot.

Republican operatives knew that, as things stood before recounts, Bush had a slim advantage.  Bush lawyers were in state and federal court, doing everything they could to stop all counting.  They wanted the Republican Florida legislature to confirm Bush’s electors, and the Republican governor, brother Jeb, to sign off on the certification.  Their attitude was:  count until we’re winning – then stop counting.  (If that sounds suspiciously like the Trump 2020 strategy of declaring victory the day after the election, even though many millions of votes were still to be counted – it should). 

A Well Dressed Riot

The Bush campaign felt this wasn’t a time to play “by the rules”, or to be “fair”.  They played their version of Dahlman Tennis. Whatever it took, to the edge of the “rules”, was fair game.  One Republican operative in Miami was from New York.  Roger Stone had the ignominy of being the youngest operative to be questioned by Federal authorities in the Watergate “dirty tricks” investigation.  Stone now led a contingent of other operatives and lawyers from all over the nation, who came to Florida to do anything they could to make sure that Bush won.  And they meant “Stop the Count”.

 Miami-Dade needed more space, so they moved the re-count operations into a bigger room, farther away from “observers”.  The operatives, nick-named the “Brooks Brothers Brigade” for their natty apparel, started chanting, yelling, and charged the doors to the facility.  Miami-Dade Sheriff’s deputies were hard pressed to keep them in check, and the Board of Elections stopped the counting process until peace was restored.  By the time they were ready to begin again, there was no way they could meet a court mandated deadline for the final tally.  So Miami-Dade abandoned the recount, and submitted their original first count.  

Bush lawyers took their case to the Supreme Court. They asked that the nation’s highest legal authority put an end to counting.  In Bush v Gore, five Republican justices to four Democratic justices, determined to stop the count. Bush’s 500 vote win was the final outcome.  The next day, Vice President Al Gore conceded the election.

Who really won Florida, and the Presidency in November of 2000. Here’s what the Chicago Tribune said a year later. And for a different view – here’s what The Guardian said.

MAGA Wear

We now know to what lengths Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and others were willing to go to win the election of 2020.  Like the Bush team in 2000, they wanted to delay the final count.  But unlike 2000, they weren’t winning, and they crossed over the line of “hardball” to lawbreaking.  They stirred a mob to attack the Capitol, not in “Brooks Brother’s” apparel, but in MAGA wear, to stop the electoral count.  Extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were “standing by and standing ready” at Trump’s public request.  When they received the call – “a wild time”; they came to battle for him.

It’s hard to say – what if they had stopped the Congressional confirmation of the electoral count, and prevented the timely inauguration of Joe Biden? What would a six Republican to three Democrat margin on the Supreme Court say this time?  Even if Chief Justice Roberts stood firm, how much faith could anyone have that the three Trump appointees plus Alito and Thomas wouldn’t “stand by and stand ready” to support Trump?

And now as the long-arm of Federal justice is finally ready to reach the actual person of Donald J. Trump, the threat of violence is raised again.  Lindsey Graham said on Sunday, “…if there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump…they’ll be riots in the streets” (Guardian).  Trump himself has offered to “lower tensions”, (WashTimes) what many see as a not-so-veiled threat if those tensions continue.  Trump World is still calling on their steadfast loyalists to “stand by and stand ready” one more time.  When Trump is finally held accountable for his actions – don’t be surprised if our world explodes.  They aren’t playing Dahlman tennis, pushing the rules. They are willing to “burn down the Republic” in a final “glorious” MAGA stand.

Grow Up

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who envisions himself in the White House come 2025, needs to grow up.  It’s not “Presidential” to verbally abuse teenagers to score political points about masks; even though the Trump years tried to make that “OK”.  But that’s what he did, badgering them to remove masks in his presence. Good for one of the kids, who decided to put his mask back on in spite of the Governor’s annoyance.

But this week in a rally, he went even farther, stating about Dr. Anthony Fauci, “…someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac” (YouTube).

Like any effective speaker, DeSantis picked his words carefully.  How does a “big man” (I’m not calling him fat, but…those oversized suits) belittle a smaller man?  And how does he make Fauci a cartoon character rather than a formidable intellect from Holy Cross and Cornell that would take Yale and Harvard educated DeSantis apart in a debate?  Make him an “elf”,  then throw-in the dreaded “midget tossing” imagery.   And DeSantis has to hurry.  Fauci, at eighty-one, is retiring from his Directorship at the National Institute of Health.  He won’t be around for DeSantis to “pick on” anymore.

Leading 

DeSantis doesn’t really have much of a choice.  He has to attack Fauci.  The Governor made his national political “bones” in standing up to Fauci and the national strategy for dealing with the Covid pandemic.  The “Free State of Florida” went its own way with Covid, and the over 79,000 Floridians dead from the disease have DeSantis’s to thank.  More importantly, DeSantis led the Republican “opposition” to the national strategy, giving “cover” to other state governors to take the same stand.  That leads to this statistic:  of the top twenty-five states in per/capita Covid deaths, nineteen had Republican governors and two more had Republican legislatures that hamstrung Democratic Governors.  And DeSantis led the way.

The new Republican talking point is that masking, vaccination, distancing and shutdowns didn’t do any good.   They argue that “…we wasted our time, ruined our economy and damaged our children…” by taking Covid precautions.  It’s the reiteration of the “…let Covid burn through and kill who it kills, and the living will be fine…” statements that we heard just as Covid reached our shores.  

DeSantis and his ilk are demanding apologies for mask mandates, city shutdowns, and school closings.  And they are using school closings like a cudgel to elect anti-mask, Critical Race Theory haters to school boards. It’s hard to imagine putting anti-science, anti-intellectuals in charge of education, but that’s today’s Republican Party.  

Science

Just as DeSantis and his imitators did their best to destroy America’s attempts to control Covid, Tony Fauci and “science” (yep – science) did their best to protect our Nation.  Did they have all of the answers, from the beginning?  Of course not.  Covid was a new situation, and since the Trump Administration did everything it could to eviscerate the government’s ability to recognize and respond to new viral threats, America was caught flat footed.  

Did masks work?  Sure they did, the same way the work every day in every hospital in the nation.  Did they work around your neck, or under your nose, or as a fashion statement scarf device? Nope – just like the seatbelts don’t work if people don’t wear them.

Did we discover new things about Covid?  Sure – thanks to Black Lives Matter.  They went out and protested George Floyd’s death, knowing best science said that crowds spread Covid.  For them, taking the risk of disease was less important than voicing their outrage.  And what we discovered was that Covid transmission was very low outdoors.  It took the Black Lives Matter “experiment” to prove the point. And, by the way, if you need the counter “experiment”, look at Donald Trump’s 2020 Juneteenth rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It started an outbreak of Covid in the state.  If you’re not sure about that, ask the Secret Service, or Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain.  Oh snap, never mind:  he died of the Covid he caught at the rally.

Schools

Should schools have been closed?  Absolutely, if not for the kids, then for the teachers.  And for those who claim that “dedicated, loving” teachers should take Covid risks; remember that even when schools reopened, there weren’t enough substitutes to fill the vacant chairs.  If we stayed in school those first months (I was Zooming from my home office as a substitute) we would have faced an even greater teacher shortage.

Being online and not in school, damaged kids’ education. That’s absolutely true, and thank goodness.  Teachers really can’t be replaced by a screen, can they.  I always knew it, now the country does too.  But there is no way to evaluate how many lives were saved by closing schools, especially in those first few months.  Kids will get through this, just as kids all over the world get through natural and manmade calamities that interrupt their education.  That’s what those living, breathing, capable teachers can do.

I’m not apologizing for trying to do what was right – for me, for my family, for humanity.  And just because others are willing to “write-off” the deaths of over a million Americans (so far), I’m not.

Did Dr. Fauci do everything right?  No he did not. But he did his best to follow the best science at the time.  When that science changed, he was straight-forward in telling us so.  And if a bully politician like DeSantis with Yale AND Harvard degrees doesn’t understand that – maybe they should revoke his diplomas.  He must have cheated.

If DeSantis thinks he’s going to fulfill his childhood dream of being President, he’s still got some growing up to do. It’s time for “adulting”.

This is another in the Sunday Story series – no politics here, just stories about, putting lots of kids (but “always” within the law) in vans!!

New Car

I bought my very first brand new car in 1983 – a Datsun (now Nissan) Sentra. It was a small four door, actually pretty stripped down. I bought it without a radio (I installed my own), and I did purchase one “option” – a rear view mirror (who thought that was an “option”?). But it was small, and quick, and new. Pieces didn’t fall off along the highway like the Volvo it replaced, and there weren’t any holes in the floorboards like the old Squareback.

It was a sweet little car, and I drove it hard for a few years.  But I was soon the head cross country coach as well as the head track coach, and coaching cross country means sending kids on long runs, miles out on the roads.  That got boring – there were only so many ways you could run “out and back” from the school.  If only we could just go out, or just come back, or even go somewhere else to run. It would make the whole process a lot more fun.

Hippie Van

So I needed a vehicle that had some room.  John McGowan, my mentor and the former head cross country coach, was selling his Volkswagen Bus.  If the first thing that comes to your mind is a “hippie van” – you’ve got the right one.  All it needed were flowers painted on the doors to make it complete.  It had the same rear engine that I had in my old Squareback (see Car Stories I), and I was right at home doing any kind of work on it. 

I could fit six kids in the seats, and a few more in the “back”, actually sitting on the engine lid.  So if I sent eight kids from school to the five mile mark, and drove eight more out to the five mile mark to run back – then everyone got a straight five mile run, and I could “supervise” the whole run from the driver’s seat of the VW Bus.   Add my assistant coach’s car to the list, and we could move half of the team, and pick up the other half at the end.

The VW Bus was exactly what I needed. But it had all of the VW “issues” too. The heat was OK, but in the dead of winter the air-cooled engine heating system wasn’t great. On the other hand, it had a rear engine and rear wheel drive, so it would go in the snow. In fact, I learned a serious lesson about that. Just because I could go, didn’t mean other vehicles on the road would.

White-Out

We were driving back from a February indoor track meet at Ohio State (just north of downtown, Columbus), when there was a blizzard, with a white-out on the highway. The wipers barely kept the windshield clear and visibility was a matter of feet. We made it to only a few miles from home, just east of Reynoldsburg on I-70, and we were “putting” along at ten miles an hour or so.

I had no problems controlling the Bus, but the person three cars ahead wasn’t so lucky. He was one of those “drive fast in the left lane in a blizzard” idiots, and spun out in the middle of the road.

The car behind him went left , and the car in front of me went right. I went right as well, and we’d have all been ok, but “spinner” stalled in the right lane. The car in front of me hit the guardrail – and with all four wheels locked up, I slowly slid into his back bumper. Behind us we felt another pretty good thump – the car behind us slid into us as well. Then another car smacked into the back of it.

Speed demon straightened out and took off. And there we were, four cars on the guardrail at the top of a hill in a whiteout blizzard.  The only thing I could think of was a semi-truck coming up the hill, not seeing us through the snow until it was too late.  So I told the six kids  to “Bail Out”, and jump on the other side of the guard rail.

BAIL OUT!!!!

Maybe I said that with a little too much emphasis. The kids popped the sliding door, and went out the side of the Bus like Airborne Rangers hitting the landing zone. Bill, a shot putter, was the first out. He hit ice, and immediately went down. The other kids didn’t have a good view, so they jumped onto Bill’s back, and vaulted over the guard rail. Finally we got Bill to his feet, and all clambered over the side.

