Category: Uncategorized

Hard to Say

There is a TV  commercial that aired during the Olympic Trials (Gymnastics, Swimming, and Track and Field; a lot to watch).  It has folks who speak English as a second language, first talk about the “hardest things to say in English”.  Several talk about linguistics, the difficulty of saying the word “sixth”; and the words the sound the same, like “scissors” and “Caesar”,  but mean two different things.  But then the topic changes, to the hardest emotional messages to say in English. “Goodbye”, “I was wrong”, “I am sorry”, and “I love you” are some of the phrases so tough to say.

Well, I need to say something that is incredibly difficult to say; both to you, and to myself.  I was a fool.  I was a fool to expect anything different from the Supreme Court than what we got yesterday. A fool, to believe that this Supreme Court would stick to what they believed.  I thought that they believed in the Founding Fathers, and in the sanctity of what the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights said.  In fact, I thought that was the entire basis of “originalism”. The law: their theory that the law is “as written” with the “original intent” of the authors. For the past fifty years, I believed that was their guiding principle.

No Man Above the Law

And I had a further “foolish conceit”.  I thought that there was a level of our national leadership who understood that MAGA-Trumpism was simply a “story” to gain votes.  I anticipated that the Justices on the Supreme Court would pay lip service to Trump, but would stand with the Founding Fathers, their “original” legal foundation.  But again, I was a fool.

Yesterday the United States Supreme Court, a topic I’ve spent a lot of time on for the past few weeks, ruled that the United States in NOT a Nation where everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.   The Supreme Court created a whole new status of American:  one who is literally immune from the law in his/her official capacity; the President of the United States.  As noted conservative jurist Michael Luttig stated:  “Today our country is changed.  We are no longer a Nation where no man is above the law”.

Founding Fathers

There was no need for this.  The Nation managed to get through two-hundred and thirty-six years of Presidents, from Washington to Lincoln to the Roosevelts to Barack Obama, without criminal immunity.  And we even managed to get through “bad” Presidents;  Hoover, Filmore, Harding and Richard Nixon.  But now, all the rules are changed.  A President is even “presumed immune” in their private conversations and public speeches, even if they are acting in “bad faith”.  

And, looking back at the Founding Fathers themselves, there is no question.  Their greatest fear was the unchecked Executive, the President who “would be king”.  There is absolutely no way that Madison, Washington, Franklin, or even Alexander Hamilton; would have wanted a President to have some form of blanket immunity from criminal responsibility.  Today’s “Originalists” on the Supreme Court did the thing they argued most against.  They “legislated” and created a Constitutional right out of “whole cloth”.

Signs

So how did those six Justices, led by their Chief, John Roberts, author of the decision, find themselves as “living Constitutionalists”, their own arch-enemy?  

This is the center of my own foolishness.  The signs were all there:  Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife was a leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement.  She organized, called, and donated to the attempt to stop the legal transfer of power after the 2020 election.  And Justice Samuel Alito literally flew the flag of “rebellion” outside of his homes during January of 2021.   They are true believers in the fundamental “canons” of MAGA lore:

• The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump
• The Justice Department is being used to keep Trump from gaining office again
• Joe Biden is an illegitimate President of the United States
• The entire “main-steam media” is arrayed against Trump, and the United States voter
• “The left” is only interesting in using minorities to gain political power, and wants to create a socialist state, antithetical to their view of what America is.

Sure, I figured Thomas and Alito were that way.  But I didn’t think that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and most of all, Chief Justice Roberts were “all-in” for MAGAism.  I thought, wrongly, that they would stand for their own “originalist” ideology.  I was a fool.

Foolish Ways

And I keep falling back into my “foolish” ways.  After the stunning announcement by the Court yesterday, you would have expected the entire Republican leadership to jump on board, with statements from Speaker Johnson to Chairman Jordan, to Leader McConnell, praising the decision.  But we heard little from them yesterday, and my “head” reasoned that they see the reckless and dangerous immunity decision for what it is. But they don’t.

They’ll fall in line, probably today.  From Johnson to “Old Turtle” McConnell, they too are believers.  And as soon as I get that through my foolish head, then I can think more clearly about the existential threat America faces today.  It’s not Trump:  as the Bible says in Second Corinthians (or, as Trump said, “two” Corinthians) he is “the imperfect vessel”.   But with his victory in 2024, they will “fill” his Presidency with their plans to alter America to some land very different to the one we live in today.  It’s not “just” the 2025 Project, but it’s the alternate vision of America that it represents, a vision so powerful that even the Justices of the Supreme Court are willing to give up their own fundamental principles to achieve it.