 Matt, our team manager, statistician, bookkeeper and all-around caretaker; ran down the hill, climbed a chain link fence, and in this era before cell phones, knocked on the door of the neighboring house to call the police.  It was so cold his bare hands stuck to the top bar of the fencing, and he came back missing pieces of his palms – frozen into place on the fence.  

The car behind us had two women in it.  The driver was pregnant, in pain and panicked.  The impact, slow-speed though it was, drove her stomach into the steering wheel.  Behind them was a car with three high school track kids.  The driver was banged up pretty good.  He broke a rib on his steering wheel when he hit the pregnant woman.  They were also coming back from the meet, headed towards home in Marlington, Ohio near Youngstown. 

Taking Care

As we were tending to the injured, our other team van pulled up, full of kids.  I loaded my group into it.   We were only a few miles from school, and it was very cold and windy so I sent them on their way. Matt stayed with me to help out with the injured.

It took a while for the police, and then the ambulance to finally get to us. The Highway Patrol officers weren’t interested in writing tickets, they just wanted to get the injured to the hospital, the cars out of the way, and the passengers out of the cold. I was all in favor of that. I ended up with Matt and the two Marlington kids in the Bus, and we headed towards home. The Bus was a little dented, but nothing could stop it!

I dropped Matt at his house, and the two Marlington kids and I went to the hospital to check on their buddy. The ER bandaged up his chest and released him, but their car wasn’t going anywhere. The blizzard was getting worse, and they all ended up spending the night at the house with me. Thank goodness Mama Linda’s pizza place braved the blizzard that night as well.

No Left Turn

The VW Bus lasted for a few more years, but like all VW’s, rust was its ultimate demise. We were driving to a local meet, when all of a sudden the Bus wouldn’t turn left. It seemed to do right just fine, but no matter how much the steering wheel turned, straight and right were the only two choices.

I managed to get it home – as long as you can go around the block you can find a “right” way, but I lost all confidence in the vehicle.  We had an annual summer Cross Country yard sale at the house, and I put a sign in the window.  Some guy pulled up, put $250 down, and stuck a clamp on the steering tie-rod.  He drove off down the road – and that was the end of VW Bus era.

Next Sunday Story time  – I’ll tell you about the Big Blue Van!!!!! 

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
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22

Denison

I am a proud 1978 graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio.  Denison was a perfect place for me:  an academic “castle on a hill” in a small rural town.  I could focus on academics, gathering my thoughts as I hiked the hills and forests nearby.  The Denison professors were challenging and incredibly helpful, and the community knew how to have fun as well as study.  Denison gave me the academic freedom to explore all of subjects that fascinated me – the intersection of history, government and politics in American life. 

A bigger institution wouldn’t have “flexed” their program the way Denison did.  I managed to graduate in four years, while I spent a semester as a political campaign operative, a semester studying in Washington, DC, and a semester student teaching.  While I did have some early struggles, in the end, it was the perfect place for me.

I attended Denison from the fall of 1974 until the spring of 1978.   In the Great Depression, my Dad worked his way through the University of Cincinnati, living at home.  Mom went to London University staying at home as well.  It was my parents life-goal to take care of all three of their kids’ college educations.  So I was privileged to not be saddled with college debt, and my parents were able to afford the room, board and tuition of less than $18000 a year.  It was a great gift for life.  I still managed to build a student loan debt, but it was in graduate school. I ultimately paid that off.

Cost of the Dream

Today to attend Denison, it costs $73000 a year.  There’s lots of financial aid available, and a high percentage of students take advantage of that.  That’s no surprise:  it’s hard to imagine being able to afford to pay for a four-year college degree costing almost $300000.   It’s still a great education, and small liberal arts colleges still have an important place in American education.  But the costs are truly amazing.

To send my son to a public university a decade ago, was $40000 a year.  America’s reality is, no one is “working their way through school” the way my Dad did in the 1930’s.  In order to get a four-year college degree today, there are only three alternatives:  be so gifted in some way that you get a scholarship, be so wealthy that you can pay, or borrow the money.

At the same time, the educational requirements for getting and advancing in the workplace increasingly require a four-year degree.  And this is the “American dream”:  working to gain an education in order to advance.  Parents would love to “gift” this to their children the way my parents did for me, and we did for our son.  But to do it today, most have to borrow the money.

Loan Forgiveness

Yesterday President Biden announced that $10000 of college loan debts would be forgiven.  In fact, if a student qualified for Pell Grants, an income based award, $20000 will be forgiven.  Forty-eight million Americans owe college debt today, a total of $1.75 Trillion.  The loan forgiveness President Biden offered will reduce that by $500 Billion.  

Biden compared his student loan forgiveness program to the PPP program for businesses during the Covid pandemic.  In that program $800 Billion was loaned and forgiven to businesses to maintain employees’ wages.  Biden made it clear that he recognized that in any program like this, there would be unfairness.  Some businesses went under during Covid despite the PPP program and some businesses survived without qualifying for PPP.  With student loan forgiveness, there’s always going to be those who “would’ve gone” or “wouldn’t have paid” if they had known.  

“If I had known there was going to be a PPP program, I would have started a business.”

“If I had known there was going to be student loan forgiveness, I would have borrowed more.”

There’s no way to be “fair” when solving a problem that’s gone on for far too long.   There are always those that suffered before things were improved – we should still fix the problem now.  Student loan debt has saddled millions, stifling their economic lives.  They can’t start families, they can’t buy houses, they can’t participate in the economy.  They can just make their monthly payments to MOHELA or the other student loan services.  The only “big winners” from the student debt, are the loan companies. For the good of our society, we need to resolve this problem.

The Real Problem

But it does mean we should look at the greater issue; the cost of education.

In the United States we “guarantee” free public education, Kindergarten through twelfth grade.  But in our modern, technical world, we find that thirteen years simply isn’t enough to prepare both a workforce and an intelligent voting citizenry.  We need to add four more years to the program, two years of pre-school, and two years of post-high school education.  The two years after high school could be the first two years of a four year program, or it could be some kind of vocational education or certification.  But to take eighteen year-olds just out of high school and say “It’s all on you now”,  in our modern highly technical and highly expensive society, just doesn’t make sense.

And the cost of college education soared well beyond inflation in the past forty years.  Certainly easy access to student loan money was part of that spiral; and the entire way we pay for higher education should be up for examination.  But in the meantime, it’s good that the government is taking steps.

So thanks President Biden for addressing the problem. You’re going to take a lot of “guff”.  Some are going to say that it’s the “…plumbers and construction workers…” who are going to pay for those “snotty college kids”. But we know that’s not how it should be – it should be those multi-billion dollar corporations who don’t pay any income taxes that should be picking up this tab.  

I know you’re working on that one too.

PostScript

A little note to those “local” to Pataskala. Gas prices from 270 east on Broad Street – $3.13 a gallon – until you reach “downtown” Pataskala – then it’s $3.64. That’s our “Amazon” price bubble!!! And it’s all down more than a dollar from a few months ago. Oh – and the Columbus Teacher’s strike that I wrote about yesterday, was settled last night. Hope they got what they needed!!

First Day of School

It’s the first day of school today in the Columbus City Schools.  As a teacher, I know how important that first day is.  Sure, it’s mostly “organizational”, making sure kids are in the right places, pronouncing names and creating seating charts, and helping them negotiate their way to the next class or figure out lunch.  As a teacher in middle and high schools, I always thought of that first day as setting the “tone” for the rest of the year.  In each class there was always an opportunity to establish “the atmosphere”, and demonstrate what I wanted for our class.  My goal for the first day was respect for each other, and myself as the teacher, and an openness to questions. 

But teachers in the Columbus City Schools are on strike today.  I can absolutely guarantee that not one of those teachers wants to be on a picket line, instead of in the classroom.  They are teachers because they have a mission,  and a job, to educate and to nurture.  And there’s little nurturing going on walking the picket line.

Instead, Columbus is starting school “online”, with seven hundred substitutes and administrators.  You can count on it:  nothing much is getting done.  I guess you can show a “movie” on Zoom, but why would the kids watch?

The Association

I was a “teacher association” member (read: union member) my entire career.  I served my time as an officer in our Local; as the “campaign” guy, Vice President, and ultimately President of the Association.  Even when I became the Dean of Students of the High School, I remained a member.  The Association refused to let me go – they maintained that while they wouldn’t back my actions as an “administrator”, they wouldn’t let the position become non-union.  So, like it or not, I was in the Association for my entire thirty-five and a half years.

We never had to strike.  We did pack up our classrooms and take all of our personal stuff home. That was a lot, even for a high school teacher.  For elementary teachers it was more than half of the supplies.  The rooms seemed empty.  We “educationally picketed” school board meetings and even in front of the buildings before school started.  We took strike votes that overwhelmingly passed.  But our negotiations teams and the school board always found a “deal” that kept us in the classroom.  We never had to take that final step.

Just for the record, striking is generally not a “positive” financial move.  If the District can remain open, then days on strike are “no pay” days; money lost forever both in-pocket and in retirement.  Insurance payments and other benefits are suspended.  Only if the schools are forced to close their doors and make up the days later, do teachers makeup some of what they lose on the picket line.  If things go on for a long time, the Association will pitch in to help in emergencies, but when we considered striking, I made arrangements to borrow money against my home, just in case.

Not About Money

So why are the Columbus teachers on strike today?  It doesn’t seem to be about money.  Columbus teachers already have a decent salary schedule, with entry teachers paid $45600 a year, and the “top of the scale” over $100,000.  (For contrast, my old District salary starts at $40,203 and tops at $92,487).  It’s not directly about “pocket” money.  

Columbus teachers are striking over building conditions.  Buildings that are over a century old,  without adequate ventilation in the post-Covid world. Schools that are without air conditioning in mid-August in Ohio, schools with falling ceilings and moldy walls.  

And they are striking about class size.  They want the District to commit contractually that kindergarten through fifth grade classes will have no more than twenty-eight kids. Currently Columbus can have elementary classes of thirty and middle school and high school classes of thirty-five.   (In my old District, class size is K-3 is twenty-two; 4-5 twenty-seven; and no more than thirty 6-12.)

Why does class size matter?  Studies show that the more individual attention students get, the more success they have in learning.  Especially at the youngest levels, smaller classes give kids the best opportunity to improve, and teachers the best chance of intervening to resolve learning issues.  But class size is the most expensive solution to improving education.  And that’s why school districts will raise salaries, but refuse to lower class size, even though it is absolutely the most effective way to improve educational “outcomes”.  

Shared Goals

Columbus teachers are striking because they don’t want to be packed into steaming (or freezing) classrooms with too many kids.  Sure that’s uncomfortable as a teacher (and as a kid) but more importantly, it’s a lousy way to learn.  Columbus teachers want to fulfill their mission, to educate the best way they can.  And they need the District to provide conditions that will let them achieve that goal. 

Ninety-four percent of Columbus Association members voted to strike.  They are hanging together.  Now the school district needs to figure it out.  Administrators say they are committed to making building and class size improvements as well, they just don’t want it in a contract.  Maybe putting it in writing “confines” them too much.   But the Columbus City Schools need to be more committed.  After all, teachers and administrators are all trying to achieve the same thing.  As my old mentor and principal used to say – it’s time to do what’s right for kids.  

“Now, generally speaking, would you say that things in the country are going in the right direction, or have they pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?”  – (Morning Consult, right track, wrong track poll question). 