Ain’t Your Side

There is no middle ground.  America is so polarized, that even the Supreme Court is now firmly on a side.  Whatever you used to think about America’s leaders standing for something more than “what’s good for them”, stop sharing my foolishness.  There is no center, no Roberts standing in between right and left.  There is only victory or defeat in November for one side or the other.  

Depend on one other thing:  the Supreme Court is not an “impartial arbiter”.  They too are on a side. And, if you’re a Democrat, if you see a future America as a multi-cultural nation; they ain’t on your side.  Don’t be a fool.

Lost Faith

I’ve lost faith in the Supreme Court.  They used to be the final arbiter, who would do “what’s right” for the American people and the law.  Sure, there were the “bad” decisions:  Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson and Korematsu, for example. But the Court ultimately rectified them.  And even when the Court split down party lines in Bush v Gore and determined who the President of the United States would be, it was easy to say that they had to make some call, or there would be no President at all.  

But now there’s the actions of Justices Thomas and Alito, flaunting their immunity from codes of conduct and accepting millions of dollars in gifts. (It makes the behavior that caused Justice Abe Fortes to resign in the 1960’s; penny-ante.) And there’s the “deconstruction” of the administrative state by this Federalist Society majority, over-ruling the “Chevron” case this week. Their actions make it clear. 

 This Court has an ideological agenda, beyond and outside the law.  It can be depended on to drive our Nation back to the “bad old” 1950’s in every way imaginable. (Or, perhaps worse, forward to the “2025 Project”).  In the end, the “Robert’s Court” will bear the same stain as the “Taney Court” of the 1850’s; the one that took the wrong side before the Civil War.  This Court (Justices Kagan, Jackson and Sotomayor excepted) is on the “losing side” of the arc of the American moral universe bending towards justice.

Perfidy

That doesn’t get into the absolute lies that Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch told in their Senate hearings.  They all pledged to pay respect to precedence, to the rule of “stare decis”. But, they clearly do not respect the past, unless “stare decis” only applies to laws passed prior to 1860.  Look out Sherman Anti-Trust Act, they’re coming for you next! 

And it doesn’t include the perfidy of Senator Mitch McConnell, who refused to allow President Obama’s legal nominee for the Court to have a hearing, then rammed through President Trump’s nominee in less than six weeks.  Were McConnell’s legislative machinations “legal”? Unfortunately, they were.  But they were not in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution, or the “norms” of American government and Senate.

Franklin Roosevelt had it right in the late 1930’s.  The Court is stale, dominated by an ideologic legal theory that seeks to undo our modern world.  And every Justice is appointed for life, with no Constitutional way to remove them or force retirement, short of death or behavior so egregious that two-thirds of the Senate would agree to convict on impeachment (something beyond possibility in our polarized age).  

Reform

Federal Judges can take “senior status”, a form of working retirement, at sixty-five years of age with fifteen years of service.  And in the next year, we will have four Justices of the Supreme Court reach seventy.  They are appointed for life.  They can’t be forced to quit. 

 But there is no Constitutionally assigned number of justices on the Court.  Nine Justices is simply a “number”, set by statutory law.    That number has been both fewer and greater in the past (the precedent).  So, the simple answer is this:  for every Justice seventy or older, the current President can appoint an additional Justice to the Court.  The number of nine Justices is just a law, a law that can be changed.   If President Biden could do this – there would be four new Justices on the Court next year, four Justices to balance the Federalist cabal that is now altering our Nation; four Justices to reassert the modern American view of citizenship and personal rights. 

 All it would take, is a majority of the House, a majority of the Senate (willing to break the filibuster rule), and the signature of the President.  And for those who decry this idea as a “politicization” of the Court, that ship already sailed.  It sailed when McConnell pulled his shenanigans, denying Garland a hearing, then rammed Barrett through.  It’s time for Democrats to “ante up”, and get in the “Supreme Court” game.   And it’s not a new idea – checkout the “Judicial Reform Act of 1937”.   In 2025, we deserve a “New Judicial Deal”.  

Just one more reason that the election of 2024 is so important.

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series.  No politics here, just some stories about life, camping, and “Camp Mornings”.  

Dogs

It all starts with the dogs, of course.  I spent a lot of this spring getting up early, travelling to a track meets in New Concord or Dayton or Logan or somewhere.  I got our five dogs in a cycle:  get up by six, the breakfast rituals (meds with carrots and cheese, then breakfast, then the post-breakfast appetizers of more carrots and finally a treat) done by six forty-five.  I’d need to be on the road by seven-thirty or so.  

But now, it doesn’t matter that it’s summertime and we could all sleep until ten.  The exact time is 6:08, that’s when Louisiana lets me know that he’s ready; to go out, to get meds, to eat breakfast, to be warmed up with a big rub and a kiss or two.  6:08, not 6:10 or 6:05:  it’s time to get up – “OWW-ROO!!”.

And after all of the rituals, in the end I’m way too awake to go back to sleep. So in the midst of all of that, I perform the most important act of my day – I make the first pot of coffee.  So now, I’m up.  But today, it was all worth it.  Because when I let them outside for the third time, I went out with them.  And I got to experience a “Camp Morning”.

Scouts

I grew up in the Boy Scouts.  When I first started at eleven years old, my troop went on a campout every month, rain, shine or sub-zero temperatures.  And every morning on the camping trip, I’d wake up, snug in a sleeping bag, to the sound of the “old men” and older Scouts around the campfire, talking quietly about whatever came to their attention that morning.  I could never figure it out back then; why were those guys up so early? 

So like all the other Tenderfoot Scouts, I’d straggle out from our canvas tent, sleep in my eyes, boots untied, and wander off to the woods or the “Kybo” (the outhouse, often with multiple seats, “two-holers” or “four-holers”, just like in ancient Rome).  I knew as soon as I returned my “tasks” would begin:  find firewood, police the campground, help with breakfast, pack up my gear.  The only exception was on the really cold winter camps, then I was allowed to “hang-out” by the fire for a bit, turning slowing like a roasting pig to make sure I re-heated evenly from the bitter cold night.

Woodland Trails

And then there was summer camp, two weeks at a Scout Camp in Western Ohio called “Woodland Trails”. (The Scouts sold Woodland Trails just last year to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  Makes me want to take the Jeep over to Gasper-Somers Road, where I learned to drive a stick-shift).  They let us set up in what looked like Civil War vintage “wall tents”, with painted beer boxes under our cots to stow gear.  We didn’t need too much:  a couple of pairs of Scout shorts, some Troop T-shirts, socks and underwear.  And, of course, a “full dress” Scout uniform for special occasions.  

At eleven years-old, a couple of T-shirts could last the whole week.  And if they got too bad, a rinse and line dry besides the swimsuit would do the trick.  Scout camp at that age was all about the basics:  how to build and start a campfire, discover what plants were edible (and which weren’t – hopefully not be trial and error).  We learned first aid and canoeing and how to lash together large structures that didn’t fall over.  I set the “mile-swim” record and learned “lifesaving”.  We walked everywhere, and when we weren’t walking, we were hiking around and learning the rudiments of backpacking.

Camp weeks became a summer ritual in my life, from eleven until I was in my early twenties.  By then, I was backpacking all over the country, both with Scout groups and with my “packing” buddies.  And one of the things I discovered was the answer to the mystery of why all of those old guys were up at dawn, hanging out by the campfire they quickly built (or re-lit), and making that first pot of coffee.  

First Light

There’s nothing like the world right before it wakes up.  The air is still, not yet filled with the shouts of Tenderfeet discovering a garter snake in the middle of the path, or the inevitable barked orders of that fourteen year-old Patrol Leader trying to figure out how to actually lead.  The birds are chirping, but in that quiet, “hey we’re just getting up too” mode.  And in the right place (like more recent cross country camps we had at nearby Camp Falling Rock) there would be deer grazing just in the field, not concerned yet about the few humans moving slowly about.  

The world is still, the day is all anticipated, not yet started.  It’s the few moments when there’s still time to contemplate, to sip that first cup of dark, black, coffee (no additives for me, I take my coffee “barefoot”, thank you).  It’s just a time to breathe, and let the day come to you, instead of charging out from the get-go.  By the time I was in my late teens, I was out there with the “old men”, hanging by the campfire, joining in that early ritual of adult camping.

The Back Deck

This morning I went out with the dogs.  There was a rain last night, that drove the eighty degree humidity out of the air.  It was cool/comfortable at 6:30 on Sunday morning, sitting on the back deck here in Pataskala.  There weren’t many cars on State Route 16 yet, and Louisiana hadn’t found any squirrels to chase down.  While there were no deer in our backyard (anymore, that would be way too much for these dogs);  I’m sure they were in the field across the road. 

The quiet was there, the anticipation of a good day, the moments when I could just sip my coffee, and let the day come to me.  This Sunday morning I had a Camp Morning, at least for a few minutes.  It’s a great way to start.