Concrete Rules

I’ve been a student of politics since Mom pinned a “Kennedy for President” button on my blue sweater. I was three years old and it was in 1960.  And there are “age old” rules in politics, that proved themselves accurate over the more than sixty-five years of my lifetime.  One of those, concrete, indisputable rules is this.  If the majority of the nation think the country is on the “wrong track”, then the Party in control of the government will be the “loser” in the next election.  That makes a lot of common sense.  Democrats control the House, the Senate, sort-of, and the Presidency.  On August 15^th, 70% of the country said that the United States is on the “wrong track”.  

Morning Consult breaks this down by political party affiliation.  47% of Democrats thought we were on the “wrong track”, 78% of Independents, and 91% of Republicans agreed.  And that fits perfectly with the “age old” rules.

So I’m a lifelong Democrat.  I can count on the finger of my right hand, not including the thumb, how many Republicans for any office I’ve actually voted for.  I actively campaigned for ten different Democratic Presidential candidates, including working on the professional campaign staff of one.  So if you’re looking for what a “Democrat” thinks, I think I should count.

I think the United States is on the wrong track.  And I don’t blame Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer a bit.

Driving that Train

So will the “wrong track” poll make me vote Republican, or even make me not show up to vote in November?  Are you kidding me – I haven’t missed a contested election since 1974 (when I turned eighteen).  And I am more motivated than ever to go out and support my candidates.  Just as importantly, I am motivated to do everything I can to stop those that I blame for our Nation being on the “wrong track”:  the Republican Party.

It’s not a matter of policy disagreement, though there are a whole lot of Republican policies I disagree with.  I disagreed with a lot of Republicans all of my life.  But through most of that time,  I felt that we shared a common goal:  the good of the United States.  My Republicans friends (and family) just had a different view of how to get to that goal, and I respected our differences.  In our current era though, for the first time in my sixty-two years of politics, I don’t feel that we share a common goal.

Blocking the Tracks

I don’t even need to get into the “MAGA” Party that dominates Republican life.  Senator Mitch McConnell is the embodiment of establishment Republicans, called by many of his fellow party members a “RINO”, Republican in name only.  And yet his avowed goal, since Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, is to stop all Democratic legislation.  He isn’t interested in governing, and wasn’t able to get much done even while he had the reins of power in his hands.  But he absolutely wants to prevent anything and everything from happening.  Failure of the Democrats is enormously more important to him, then the good of the nation.

Give him his due; while McConnell had power, he was able to achieve two “stellar” legislative actions.  He passed a trillion dollar tax cut.  By definition, tax cuts cut taxes for those who pay the most, so the wealthy got the most benefit.  And he transformed the Supreme Court into a branch of the Federalist Society. they now promote a view of America as “set in legal concrete” at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  

But past that, McConnell sees the Senate as a political battlefield, without a larger view of serving the good of the nation.  It’s that obstructionism that motivates me to go out and vote for any Democrat I can find.  And I haven’t even gotten to MAGA.

Jump 

Our country is definitely on the wrong track.  One of the two major parties is the engine leading us down that track. They are headed away from “small d” democracy, and towards a more authoritarian and oligarchical (gotta love that word) society.  While it’s easy for even the “good” Republicans to disclaim the extremists that control their locomotive, what they don’t seem to get is the entire Party is enabling America to race away from our core values. 

There are a few:  Liz Cheney, John Kasich, Larry Hogan; who tried to change the direction of the Republican train. They want to “pull the switch” and move their party back from the “crazies”.  But, like a car stuck at the crossing as the freight comes through town, they’ve been swept aside, hardly even slowing down the MAGA juggernaut.

The only way for us to get on the “right track”, is to  jump from that train.  And that’s the critical fact that may break the “concrete, indisputable” precedent of electoral life.  I’m hoping my fellow Democrats, and the rest of America, do that in November.

 1974

What I most remember about 1974 was graduating from high school and starting college.  But as far as “the world” was concerned – it was the House Impeachment hearings, Nixon’s resignation, and Ford’s pardon.  How much of an impact did all of that have on me, a budding politician?  When I had the “freshman blues” at Denison, I put a sign on my wall – Allenwood Prison Farm.  That was the minimum Federal security facility where many of the Watergate principals were serving their time.  (Allenwood was closed in 2005, and now, fittingly, is part of a landfill).

What I don’t remember much about – is the end of the Vietnam War, the “opening” of China, pirates seizing a US ship off of Cambodia, and whatever else happened in the world.  Like much of America, I was too focused on our internal politics and issues.  The rest of the world had to wait – we were busy trying to save the nation.

Return to Normalcy

Fast forward to 2022.  The “return to normalcy” offered by Joe Biden can’t happen, because the election of 2020 is still far from over.  Now I haven’t turned into a conspiracy theorist or a Stop the Steal believer.  But until we finish the “business” of 2020, our nation will remain looking inward.  The concern:  there’s so much going on “out there” that we’re missing, and might well be missing us.  Polling this week shows that the number one issue for Americans is “the threat to democracy”.  Numbers two and three are about the economy.  What’s happening in the world isn’t even on the list (NBC).

For a brief moment, the Russian invasion of Ukraine caught our attention.  We watched the “rookie” leader Zelenskyy grow in his Presidency to become the savior of his nation.  We were stunned as the “Goliath” Russian military machine ground to a halt, stopped by the “David” Ukrainian forces. All our long held beliefs about Russia invulnerability, reinforced by old black and white movies of Russian tanks driving the Nazis back to Berlin, dissolved as that seventeen mile convoy was a sitting duck for weeks.

We cheered the Ukrainian defense, and backed them with massive amounts of aid and weapons.  Putin’s strategy of decapitation failed, but he wasn’t done.  Now, six months later, Russia is grinding out an artillery campaign, trading shots without the massive tank movements we expected.  No one is willing to estimate the casualties, especially civilian deaths. Putin is betting the “West” will lose interest.  And in the US, that’s actually working.  We all knew about Mariupol and the valiant defense of the city. But we can’t even pronounce Zaporizhzhia (Zap-or-rhee-sha).  The largest nuclear reactor in Europe is literally the battle line there – but Americans show little interest in news about that.

China

And on the other side of the world, China seems to be doing more than just “saber-rattling”.  For the past several years, China has expanded its territorial “waters”. They claim more and more of the South China Sea (the water between China, Vietnam and the Philippines).  China even went so far as to build artificial islands to claim as “territory” – demanding 200 miles of the sea around them.   The United States consistently opposed those claims. We fly US aircraft and sail our Naval vessels in China-claimed territory to demand freedom of navigation and overflight. 

And now China is threatening to invade Taiwan, again.  The US policy is purposely vague:  we support a “one-China” policy, but also support Taiwan’s independence.  If China determines to invade Taiwan, like Russia did in Ukraine, will the United States go to war against them?  I think so, and I think we want China to think so.  But in an era when we are so distracted by our own internal struggles, China, like Russia, sees an “opening” to achieve their goal of conquest.  No wonder they were so upset when the third ranking American leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, went to Taiwan to pledge her support.

Final Answer

Europe, like the US, is trying to stave-off burgeoning authoritarian movements.  Some of those movements have been successful, like Victor Orban in Hungary or the success of Marie LePen’s party in the French legislature.  Other countries have rejected authoritarianism, and some, again like the US, have done both.  LePen’s Party had tremendous success in the National Assembly elections in June, but LePen herself was rejected as a Presidential candidate.

Iran and the US are negotiating again.  The US is demanding the Iran return to the Obama Administration’s JCPOA plan to prevent nuclear weapons. That was the plan abandoned by the Trump Administration.  But there’s a lot of “water under the bridge” since President Obama announced success. The US assassinated Iranian General Soleimani, and Iran in turn tried to assassinate former National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  So it’s hard to figure how that will turn out, or whether Congress will approve an agreement even if one is reached.

With all of this is going on, nothing really is much different at the US Southern Border. Except, thank God, we aren’t ripping kids out of parent’s arms.  But we are still so focused on the 2020 election, even here in 2022.  Election deniers are running for office trying to get votes that will deny if they lose. We are poised on the edge of our own authoritarian crisis.  November will point what direction we are headed as a nation, but it won’t be until 2024 that the “final answer” will be called.

I hope the world can wait, but I expect it won’t.  

This is another in the Sunday Story series.  No politics today, just another “dog” story, with a twist.  There’s a new member to the Pack!

Alphas

If you know anything about dogs, you know they are “pack” animals.  They develop complex relationships among themselves, and with others in the home.  We have five dogs, and so there are lots of interactions.  Among our dogs, Buddy is the “Alpha Emeritus”.  He’s over ten human years old, and while he’s not going to win fights anymore, all the others show him respect appropriate to his age and status.  They’re happy to pay him attention, but leave him to himself when that’s what he wants.  That’s not much fight left in him, but he can still let out a mean “hiss” when he needs to.

Then there was the big “upset” in the house.  Louisiana, our battered rescue from, well, Louisiana, fully recovered from his injuries and “felt his oats”.  The titular “Alpha” was our six year old Yellow Lab Atticus, who ascended with Buddy’s aging.  But Lou and Atticus had a couple of “interactions”, and now Lou is clearly number one.  The saying goes, “If you ain’t the big dog, stay on the porch”.  Atticus spends a lot more time on the porch with Jenn and me.

The Ladies

Keelie, our rescue from Kentucky, is the “mother” of us all.  When someone yelps or yells “OW”, Keelie immediately comes to investigate and ameliorate.  And when someone gets in trouble, dog to dog or dog to person, Keelie is compelled to intervene and “make things better”.   And Keelie “knows” where everyone is supposed to “be”, especially guests in the house. Sit at the kitchen table; otherwise anticipate an escort suggesting you go back where you “belong”.

Which leaves us with CeCe, our year and a half old “Baby Yoda” puppy.  She’s not so much a puppy anymore, but she’s still fearless when it comes to the other’s in the pack.  She took her lumps early, but she really is everyone’s puppy. She’s even found a way to relate to Buddy, who enjoys the attention.  CeCe gets away with a lot. She chases Lou who towers over her, making dreadful noises. And she treats his long tendinous back legs like chicken bones.  He might be the Alpha, but he ends up on the porch from time to time too.

CeCe is wonderfully lovable, but she has an affinity for eyeglasses.  Whenever there’s downtime, she will seek out any pair of glasses she can reach, prescription or sunglasses, or most often, my reading glasses.  Then she will efficiently chew the ears off ’em.  So far, I think she’s destroyed eight pair of my Amazon “cheap” reading glasses.  I’m wearing a pairs with dramatically shortened ears now, and she got my good bifocals as well.

No mistake, Jenn’s the “Alpha” of us all, dogs included.  I come in as “Associate Alpha”, good for breakfast in the morning, early morning romps, and more than willing to fulfill most dog demands.  

New Addition

And we added another “player” in the dynamic Dahlman domicile. No – not another dog, five is by far enough.  This character is low key but determined, keeps her head down and does her “business”.  She knows where she sleeps, when she’s hungry, and when it’s time to “go potty”.  And she has a name – Roomba!

Yep – we got a Roomba, one of the IRobot independent vacuum cleaners that purposely goes about the house cleaning up the messes.  It’s a pretty amazing device, mapping out the layout of the house and then determining the most efficient way to cover the entire place.  It goes where Jenn and I seldom go with a vacuum:  under the cabinets and the stove, and even under the couch.  Our house has five dogs:  hair is everywhere (we call them “tumbling tumbleweeds” after the Roy Rogers song).  It requires daily sweeping – and while we were worried that the volume would be beyond Roomba’s capabilities, so far, so good.  Roomba knows when she’s had enough, and heads back to her docking station to “dump” and to recharge when needed.  

It wasn’t the cheapest cleaner, but IRobot guaranteed it could handle hair (and maneuver around any dog accidents – without a dreaded smear).  And so far, she’s lived up to her billing.

Finding Her Place

And where does Roomba fit in the “pack”?  Well, Lou is scared to death of her.  He heads for other rooms, up on the benches and chairs to stay away from the relentless hissing and bumping.  And when Roomba “relieves herself” in the docking station?  Lou breaks for a door to get outside, away from the rocket launch sounds.  Keelie doesn’t seemed bothered, and Atticus just stays with me, out of the way.  

CeCe, the house defender against all brooms and vacuum cleaners, doesn’t really mind Roomba.  It seems that they are all giving her space, kind of an “Alpha-like” status.  Roomba can clear the room.  That works, as she then cleans the room as well.

Oh, and Buddy – well he and Roomba don’t get along so well.  You see, Roomba followed Buddy into his sanctuary, the bathroom.  And when Buddy flopped down next to the air conditioning vent, Roomba had the audacity to drive up to him – and BUMP him!!  Well that’s unheard of in this house – and Buddy with all the dignity of his equivalent seventy dog years, struggled to his feet, and stormed out of the room – to the bathroom on the other side of the house.  That wasn’t on Roomba’s programming for this run.

The jury is still out on the Roomba.  We will see how long she can handle this, a five-dog, two-person load.  Jenn won’t let her come in my office, afraid that might be too overwhelming for a newly programmed IRobot.  I’m sure that’s not a compliment, but Jenn is the Alpha or us all.  Who am I to argue with the Boss?  I think I now fit in about third – behind Jenn and the new Roomba.

Want to know more about our dogs? Check out Origin Stories Parts I and II on the list below.

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
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22

Denison

I was a sophomore at Denison University in the fall of 1975.  That fall wasn’t my best academic semester.  While studying was still important, I found that “social activities” played a much greater role in my life.   I discovered the pleasures of alcohol, and spent a lot of that fall studying it, in its various forms.  In fact, I studied it in such depth, that at the end of that semester I determined  that “only” beer (or occasional wine) would be my choice, a decision that lasted until the next millennium.

So it probably wasn’t the best scheduling choice to take Poli Sci 209, “Introduction to the Theory of Political Science” as my early morning (9:30) class.  But there I was, sitting in the front row of Dr. Steinberg’s lecture hall, listening to theory from ancient Greece and Rome to the Enlightenment, delivered in a heavy New York accent.  I was generally sober, but often still very tired from the “activity” of the previous evening.   Dr. Steinberg, though, was an excellent instructor, and there were two rules in his class:  don’t skip class, and don’t fall asleep.

Somnambulance

It was the 1970’s, and smoking was still allowed in public buildings.  Dr. Steinberg chain-smoked his way through the Greeks and Romans, emphasizing an important point with a particularly large cloud, or creating a dramatic pause as he lit his next cigarette.  One class, after a particularly late evening (more early morning), I was struggling to maintain consciousness as the professor lectured on.  I don’t quite remember when I lost the train of thought – but I definitely recall waking up, desperately choking, as Dr. Steinberg shared his constant tobacco cloud directly into my face. The rest of the class howled in laughter.  I took it philosophically, and NO ONE ever fell asleep in that class again!  

My somnambulance didn’t help my grade, or my retention of Political Philosophy.  I ended up with a “B”, and just this week had to go back and do some real research as I thought about how to write this essay (research in political philosophy, not the other stuff).  

Enlightened Men

The 1700’s were called the age of Enlightenment.  In the current “woke” era, there’s a lot about the Enlightenment we might call less than “enlightened”.  Jefferson and Madison were men of intellect and developed the moral and practical foundations of the United States.  But at the same time, they participated in very real immorality.  They enslaved other human beings, and they did so in full knowledge of the moral wrong they were committing.  

But they were well educated men, and knew well the other great minds of their own era.  John Locke lived nearly a century before Jefferson.  Locke wrote about “natural rights of men”, beyond those granted by sovereign kings and governments.  Locke outlined those rights as “life, health, liberty, or possessions”, not far from Jefferson’s “self-evident truths…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Jefferson recognized that “possessions” opened the door to the great immorality of their own time.  It was better to talk about happiness than property. 

Burke

As the Founding Fathers debated the structures of the United States, other Enlightenment minds were thinking about how governing should work.  One of those was Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament from Ireland.  Burke considered the nature of representation.  Was a representative chosen simply to voice the views of those who elected him?  Or, was he elected to use his own best judgment.  As Burke said in a speech to the voters of Bristol:

“You choose a member (of Parliament) indeed, but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.  If the local constituent should should have an interest, or form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be, as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect.”

Burke viewed his role as an “agent” of his constituents; elected to use his own best judgment as to what was best for them, and for the nation.  If the constituents didn’t agree with him often enough, then they had the ultimate means of persuasion. They could choose not to re-elect him to office.

Cheney

Congressman Liz Cheney of Wyoming dramatically lost the Republican primary this week.  Cheney only received 29% of the vote. Her opponent, backed by the twice-impeached and disgraced former President, received 66%.  Two years before, Cheney received 73% from the same voters.  

Cheney is a conservative.  During the Trump Administration, she voted more than 93% of the time with the former President.  And Cheney comes from a legacy of Republican Conservatism.  Her father is a national conservative force, and has been since the 1970’s.  He served as Congressman from Wyoming, White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, and ultimately eight years as Vice President of the United States.

But Liz Cheney could not abide with the “Stop the Steal” lie. And she would not support the attempts to overturn the election, leading up to the Insurrection on January 6^th. In fact, she made it crystal clear how she felt about those who did support Trump. As the rioters were at the doors of the House Chamber in the Capitol, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio attempted to take Cheney’s arm to try to lead her to safety. She was blunt with him as only a “Cheney” can be. She said: “Get away from me, you F##king did this.”

Cheney voted to impeach Donald Trump for the Insurrection.  For that, she was stripped of her leadership position in the House Republican caucus.  She also volunteered to participate on the January 6^thCommittee, against the wishes of Minority Leader McCarthy.  And she has been the primary “prosecutor” of the case against Trump in the Committee hearings.

Courage

Liz Cheney has the courage of her convictions, and stood for the fundamental structures of the United States against the anti-democratic actions of Trump and his followers.  She was an “agent” of the people of Wyoming, rather than a “delegate” who follows the public sentiment of her state.  She paid the price for that this week in the primary election.

But she isn’t done.  She remains a United States Congressman until January of 2023.  She will continue as the Vice-Chairman of the January 6^th Committee until then.  And she will stand at the center of the “enlightened” Republicans, one that rejects the authoritarianism of Trump.  Someday she will find a whole political party around her.  Madison and Jefferson, Locke and Burke would applaud.   

The Deal

On a “dollar for dollar” basis, the First Energy Corporation made the right move.  They spent $60 million in order to secure $1.3 trillion, a “good” investment in anyone’s books.  The problem:  the $60 million was a bribe to public officials, and the $1.3 trillion was supposed to come from the pockets of the citizens of Ohio.

Not surprisingly, First Energy didn’t think of it as a “bribe”. They considered it a donation to the legislators that backed their financing plan. The sum was managed by one legislator, Republican House Speaker Larry Householder.  And that is an issue in American politics today. Campaign success is absolutely based on how much money a candidate can raise.  To run for the US House of Representatives costs millions, and while state Legislature campaigns are less than that; success requires hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So are campaign donations simply a show of support, or are they a “quid pro quo”, payment for some specific action?  Showing support is perfectly legal. But a quid pro quo payment like the First Energy “pay to play” is the felony of bribery.

The Story

First Energy Corporation ran two nuclear power plants in Ohio, the Davis-Bessie reactor near Toledo and the Perry reactor outside of Cleveland.  Both plants were over thirty years old, and maintenance costs continued to grow. First Energy also had several coal-fired plants in Ohio. But other forms of energy generation were more cost efficient, and the nuclear and coal plants struggled to compete.

In order to operate profitably, First Energy asked the Ohio State Legislature to pass a bill that would give them a $150 million a year subsidy for nuclear and coal fired plants. The bill would also reduce subsidies for other forms of more energy efficient production, raising their costs, to make coal and nuclear energy competitive. All of this was paid for by increasing consumer electric rates in Ohio.  The bill was passed by the Republican controlled legislature, led by Speaker Larry Householder, in July of 2019. The next day Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill into law. 

The Takeover

In order for Householder to gain control of the Ohio House, he accepted $60 million from First Energy through their political action committee, “Generation Now”.  Householder used some of that money to finance twenty-one successful legislative campaigns for those who were willing to vote for his Speakership and the subsidy bill, and won enough seats in the House to get elected as Speaker.  It is against the law for a legislator like Householder to direct an independent political action committee’s funds.

After gaining control of the House, Householder brought the bill, called House Bill 6, up for debate.  The legislation was widely unpopular, as it promised consumers increased electric rates.  Householder then orchestrated a public media campaign with Generation Now money, estimated to cost $9.5 million to get the bill through the House and another $7.3 million to get through the State Senate.  The campaign claimed the rate increase would “save jobs” at the nuclear plants, and improve “green” energy (except at the coal plants).  It served as “cover” for the legislators who voted for the bill.

Response

After the bill passed, an awkward coalition of Democrats, the natural gas industry, renewable energy and consumer advocates tried to put the bill up for statewide referendum in order to repeal it.  “Generation Now”, under the direction of Householder and Republican State Party Chairman Matt Borges, spent another $38 million on an incredibly ugly media campaign to prevent the referendum from even getting the required 6% of voter signatures to get on the ballot.  Their claim was that passage of the referendum would put “Ohio’s energy in Chinese Communist control”, and raised the specter of Chinese “spies” coming to get your signature.  

Ohioans never got to vote on House Bill 6.  And Larry Householder used part of the “Generation Now” funds to buy a $500,000 house in Florida, pay for his own personal campaign expenses, and pay off a personal lawsuit he was involved in.  

The scandal broke in July of 2020, when Householder was arrested by the FBI.  Ultimately the Ohio House and Senate along with Governor DeWine voided the legislation.  Householder is still awaiting trial on charges of accepting bribes and abuse of office.  His trial, in conjunction with the trial of Matt Borges, is expected to begin with jury selection after the election in November of 2022.  First Energy Corporation has already admitted to bribing public officials, and is paying a $230 million fine to avoid further prosecution.  The Chief Executive Officer of First Energy, Chuck Jones, was removed by its board, and the Board demanded that he return his $56 million salary. 

Gone Away

Other leading Republicans in the state, including DeWine and Lieutenant Governor John Husted, have been implicated in parts of the scandal.   First Energy “remade itself” through bankruptcy, and is now called Energy Harbor.  They still own the two nuclear plants, as well as the several coal fired plants.  Federal funds are keeping the company profitable.

And, oddly, the scandal has “gone away”. While Democratic candidates like Nan Whaley raise the general concept of “corruption”, the fact that the entire state Republican Party establishment was complicit in taking bribes and passing laws to protect the profits of First Energy, just doesn’t seem to be a concern to Ohio voters.

It’s hard to imagine a bribe so large.  $60 million:  at least no one can accuse Ohio Republicans of selling out “cheap”. 

First Keys

One of the first lessons I learned as a Boy Scout leader back in high school was that keys represented power. I became the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) of Troop 819, the “head kid”, and with that leadership role came keys.  One key opened the basement door to the Church where our troop met. A second opened the pad lock to the wooden door in front of our Scout Room, the meeting place in what was the crypt of the main church.