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
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23
• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24
• Season’s Over – 6/22/24
• Camp Morning – 6/30/24

Debate Results

Frank Luntz is a well-known Republican pollster.  You can count on him to slant his findings to fit his partisan views.  Last night, after the CNN Presidential debate, Luntz asked his “focus group” the following questions.  “How many think that Trump won the debate?”.  No one in the group raised their hand.  “How many think Biden lost?”   All hands went up in agreement.

Much as I dislike Luntz, in this one case, he’s right.  President Joe Biden had “one job” last night, show America that he was up to the task of defeating Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential election.  We hoped, we believed; that the President would show that even at eighty-one years old, he still has the “juice” to do the “one job”.  He failed miserably. His performance was as bad as I’ve seen from any candidate for the highest office in the land.  In more than a half-century of Presidential debates, the only thing that comes close was in 1992, when Admiral James Stockdale, running as Vice President for third party candidate Ross Perot, could only utter one-word answers – notably the term “gridlock”. 

Liar or Old Man

Trump lied, over and over again.  The CNN moderators determined not to try to fact-check his lies, another job that then fell to President Biden.  No excuses:  Biden looked like a confused “old man” on the debate stage.  He struggled to put a coherent thought together.  The sheer volume of falsehoods seemed to overwhelm him, throw him off message, and sent him searching for responses.  But all that does not “excuse” Biden’s failure.  

What is America left with?  A President who lies so much, there’s no time left to correct him.  A President who made it very clear that he is running to get his “retribution” against his enemies, who demonizes immigrants and cozies up to our enemies.  A President who is a factual felon, a criminal? Or do we elect an “old man”, who seems to be able to govern, but struggles to put it together enough to lead.   

Joe’s Back

California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, is a Democrat who appears to be running for President in 2028.  He is a Biden “surrogate”, going around the Nation in support of the President.  Last night, Newsom made it clear where he stands in 2024:  “You dance with the one who ‘brung’ you.”  Joe Biden had a horrible night, a terrible public failure.  But that one night shouldn’t wipe out his decades of service, his obvious leadership in achieving one of the best legislative histories of an American President, his universal concern for the American people. Newsom said; “Joe Biden’s had our back, now it’s time for us to have his”.  

Biden walked off of the debate stage onto a rally stage – and looked, acted, spoke, completely normal.  He was a “Happy Warrior” in front of the crowd, joking and laughing and making important points clearly.  The choice of what happens next rests solely with him.  If he decides to resign from the job of “running for President” and release his convention delegates, then the Democratic Party has a crazy month ahead of it.  There hasn’t been that kind of “open” convention since the 1920’s.    It would have to unite behind another candidate, one who can lead the existential fight to defeat Trump and MAGA’ism:  Vice President Harris, Governor Newsom, Governor Whitmer, Secretary Buttigieg – who knows.

Or Biden can soldier on, now with one more huge hurdle to clear.  He must convince the American people that he is “up” for both jobs:  defeating Trump and running the Nation.  No amount of reassurance from staff, friends, surrogates, or media will solve that problem.  Biden must “show us”.   

Get It Right

It’s June, four months before the Presidential election.  A lot will happen before November.  Donald Trump, will be sentenced for thirty-four felony convictions in July 11^th.  There will be conventions, there will be daily speeches and interactions, plenty of opportunities for Biden and Trump to show who they are.

I was a coach.  One of the hardest decisions I had to make was when a “star” failed.  Was it time to change, to pull him from the lineup?  Or was it time to “have his back”, depending on him to regain his “mojo” and help our team win?   That decision is far more difficult, when ultimately the “coach” in this situation is also the “star”.  But we’ve trusted Joe Biden with the Presidency, and with the role of saving the Nation from MAGA’ism.  Failure in that task, is not an option, and he knows it better than anyone.  I guess, (and if that sounds shaky, it is), we need to trust him this one more time.  It’s his decision, it’s Jill’s decision, it’s his closest advisors decision.  I’ve got his back, either way.

But they better get it right.

Decision Days

The Supreme Court of the United States released their decisions on two cases Wednesday.  The first is Murthy (US Surgeon General) v State of Missouri . It’s about the Federal Government’s ability to “advise” social media platforms about posts that are factually inaccurate.  The Missouri Attorney General aimed the suit at the Biden Administration’s reaction to false Covid information. But the issue is much broader. It includes the FBI advising social media platforms about Russian disinformation efforts (like those that occurred during the 2016 election).  

The Court ruled that Federal agencies advising the platforms about false and misleading information is NOT an abridgement of the Media companies “corporate” First Amendment freedom of speech.  That’s an important consideration going into the 2024 election cycle, and in dealing with possible future pandemics.