Keys meant a couple things.  It allowed me to have meetings with other Scouts without the formal “permission” of the adult Scout leaders.  It let me do “my job” with the troop Quartermaster (another Scout) as we prepared equipment for our monthly campout. And we had other projects that were part of the Troop annual calendar.  Looking back on that, it was actually a lot of responsibility to put on a sixteen year-old.  And I’m not sure that the Minister of the Church knew what our Scoutmasters were allowing.  

I knew the responsibility I had with “the keys”.  I made sure the door was locked, and that no Scout got left behind. Getting trapped in the Church basement between the Scout room and the storage was scary for a twelve year-old.  When I moved from SPL to become a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, they let me keep my keys. The Scoutmaser made another set for the next SPL.  I remained part of the Troop, through college, and until I moved away from Mom and Dad in Cincinnati.  Somewhere, in a drawer, I still have the keys.

School Keys

So when I went to work at a public high school, having a “key” was a deal.  Getting into the building in the evening, or on the weekend with a team, you had to have some way to open a door.  And soon enough, I had the key to a locker room door, and the key to my classroom.  A mentor of mine taught me an early dubious lesson. If you get access to a key, and don’t make a copy, then it’s your own fault.  Keys meant access for what you needed to do your job. We acquired them like medals on the battlefield.  

We needed keys to tractors to maintain the Cross Country course, keys to the press box and gates to run track meets, keys to storage to access our equipment.  And we always needed keys to get into the building. That was especially back in the day when the only access to a phone was a “hard line” in an office somewhere.  The kids had to call for rides, and, when necessary, we needed to be able to call for an ambulance.

Just like when I was a Scout, having keys meant getting access, responsibility, and “power”.  And the ultimate key to have was the “building master key”, the one key that opened every door.  You know you “made it” when you had the one key to get everywhere.  

Giving Up 

I worked in the school district for forty years.  There were generations of keys. I had keys for buildings that no longer were standing, and keys for obscure locks that were buried deep inside storage areas or closets.  Ther were my “working keys”, the few that went into my pocket every day. And then my “occasional keys”, that I would use once a year during a special event.  

When I finally retired from coaching and managing cross country meets at the school, it was time to turn in the keys, at least most of them.  The ones that no longer opened anything I pitched, and a few were passed onto the next generation.  But the “big ones”; the master keys, gate keys and equipment keys, were on my ring, and on the secretary’s desk.

Giving up my keys was giving up my “power” in the school.  It was the final act, disconnecting from forty years of work and fun. I left behind all of the successes and tragedies, things accomplished, and getting into “good” trouble.  Of all the goodbyes, setting my keys on Barb’s desk (the Athletic Secretary) was the second hardest.  The first, of course, was saying goodbye to the kids.

The President

Donald Trump is a man who gets what he wants.  It’s hard to tell whether he truly believed he won the election of 2020 at the beginning, but at the end, it’s clear that he convinced himself that was true.  But while the President doesn’t have a “master key” to the United States (in fact, he doesn’t have keys at all, someone else always does), he has the “master secrets”.   And in the days between January 6^th, the Insurrection, and January 20^th, the Biden Inauguration, Trump struggled mightily with the idea that he actually had to leave the White House.

Bunches of papers were hurriedly thrust into boxes.  Classified confidential, secret, top secret, top secret compartmented information:  all were stuffed in boxes and shipped to Trump’s home in  Mara Lago, his “winter White House”.  

There’s lots of ways to look at that.  Maybe he was just keeping them to show that he was “still powerful”, like keeping the master key to the building even after you retire.  Or maybe he had confidential information he could use, “kompromat” on others to get them to bend to his will.  Or the worst case scenario:  maybe he saw some financial gain to be made with all of those secrets.  But one thing is for sure:  Donald Trump became President for power, and wasn’t will to give that up, even when the National Archives demanded them, and even when the FBI came for it.

He wanted to keep his keys.

This is another in the Sunday Story series. No politics here, just some stories of Cross Country running teams from “long ago” through today.

Tradition

I went out to my old Cross Country team’s summer camp this week.  As my good friend and their current coach John Jarvis pointed out, the Watkins High School Cross Country team has a forty-eight year history. Over that entire time, there were only three Head Coaches.  Coach Jarvis was my assistant for eleven years before he took over in 2009.  I was John McGowan’s assistant for six years before I tried to follow in his footsteps in 1985.  While the current crop of runners only vaguely know who I am, and know my predecessor by name only, they don’t realize that much of what they do in practice and as a team started before they, and even some of their parents, were born.  

One of those traditions is that all three of us treated kids as individuals, as people, not “just” runners.  We didn’t try to “fit” kids into some pre-conceived mold.  We took them as they were.  They were willing to try, and we did whatever we could to make them better, as runners, but more importantly, as people.  That was and still is the one “true North” of Watkins Cross Country, that John McGowan established, and that we all followed.   

Another principle that has come down through “the generations” is that we, as coaches, must be willing to learn, and to change.  Over forty-eight years the science and art of training runners has grown.  We know so much more about the physiology of athletics, and the psychology of runners.  At the core, kids haven’t changed in their desire to belong, to try, and to succeed.  But the stresses and demands on kids are qualitatively different today, than they were back in “the day”.  As coaches, we recognized those changing influences, and adapted.  

Going to Camp

When we first went to camp in 1997, one of the best parts of the experience was that there was almost no cell phone service there.  We had the kids “in the moment”, with no distraction from the “outside” to break their attention.  Now, twenty-five years later, technology has come even to eastern Licking County.  Everything that kids do now, at camp and in life, is part of a “public record”.   There is lots of good from that, but it means that being “in the moment” is an experience many kids never have.  “The moment” is always shared, always interrupted, always includes others not “in the group”.   It’s no good taking kids on a “snipe hunt” today. Someone will “google” snipes.  Every move is subject to “fact checking” and scrutiny.

The one thing not subject to cell phone interference is the running.  Kids (most) don’t run with their cell phones.  It ultimately is more hassle to carry than it’s worth.  And the secret of “bonding” on a cross country team is the shared “suffering” of long runs on hills and dusty roads.  Hours on the road means hours of conversations, some grunted going uphill, some casual while striding along in the sun.  Want to grow close to someone:  run with them, hours at a time, every day.  You may not grow to “love them”, but you will grow to know them.

Camp Memories

Going to camp is nostalgic for me.  When I was the coach, I treasured the early morning walk from the cabin uphill to the lodge.  The sun was just rising, the crows calling out.  And there was often a small herd of deer culling the tender shoots of dew-soaked grass.  It was quiet, before we “rousted” the kids for morning run.  Time for a cup (or two, or three) of coffee, and a moment to contemplate the day.

I didn’t stay overnight at camp this time, but I was pleased that a lone deer came out into the field as I walked near the lodge.  It reminded me of how loaded camp was with stories.  Here’s where Doug “boobytrapped” the shelter for the “capture the flag” game.  There’s where we all lay on the hillside at midnight, watching the Perseid meteor shower.  That’s the path where I started the team on my “run to get lost, run to get found” morning jaunt.  

In the cabin is the bunk where my dog Paige hid as the raccoon came in looking for snacks in the middle of the night.  And that’s the porch where we had so many conversations; about running, about school, about life.  Camp only lasted four days then (three now in an era when school starts in the middle of summer), but it became the inflection point, the end of last season and the beginning of next.

Family

John’s building a team through hard work and hard fun.  Sure that’s a good thing for being successful:  kids will run harder for their team than they would for just themselves.  But more importantly, John is building a cross country “family”, a “family” that’s been going on since 1974.  Three generations share that bond, with the oldest now in their sixties.  Their team experience is forty or more years behind them.  But they would still recognize the “aura” of Watkins Cross Country.  It’s still family.

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
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22

From the Beginning

The United States has always been a nation-divided.  Even at the Second Continental Congress, the differences between New England, the Atlantic colonies and the South were apparent.  They lived different kinds of lives, with different cultures.  It was a struggle to find any kind of unity, even in the face of British troops threatening on many fronts. 

The decision to declare independence was rife with division.  Eight of the fifty delegates never signed the document.  Three states originally held back; Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted no, and New York abstained from voting.  It wasn’t until the final day of debate, that Pennsylvania and South Carolina joined in.  New York didn’t actually commit until August, more than a month after the “Fourth of July”. 

And tradition has it that, as the delegates left the formal signing at the Pennsylvania State House, the senior statesman Benjamin Franklin said:  “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Common Cause

The United States has often been a nation of division as much as unity.  There has always been economic divides, between the “haves” and the “have nots”.  What did Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and John Hancock of Massachusetts have in common?  They both were wealthy men, and the wealth of both was impacted by British regulations and restrictions.  They found common cause not just in the intellectual foundation of their new nation, 

“…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.  That to secure these rights,  governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

They also agreed on the “complaints”.

• “For cutting off our  trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
•  He (King George III) has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns  And destroyed the lives of our people.”

Great Britain was cutting into their wealth, as well as their liberty.

Citizenship

But the ultimate time of division in American history was the Civil War, when a section of the nation determined that they could no longer remain united as states.  It was a battle for power, based in the determination by the minority South that the foundation of their economy, enslavement, would ultimately be outlawed by the majority North.  

But something to remember.  Not every Southern was in favor of secession, and not every Northerner was in favor of waging war to save the Union.  There were abolitionists in the South, there were Copperheads in the North.  And, not unlike our current climate, there were many who simply wanted to live their own lives in peace, but were forced to take sides.

In eighth grade American History we taught that before the Civil War, we were citizens of Ohio, or Virginia, or Texas; not so much the United States.  In my day (back in the late 1960’s) we were taught of the “agony” of Robert E. Lee, forced to choose between the Nation he swore an oath to serve for thirty-two years, or his native Virginia.  Back then, they taught he made a principled choice based on the ethics of his time.  Today, we would look more closely at the enslaved people that he either personally owned or managed for his father-in-law’s estate.

Eighth grade history taught us that the term, “American”, was a result of the Civil War.  That from then forward, “we” were a nation united, the “savior” of “the world” in World Wars One and Two.  

National Media

And I remember teaching specifically, how national media served to “nationalize” our citizens.  It was the “bad” media – “yellow journalism” that convinced our leaders and citizens to go to war against Spain in the 1890’s. Or it was the “good” media of nationwide radio.  Everyone shared in the adventures of “The Shadow” (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.  The Shadow knows!!!).  And Americans also heard the voice of their President, Franklin Roosevelt, in Fireside Chats that reassured them that the government and the Nation cared about their privations in the Great Depression.

We shared as a nation the two World Wars, and the economic highs and lows that came before and after. Unity is shared experience, and as a Nation the United States shared all of those calamities and triumphs together.  Newspapers, telegraphs and telephones, radio and ultimately television served the purpose of nationalizing a culture.  Think about this – why do all the “national” news anchors have the same accent, in a nation with so many variations on speech?  It is because we have our “regional” accent for local use, and a “national” accent as well.

But now we have found that the media that served to help make us a nation, is acting to divide us.  We hear our “news” in the same “accents”, but they tell us wildly different stories.  And while we can (as I’m doing now) sit in the sun in our own backyards and access seemingly all of the information of the world on our phones and computers, we pick and choose sources that match our preconceived beliefs.  Our “news” now is slanted to our differences. Rather than serving to unify, it serves to divide.

Lone Wolf

How big a deal is it?  Yesterday a man, polarized and divided, went out and tried to kill FBI agents in order to fulfill the “destiny” he learned through his media.  He succeeded only in killing himself, but who knows what will happen next.  David Hogg, one of the survivors of  the Parkland school shooting and a founder of March for Our Lives, tweeted: “When (the $%#@) will we stop acting like all these “lone wolves” are lone wolves?”  

They are being “sent” through their media, and they could be packed into more than just “lone wolves” as easily.

Yesterday’s  ”lone wolf” was shot in a cornfield near Wilmington, Ohio.  It was just down the road from the “73 Grill”, a restaurant and bar I’ve eaten in a couple times.  I have family living not far away from that cornfield, and that restaurant.  

Choosing Lines

Someone asked me “which side” of the line I’m on.  I had to think about what that meant.  The Mason-Dixon line was a fairly clear demarcation for the Civil War, but the “lines” for our current divide are less certain.  It is more urban and rural, coastal versus central.  Yet the “lone wolf” shooter of yesterday lives nearby here, in Columbus.   I thought Columbus would be on the “other side” of the line, I guess, the urban, “Blue” side.  But he lived there, and I live here, in “Red” suburban Ohio,  with the MAGA flags down the street.  Where are the lines for our possible Civil War??

Like the Abolitionists in the Confederacy, and the Copperheads in the Union; the lines of our demarcation are blurred.  We are divided by news source, more than anything else.  And Franklin’s statement is a correct today as it was on July 2^nd in 1776:

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

America, to survive our current disunion, must find a way to hang together once again.

Go Bucks!

Jenn and I went out to lunch a few days ago, at the Broadway Pub in Granville.  Jenn had to take a phone call, and I was left watching an old football game on the TV over the bar.  It was a replay of the 2003 National Championship game, one near and dear to the hearts of Central Ohio “Buckeye” fans. Ohio State was playing the Miami Hurricanes, and “everyone” knew that Miami was going to win.  Everybody, that is, but the Buckeyes.

Looking back at that game, Miami had the better athletes and the more talented team.  Eight times out of ten, Miami should win that game.  But sometimes good coaches can make a difference.  The coach of Ohio State then was a mild-mannered man in a vest named Jim Tressel.  And he came up with a game plan that upset the Miami “Hurricane”.  He kept Ohio State in the game, “hanging around” into the fourth quarter, then striking to take the lead. Miami lost their best running back to knee injury, but still came back, scoring a game-tying field goal at the end of regulation.

The game went into two overtimes, filled with controversial calls.  But Miami was playing hamstrung, and ultimately Ohio State won the game and the National Championship.

Disaster

Three years later Ohio State was back in the national championship game again, this time against the University of Florida.  As smart as Tressel’s game plan was for the Miami game, it was a disaster against the Gators.  How bad did things go?  Ohio State’s number one receiver, Ted Ginn Jr., ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown.  He injured his ankle in the victory “celebration” and was out for the rest of the game.  So were the Buckeyes. They lost 41 to 14.

The mark of a good coach is to discover the weakness of their opponent, and then exploit it. That’s what Tressel did against Miami.  The great coaches also realize that their pre-planning isn’t working, and transition to a different strategy in mid-game.  Tressel tried to do that against Florida.  But that’s one of the hardest things to do in coaching, and for the athletes.  It takes all of the pre-planned reactions, and alters them in the middle of the competition.  

I was never a football coach, and it’s not often that I use football analogies for politics.  But I think it’s a good way to think about the 2022 mid-term elections from a tactical standpoint. 

Trumpism

Republicans across the nation are “doubling-down” on Trumpism.  Candidates from Ohio to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania to Georgia, Florida to Washington, are 2020 election “deniers”, Build the Wall supporters, Critical Race Theory haters, and Insurrection apologists.  Republican strategists (like football coaches) are well aware that this strategy won’t attract many undecided voters.  But the Republican Party base is dominated by Donald Trump.  In order to get nominated in the Republican Party, fealty to Trumpism is almost an absolute requirement.  Need examples?  Look at the ten Republican Congressmen who voted to impeach Trump.  So far of the ten, only one is re-nominated by the Party to run in 2022 (Wyoming will decide about Liz Cheney on Tuesday).  

With that kind of “entry requirement”, there’s little room to move to the middle and pickup more undecided voters.  So instead, Republicans must depend on a maximum turnout of their voters in November, and a suppressed Democratic turnout.  If everyone shows up, like 2020, the biggest election turnout in US history, then Democrats should win.  Republicans have to work to make sure that doesn’t happen.

And they are doing a lot to get that done.  Twenty-seven states have made voting harder for 2022.  Even in states that didn’t make major election law changes, Republicans are making practical changes that will making voting harder in Democratic districts.  They are slowing the voting process to increase lines at the polling places, and reducing the number of locations.  All of that may suppress Democratic turnout. 

Pick a Side

Democratic strategists have made their own tactical decision.  They “helped” Republicans chose “Trumpists” as their candidates, actually spending hard-won campaign funds in some Republican races to defeat more moderate candidates.  The theory:  if Republicans are going to abandon the “middle”, then Democrats will do all they can to seize the center and tip the scales in 2022.  Democratic strategists will try to overcome Republican suppression efforts both by driving their base to the polls (the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade will certainly help there) and at the same time by trying to sway the middle.

An example of this is the Ohio Senate election between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican JD Vance. Democrats are trying to paint Vance as a Trumper, an extremist of the right.  Vance isn’t helping himself there. He already has made statements that abortion should be totally banned with no exceptions, and that women in abusive relationships should consider “sticking it out”.  Meanwhile Tim Ryan is portraying himself as an “independent” Democrat, willing to take on his own leadership to represent his constituency.  He’s not  making that up; he ran for Speaker of the House against Nancy Pelosi.  All of that is an effort to appeal not only to the Democratic base, but to the “middle” voter.

High Risks

Like Coach Tressel’s Miami National Championship strategy; the Democratic plan has high risks for high rewards. If they manage to maintain control of the Congress after 2022, they would have defied historic precedence. Democratic success would mark a third win over Trumpism in four elections: one loss in 2016, then wins in 2018, 2020, and 2022.

But a failure would be as catastrophic as the Ohio State loss to Florida in 2006.  Perhaps both the House and the Senate would be in Republican hands, and not just “Republicans”, but Trump Republicans.  It will open the door for Trump, or a Trump-like candidate for President in 2024.  

And even if Democrats succeed in November, the Republicans that remain will be even more Trumpist then before.  

Win or lose, America will be more polarized after November, not less.

Watergate

Forty-eight years ago today,  Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, announced his resignation from office.  After two long years of investigations, Congressional hearings, court cases, protests and counter-protests; Nixon finally took the “easy” way out.  He resigned, not saying he did anything wrong, but that he didn’t have support of Congress to continue his fight.  

I was seventeen at the time.  The Watergate crisis had subsumed my life since the first Congressional hearings in the spring and summer of 1973.  I was convinced that Richard Nixon led a conspiracy. He hid the felonies his campaign committed with his full knowledge. I was right.  He disgraced the Presidency, and he had to go.   I fully expected to spend the next six months, my freshman year in college, watching the second impeachment and removal of a President .

Nixon

So his speech on that August night wasn’t a total surprise.  The actual “news” was leaked earlier in the day.  But it was a pleasant acceleration of justice.  The “long national nightmare” of Watergate, as the incoming President Ford called it, was over.  The United States could focus on something else.  I “raised a glass” that night, to the final triumph of American justice. (Yes, I was underaged – it was champagne, and you can consider this a confession). 

A few weeks later, Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed, from Watergate to income tax evasion.   I was outraged. If we are all equal in the eyes of the law, justice “blind” to status; then Nixon deserved to be “in the dock”. He should suffer the same fate as his Attorney General, his Chief of Staff and his Domestic Affairs Advisor. He should go to jail.  Later on, I better understood Ford’s reasoning. He hoped .to end the focus on Watergate, and avoid the spectacle of a former President  on trial.  

Precedent

That was before Donald Trump.  Looking back over those forty-eight years, my entire adult life, I now see that Ford inadvertently established a precedent. He established that American justice will not be applied to those that reach the highest office in the land.  Of the forty-five men who have held that office (Grover Cleveland counts twice since he served two different terms), there really hasn’t been a concern about their possible criminality.  That is, except for Nixon, who was pardoned.  And now, except for Trump, who has weaponized and transformed the Republican Party to serve as his defense.

Yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Mara Lago, the home of the former President, Donald Trump.  The warrant was to search for papers improperly removed from the White House, in violation of the Federal Records Act and national security statutes.  At least, that’s what we know so far.  But this unprecedented search, after more than a year of negotiations among Trump’s attorneys, the National Archives and the Department of Justice; can’t  possibly just be about old menus, draft speeches, and a letter from Kim Jong-Un. 

Trump himself wasn’t there.  He was in New York, preparing for a deposition with the New York Attorney General about possible civil law violations and his real estate transactions.  The FBI sent “plain clothes” agents, and notified Trump’s Secret Service detail of the warrant.  But Trump, with his usual hyperbole, claimed that the FBI was “laying siege” to Mara Lago, and illegally exercising a political vendetta.

Investigations

The New York Times reports that there was an index one hundred pages long of unclassified documents improperly removed from the White House. More importantly, there was a second index, three pages long, of classified documents.  Perhaps the value of some of those classified documents is so great, and the former President’s position so intransigent, that the only choice was to go and physically get them.

That we know of, Donald Trump is under investigation by a Federal Grand Jury in Washington regarding the insurrection, another Grand Jury dealing with violations of the Records and National Security Acts, a state Grand Jury in Atlanta for election interference, and a state Grand Jury in New York for fraudulent financial dealings.   And of course, the January 6^th Committee continues to investigate, as well.  Documents legally seized by the FBI in their search aren’t just restricted to any one of those investigations.  If they are relevant, they can be shared.

Proof

Executing a search warrant is not “proof” of anything.  But this warrant, a warrant to search the home of this former President, must have been the most carefully scrutinized document ever produced by the Department of Justice.  It would have been cleared all the way to the Attorney General.  It was signed off by a Federal Judge, who agreed that there was probable cause that evidence of a crime was present at the home.  Every one of those officials involved knew exactly the momentous and unprecedented decision they were making.  They all knew that, as Roger Stone would say, they would have “their time in the barrel” for this.  Whatever they were searching for, they were damn well sure it was there, in Mara Lago.

The defense has already begun.  Kevin McCarthy is threatening Attorney General Garland with Congressional investigation if the Republicans regain power next year.  Even Fox News, who were distancing themselves from Trump, led their website with story after story of Republican outrage.  Only deep down in the list was a sole former FBI Special Agent in Charge, saying that there was no way the entire system was politicized, or corrupted.

So I fully expect another year or more of spectacle, and even the possibility of Donald Trump himself on trial.  Unlike Watergate, there seems to be no other way for our nation to get beyond our “long nightmare” of Trumpism, and focus on something else.  But meanwhile, last night, I raised a glass once again. It was legal, this time, and it was beer.  For this minute, Justice remains blind to status, and we are all equal in the eyes of the law,  even a former President.

Where Are You?

So you’re in a meeting where the average age is over sixty-four years old.  There are six  attendees over eighty, and twenty-eight more over seventy.  Near the “average” are thirty-eight members in their sixties. Everyone else are just “babies”:  twenty-one in their fifties, six in their forties, and one really young one at thirty-five.  

Maybe it’s the group meeting at the nursing home, with some of the staff sitting in.  Or maybe it’s the afternoon weekday Mass at St. Theobald’s Catholic Church.  Or, maybe it’s the Bingo game at the Lion’s Club!!

Well, it did seem like they were playing some kind of lame game.  It’s called “Vote-a-Rama”.  One member staggers up the microphone in the middle of the night and proposes “an amendment”, one of dozens.  That member gives a brief speech about how that “amendment” would make things better.  Then another member staggers up, and says why the “amendment” is a terrible idea.

Then they start a roll call vote, beginning with Tammy Baldwin, and ending one hundred names later with Todd Young.  That takes about fifteen minutes or so.  Each of the members wake up long enough to stagger to the front table and say “Yea” or “Nay”. 

Fifty-Fifty 

The results are announced, and the “game” starts all over again.  I’m a little over the “average” age of the US Senate, so I turned C-Span off at 11:30 and headed for bed.  When the dogs woke me up at six, I flipped it back on. Nothing looked different, except different Senators were coming to the microphone with their proposals.  The “Vote-a-Rama” was still going strong.

What is the “Vote-a-Rama”?  Think of it as penance, a punishment for the sin of avoiding the “hallowed” filibuster rule.  In the United States Senate with one hundred members, it takes just fifty-one votes to pass a piece of legislation.  That’s not the hard part.  The Senate has a tradition of unlimited debate, so while it might only take a simple majority of votes to pass something, it requires sixty votes to end debate (end a filibuster) so that you CAN vote on final passage.  In other terms, to get anything actually passed, sixty Senators have to agree to allow it.

In our fifty-fifty Nation, and Senate, it takes a lot to get ten members of the “other” party to agree.  So not much gets done.

Work Around

But there is a “work around” written into the rules, called “budget reconciliation”.  If a bill is about the budget of the United States, and if the Parliamentarian of the Senate agrees that all parts of the bill are “directly budget related”, then that bill can be brought under “budget reconciliation”.  That kind of bill only requires a simple majority to end debate, as well as passage.  And it’s limited to used three times a year, and there’s a “penance” involved for using it.  

What’s the penance?  First, there’s twenty hours, that’s clock hours, of debate, divided between the two parties.  Then there are twenty more hours when any amendment can be offered to the “bill”, including amendments that aren’t “directly budget related” and must be passed by a sixty vote threshold.  Republicans offered thirty different amendments, each with an introductory speech and an opposition response, and all designed to kill the bill.  Each of those amendments had to be separately voted on; thus the seemingly endless number of roll call votes that droned on through the night and into Sunday.

It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, around 2:30 pm, that the final roll was called for the final vote on the bill, the Inflation Reduction Act  – BINGO!!  It passed with fifty Democrats for, fifty Republicans against, and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

On the Floor

What was left “on the floor”?  A proposal to cap the cost of insulin, the primary drug used by diabetics to control their condition, at $35 a month.  Right now, it can cost from $335 to $1000 a month here in the United States, depending on the kind of insurance.  But regardless of the cost, for folks with diabetes, insulin isn’t a luxury. It’s an absolute necessity of life.

The bill proposed that insulin for Medicare patients have the $35 cap.  The Parliamentarian ruled that since that would create a significant reduction in spending, it fit in the “budget related” category.  But a second portion of the bill would have extended that to all Americans, and since that wasn’t a government “spending” issue, the Parliamentarian said that required sixty, not fifty-one votes to pass.

All fifty Democrats agreed, joined by seven Republicans.  But that wasn’t enough.  Medicare recipients are capped, but Americans with private (or no) insurance are not.

Mo-Jo Lost

Which leads to another question – has Mitch McConnell, the “master tactician” of the Republican Senators, lost his “Mo-Jo”?  Twice in the past two weeks he’s left his Republican colleagues with a political mess.  It started with the PACT Act that would benefit veterans suffering from disease and disabilities caused by inhaling military trash burn pit smoke. Last week the vets gathered in front of the Capitol to celebrate its final passage.  But when Democrat Chuck Schumer announced his “deal” with Senator Manchin for the budget reconciliation bill, McConnell told his Republicans to vote against PACT.

Republican Senators voted against helping veterans, and took a political beating for days.  The criticism didn’t stop until the Senate revisited PACT and with Republicans joining in, passed  it handily.  Picking that fight was a lose-lose for McConnell:  he stood against veterans, and then backed down to their pressure.  Chalk a victory up for Schumer, the Democrats, and Veterans.

And then in the heat of the “Vote-a-Rama”, McConnell and his fellow Republicans could have “fixed” the insulin cost crisis.  As much as they didn’t like the overall “Inflation Reduction Act”, regulating insulin costs would have been a “good” thing for the country.  But instead, the Republicans shot it down, by only three votes.  So now Republicans stand against reasonable drug prices for a century-old drug called insulin.  They voted against diabetics, and for the drug companies. 

Lose-Lose to Win-Win

Again, a lose-lose going into the November elections.  While drug companies have lots of money, they don’t have lots of votes – the people do.  And, overwhelmingly, the American people are in favor of reduced drug costs, particularly maintenance drugs like insulin.

Schumer, of course, took the political win from the awkward Republican stand, and then the actual win when the “Vote-a-Rama” finally ended, and the Inflation Reduction Act was passed.  Good news for most Americans – but bad news for Republicans trying to convince the country that Democrats can’t get anything done.

This is another in the Sunday Story Series.  No politics here, just a story from someone beginning life with a Medicare card in his wallet.

 Red-White and Blue Club

I turned sixty-five last September.  This morning I realized that in five weeks, I’ll be sixty-six – so much older it seems, than just “Medicare age”.  And I’ve spent the last couple of months doing “Medicare” kind of things, using my Red-White and Blue Medicare ID card.  

When you first reach “this age”, you get a free medical appointment.  In fact, you are required to participate in the “free” appointment as a condition of getting Medicare.  Since I had my last physical just a couple weeks before my last birthday, I put off getting my “free” one until the summer (or until my physician started warning me about the “dire” consequences of skipping the “introductory” exam).  

Look, I’ve had enough health conditions that I’m a pretty steady, once a year physical kind of guy.   Getting an annual was long on my calendar before I reached Medicare age.  So I scheduled for early in the morning, as usual.  That way when they wanted to do blood tests, fasting wasn’t an issue. I usually don’t eat much in the AM anyway.  As long as they don’t worry about super-high-insanely-tenacious black coffee, I’m a pretty happy guy.  Without the coffee, I’m a danger on the road, and asleep in the waiting room.

State of Head

But what I wasn’t prepared for was “the quiz”.  You see, when you enter Medicare, the physician is required to evaluate your mental state.   They’re searching for signs of dementia, or Alzheimer’s (even if it takes the spell checker to get that right).  So you have to take the test.  First, there are three words – random words like:  banana, sunrise, chair.  The lady testing  just says them, then moves onto other questions.

“Am I dizzy often, do I fall a lot, do I feel safe at home, do I forget where I’m going?”.  Next, it’s the draw the clock test – where do the hands go if it’s 11:10.  Of course, I try to side-track the test (just like every student I ever taught); “what happens when the generation arrives that doesn’t do analog time?”  The tester stumbles for a second, then comes back with, “Well anyone your age should be able to, so draw the clock”.  I carefully suppress the urge to write 11:10, and  put the short hand where 11 goes, and the long hand at 2.  I hope she can tell the difference.

The Big Question

So it’s been a few minutes, and the focus has been on being dizzy (not often), falling (I don’t), getting lost (not that either), safe. (Well there are five dogs, but other than that. Oh, and I do trip over a dog from time to time, especially if I stand up too fast).  And then the entire clock conversation.  But the “BIG” question comes back up  – what were those three words again.  

I hadn’t thought about them, didn’t create a mnemonic to remember them, like the phases of cell replication that my freshman Biology teacher Mr. Sproul taught us – Pre Med at Texas (prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase – with interphase in the middle).  And maybe that’s a clue to “Medicare” age: I can remember Pre Med at Texas, and the five members of the Rolling Stones (Jagger, Richards, Woods, Watts, and Wyman), but for a brief moment there’s this blank in my head, a pause.  I stall – “do they need to be in order?”   (Here’s your test – don’t look back – what were the words??)   Then it’s there:  xxxxx, xxxxx, and my least favorite food of all, xxxxx.  The tester nods, I am cleared from dementia for my first Medicare year: whew!!

Going Slow

Next, it’s onto the ECG, checking out my frequently confused cardiac system.  Remember, it’s only 8 am, and I didn’t work out before I came here.  And I’ve been sitting around for a while.  I lay back on the table, watch the sticky tabs placed on my chest (why, oh why, do they keep those damn things in the refrigerator?) and relax as she hooks up the wires.  She runs the test, no paper rolls anymore, it’s now all onto a laptop.  Then she frowns, and says let’s do that again.  So I get a little drowsier.

It seems my heart rate is at fifty-one, and it’s confusing the computer program.  Now, given the situation, reclined, early morning, not enough of the super-high-insanely-tenacious black coffee in my system, I’m just glad my heart’s breaking fifty.  I run low, from fifty-five years of workouts and low thyroid, and it kicks up just fine when I need it.  To get back to that dizzy question, the better shape I get in, the more often I’ll get dizzy from a “head rush”, standing up too fast.  That’s because I jump up in between beats and it takes a second for the blood to catch up.  Being in shape means fewer heart beats.

We don’t go into any great explanation, but now there’s a new “term” in my chart – “bradycardia”.  Click on the link – what used to be a goal when I was younger now sounds terrible.  It’s really not; just being me, and the Doc isn’t concerned.  It’s not a thing.  But there’s that word.

What Did You Say?

So my Doc, (he’s about thirty-five, I picked one that I hope will outlive me), does the usual exam, listening to my heart and checking the numbers.  He says I’m fine, and wonders if I have any concerns.  I tell him that I sometimes struggle to hear certain sounds, conversations in crowds, and the nine-year-old kid next door.  So he sets me up for a hearing test.  And that becomes the next Medicare “challenge”.  

The last time I was in an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist’s office, I was fifteen and a wrestler.  Bob Rosenthal kneed me in the face during a wrestle-off , and my nose was definitely closer to the right side of my face than the left.  It took surgery, and a couple of weeks off of the mat, but old Doc Sidney Peerless got my nose back headed in the right general location.

So this week I went to an ENT here in Columbus (Peerless was in Cincinnati, and passed away at eighty-four in 2006) to get my hearing checked.  The first thing I noticed:  all of the staff speak loudly and annunciate carefully, not just to me, but to everyone in the room.  I guess if there’s a place to speak up, the “ear doctor” would be it.

Buzzing my Ear

My first stop was for the “dreaded” hearing test.  You go into a sound proof booth and they seal a pair of tight fitting headphones on.  Then the tester goes outside, and you soon hear her disembodied voice through the headphones, giving instructions.  The first series are words, and your job is repeat them back to the tester.  They come in left, right, or both, at a speaking tone or a whisper.  Sometimes there’s static in one ear and a word in the other.  And then there’s the point where the whisper is so quiet, you’re really not sure if you hear it, or just feel it, or it’s imaginary.   Think how foolish you look, repeating words that aren’t even there.  I try to make sure.

Then we switch to tones.  Some are high, some low, loud to soft, and sometimes, it becomes just an ethereal tinkling that might be a sound, or might be just your head messing with you.  When you hear it – say “yes”.  So it’s hours (or maybe ten minutes) of yes-yes-yes-pause-maybe-yes as the tones go back and forth, like a Jimi Hendrix solo in stereo.  

When I practice meditation (not so often recently, I just fall asleep), I focus on one “spot” in the center of my brain, and quiet every other thought.  So here I was, focused on the center of my brain where the tone was just at the faint edge of my hearing.  Enlightenment and Nirvana (the place, not the musical group) couldn’t have been far away, when a firm voice said – “THAT’S IT”.  

I’m Not Listening

My right ear is just fine.  My left ear is fine in the low to medium range.  Medium to high (the exact range of a nine year-old boy) it falls off, but not enough to require a hearing aid.  Why the left and not the right?  I’m left handed, and when I officiate track meets, I have the starting pistol with a .32 caliber black powder shell about three feet from my left ear.  I usually wear electronic hearing “muffs” that surpress the sound, but sometimes there’s no time to get them on.  A couple of years of fifty shots a night, a couple of times a week, and my left ear is getting it.  Not quite “shot” yet – but in definite need of protection.

He says I’ll have trouble hearing when the water’s running, or in a bar.  Well, I’ve been in trouble in bars before.

The doc says make sure the headgear’s on.  I will.

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
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22

False Narratives

Many Americans buy into the story.  Bumbling, old, Joe Biden; stumbling around the White House, somehow just not able to get anything done.  If you’re politics are “right-er”, you might believe he’s being manipulated by the “Progressive/left”, maybe even the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party.  If you’re politics are “left-er”, you know for sure that’s not true.  You see Biden as the proverbial fence sitter, with a leg on each side, incredibly uncomfortable in the middle.

We like to think in generalizations, like the “untouchable” Donald Trump, who is never accountable for anything he did wrong. Or the constantly scheming Hillary Clinton, willing to do anything  to win.  Of course, neither is true.  Trump was the only President of the United States called to task by impeachment not just once, but twice.  He spent four years in office under extreme scrutiny, and now that he’s out, the “heat” is even greater.  

And if Hillary was such a great “schemer”, maybe she should have done exactly what her opponent did.  It wouldn’t take much persuasion to convince her voters that the 2016 election was “rigged”, just as Trump did in 2020.  I’m sure there were people around her that wanted to. And they had to be smarter than the clown-car of lawyers around Trump.  But she didn’t.

Legislation Done

There is an old saying (no – not another one of those essays!) – the proof is in the pudding.  So, with a little less than two years “in the saddle”, what’s the win/loss record for the Biden Administration?

The easiest place to start is in the Congress.  The President signs “bills” into “laws”, but he has a much greater role in passing legislation.  Biden brings one talent to the table that no other President since Lyndon Johnson can claim.  Biden knows how to get things passed through the Senate.

Let’s start with the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, a spending bill that didn’t add to our current inflationary issues.  Remember the “joke of the month” of the Trump Administration – “it’s infrastructure week”?  They said it again and again, but infrastructure never even got onto the floor for debate.   Biden took less than eight months to push it through.  And it wasn’t just roads and bridges. Included were upgrades to our power grids and the essential basics for transitioning to electric-powered cars, and vast improvements in our port capacities.

More Jobs, More Security

And that was after the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package.  We Americans can gripe about inflation costing us our pay raises in an economy with unemployment down to 3%.  It’s easy to forget the 15% unemployment and huge shortages of the Covid pandemic just a few months before.  But the American economy came out of Covid almost as quickly as we went into it. Biden was a big part of that.  Sure gas prices were half of what they are now.  But there was nowhere to go, so gas supplies were high and demand low. Honestly, inflation was inevitable, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, but it was also a tradeoff to avoid a pandemic depression.

And now Congress has passed the Chips Act to increase production of computer chips here in the United States.  That’s not just “another jobs” bill.  It protects the US national security, by  lowering our dependence on Chinese chip production.  And just this week,  the PACT Act, will not only increases veteran health benefits, but recognize their unique sacrifices in exposure to chemical hazards.

Legislation Coming

Coming up:  perhaps a diminished Build-Back-Better, but still the biggest climate change law proposed in American history.   And the bill more than pays for itself, making every corporation worth more than a billion dollars pay a minimum of 15% on its income.   And finally, Congress is doing the obvious.  Every private insurance company in the United States negotiates “deals” for purchasing drugs.  As a user of daily prescription drugs, the difference between my “out of pocket” (about $50) and the monthly retail cost (over $600) is amazing.  

Private insurance companies spend 42% of prescription drug costs.  The second biggest spender is Medicare, at 33%.  Add Medicaid, and the US Government spends 44% of total drug costs (KFF).  But, by law, Medicare and Medicaid are prevented from negotiated the same kind of drug “deals” that the private companies get.  They have to take what the drug companies give them.

This “baby” Build-Back-Better includes allowing the US Government to make its own deal for drug prices, at a huge savings to the American people.   The current plan “on the table”, pays for all of this, and adds hundreds of billions to pay down on the US National Debt. 

Legislation Missing

What’s missing from the Biden scorecard?  Incredibly important voting rights legislation, reaffirming the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond.  While the current majorities in both the House and the Senate are in favor of that, two Democratic Senators are unwilling to “break” the Filibuster in the Senate to get it passed.  What is possible on the voting front?  A bipartisan “repair” bill to fix some of the worse faults revealed after the 2020 election.  That’s the new electoral vote certification act, that already has enough Senate votes to end a filibuster.

And the affirmation legislation, necessitated by the now radically right Supreme Court majority.  What we thought was settled law about abortion and contraception; gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, now all seems “up in the air”.  Congress could pass laws making those rights nationally guaranteed, in fact, that is exactly what the Supreme Court is demanding.  The House has put forward women’s health rights legislation, including legalizing abortions, but the sixty votes in the Senate aren’t there.  There might be some hope for Senate passage of gay marriage legislation, but that’s nowhere near a “done deal”.  

In The World

Biden has led the revitalization of NATO, much in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   And in Ukraine, the United States is the biggest supporter of the Ukrainian forces, holding the line against Russian aggression. 

As ugly as it was, President Biden also ended America’s longest war and got our remaining troops out of the impossible situation in Afghanistan.   Last week, he demonstrated that America’s withdrawal didn’t end America’s involvement in the region.  An “over the horizon,” incredibly precise strike against Al Qaeda killed their leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, on the balcony of a luxury apartment in Kabul.  There were no other casualties, no “collateral damage”.  

And Biden skillfully this week let China know that while we still respect the “One China” principle, the United States supports Taiwan’s autonomy.  His friend, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, demonstrated that resolve in her visit to Taiwan in spite of Chinese protests.

Early Summary

It’s been eighteen months since Joseph R Biden was inaugurated as the 46^th President of the United States.  His ceremony was surrounded by 20,000 National Guard troops. It was a show of force to protect against further Insurrection.  And much of America’s attention is focused on the ongoing efforts to undermine our national tradition of free elections.  Congress, and the Department of Justice, are deepening their investigations into what happened before, and what is happening now.

But that’s not been Biden’s problem.  Despite the political upheaval and the riveting testimony in the January 6^th Committee hearings – Biden’s gotten a lot done.  But there is plenty more to do,  And he’s not even halfway through his first four years.  

Election Day

In several states, yesterday was election day.  Here in Ohio, at least as a Democrat in Pataskala, there wasn’t much to vote on.  There were candidates for the Ohio Democratic Central Committee.  All the Democratic State Representatives and Senators here weren’t on the ballot, there was only  one candidate  running for each seat.  So there’s wasn’t much to “drive” me to the polls.

But in Michigan and Missouri, Kansas and Arizona there were massively important elections.  

Referendum on Abortion

Let’s start with Kansas.  With the end of Roe v Wade, The Republican legislature of Kansas wanted to ban abortions in the state.  But the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution guaranteed the right of women to choose their health care, including abortion.  So the legislature decided to put a Constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot, allowing them to ban abortions.  

They did it in the August primary election, the least “attended” election in almost every state.  Like the failed strategy of “passing school levies” when nobody votes, the idea was that the Amendment would slide on through with only 10% of the voters showing up.

But Kansans showed up in droves, rivaling a Presidential election.  And the people of “red” Kansas, conservative Kansas, the Kansas of Bob Dole, did what they often do.  They surprised us.

Kansas has a Democratic Governor.  That’s great, but it has more to do with the fact that she ran against Kris Kobach, a candidate even the Republicans couldn’t stomach.  But to say Kansas is all Republican, all the time, just isn’t true.  And the people of Kansas made a statement yesterday.  While many of them might not support abortion, they voted to keep “choice” in the Kansas Constitution.  And they did  58.8% to 41.2%, with a turnout rivaling the 2012 Presidential election.

History Lesson

History tells us that the Party who wins the Presidency, loses seats in the Congress in the next election.  All of us history teachers know the “drill”; with the Senate tied and Democrats having a five vote margin in the House, Republicans should take over the Congress.  But the results of “red-red” Kansas should be both a warning and a lesson.  For Republicans, a warning:  the Roe v Wade overrule is going to drive folks to the polls, and they are going to vote against the Republicans who fought for it.  For Democrats, a lesson:  be smart, campaign against the “extreme” Supreme Court.  Hang it on the Republicans. 

But in Michigan, Missouri and Arizona; there was another lesson to be learned.  The Republican Party remains in the thrall of Donald Trump, the “Stop the Steal” lie, and willing to curtail democracy to maintain power.  In state after state, “dedicated Trumpers” were nominated to run for office, even against more moderate Republicans. 

Extremists

In Arizona, Mark Finchem, an avowed election conspiracy theorist who was on the steps of the Capitol participating in the Insurrection of January 6^th, is the Republican candidate for Secretary of State.  In states, the Secretary of State is the chief election official.  So now, in Arizona, one of the two candidates to be in charge of elections, believes that Arizona’s 2020 election, so often recounted and even “Cyber-Ninja’ed” and found to be correct, was stolen.

And in many other elections in Arizona and others, the Republicans nominated the most extreme candidates possible.  So voters in November will have a clear choice in those elections.  They can choose a 2020 Trumper, a Stop the Steal conspirator, a pro-Insurrectionist; or they can vote for the Democratic candidate.  And that’s exactly what the Democratic Party wanted.

Democrats want to run against the Supreme Court and for the Roe ruling.  Democrats want to run on what many would call “libertarian” values, letting people choose how they live their personal lives.  And the Supreme Court is giving them the issue, allowing state governments to determine who can make those choices, and who can’t.  

Foolish

But most of all Democrats would like to do what they did in 2018.  They want to run against Donald Trump.  In 2018 you might remember the “slow-motion blue Tsunami” that brought Democrats to power in the House and Nancy Pelosi back to the Speakership.  That was all a reaction to the 2016 election of Trump, and fell in line with the historic trends mentioned earlier.  And now with the nomination of so many Trump supporters to run as the Republican candidates, Democrats are getting exactly what they hoped for.

In fact, in some cases Democrats did more than hope. In Michigan (and other states) the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee played “hardball”, and actually ran commercials designed to support the most extreme Republican candidates.  Their reasoning was simple:  any Republican elected to Congress was going to vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, and generally back the Republican Party.  So Democrats might as well help Republicans choose the candidate easiest for a Democrat to defeat in the general election.  

So they’ve got it:  folks like Finchem and Lake in Arizona, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Hershel Walker in Georgia, and even JD Vance in Ohio.  Democrats can contrast their moderate to Progressive views, to Trumpian extremes.

“The die is cast” as Julius Caesar would say.  2022 will be another election of extremes in the what historically will be called the “Trump Era”.  Democrats will likely quote Lincoln:

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Democrats can hope that it’s past time for all the people to be fooled.  Or to quote another great statesman, Peter Townsend of the Who, “We won’t get fooled again”.