The Court split six to three.  Chief Justice Roberts assigned the opinion to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She wrote for the Chief, herself, and Justices Kavanaugh, Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor.  Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas dissented. They claimed the First Amendment right of corporations applies not just to laws, but also to Federal pressure in the form of “advising”.  

The second decision is an issue of state versus federal law regarding state officials accepting gifts. The Court, six to three, ruled that the Federal law on bribery doesn’t apply to “tips” or “fees” given to public officials without a direct quid-pro-quo. I’m sure they were thinking about Justices Thomas and Alito’s actions at the time.

Wrong Button?

Later in the afternoon, the Court “accidentally” released their decision on the Idaho abortion law case. After the Dodds case was decided and Roe was overturned, Idaho wrote the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. It was so restrictive that even women at risk for their health, organs, and even their lives were unable to get treatment.

That violated a Federal law requiring emergency departments to provide life and health saving “standards” of care. Groups sued in Federal District court to stop Idaho’s law. The District upheld Idaho, and the state then asked the Supreme Court to skip the appellate level and hear the case directly.

It takes four Justices to agree to hear a case, but five justices to reach a decision. After all of the hearings, the Court is “enjoining” Idaho from enforcing the state law, then sending the case back to the District court for re-hearing and Appeals. Basically, the Supreme Court is saying – we shouldn’t have taken the case in the first place.

How did this get released? It looks like a clerical error. Someone hit the wrong button. The decision was immediately taken down, so we’ll see if it appears on Thursday or Friday. If it stands, it’s a small short-term victory for pro-abortion folks, but not at all determinative.

Hold Your Breath

What’s missing?  The two seminal cases dealing with ex-President Trump and the Insurrection.  One case will determine if the President has immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. The other will decide whether the law used to prosecute many of the protestors and Trump for disrupting a Federal proceeding is being applied correctly.  They’re both incredibly significant and timely. Both have direct bearing on the 2024 Presidential election, and the multiple indictments Trump faces.  

Both of these cases have been “hanging fire” for months.  Why didn’t the Court see fit to “expedite” these important decisions, and let the legal process continue to play out?  The Federal cases against Trump are stalled, waiting for a decision, either way, from the Court.  And that’s the point.

The Court will release decisions Thursday, and more again on Friday.  I would be shocked if the Court’s decisions on the two “Trump” cases came out Thursday. It’s the day of the first Presidential debate.  I believe the Court is hanging onto these, in a desire to take the Federal Court system out of the 2024 election as much as possible.  Ultimately, the majority on the Court doesn’t want the Federal charges against Trump determined prior to November. They don’t want the Court seen as “making the Presidential decision”.  So posting their decision(s) Thursday, up-staging the Presidential debate regardless of what the decisions say, just seems far too “political” for this divided Court.

Come Friday

Which leaves us waiting until Friday morning (at least) to learn the results of the immunity case.  It’s always dangerous to “predict” the Supreme Court, but after listening to the oral arguments on Presidential immunity, I suspect that the decision will be six Justices to three or even seven to two.  I can’t imagine that there’s a majority of the Court in favor of an unlimited  “get out of jail” card for a sitting President.  If they rule in favor of that, then Joe Biden could do literally anything he wants to do.

I suspect there may be a small, carefully drawn area of foreign policy where the Court might consider some immunity, but beyond that, the majority will vote to hold even a serving President as criminally accountable for her/his actions.  My guess:  the Chief Justice writes the majority opinion, with perhaps a concurrence or two from the more liberal judges narrowing immunity even more.  And then I expect a scathing dissent from Justices Alito and Thomas.  And, my best guess is the Court has waited for that dissent for weeks. That created the delay that served Trump so well, pushing his Federal trials until after November.

Come November

Why has the majority allowed this critical case held so long?  Because, in the end, they see the issue of Donald Trump and Democracy as “too important” to determine by Court or trial.  Instead, they want to allow the voters of the United States to make that final call.  

After the election, assuming Biden is the winner, the Court will move to defend the democratic voting system, and to allow Trump to be held accountable.  (If Trump wins on the votes, there won’t be a need to defend the voting system.  Biden and Democrats will accept the legal results). Until then, I expect the Justices will drop the decision out “the back door” of the Court on Friday morning.  It’s a short hop from the Court Building to Union Station: the Justices will catch the noon train out of town for the summer. 

Modern Journalism

Julian Assange, the very definition of a modern internet journalist, is out of jail.  He flew to the North Mariana Islands.  Why there, a single spec of dry land in the vast Pacific north of Guam called Saipan, infamous from World War II? Saipan has the one thing that Assange needed . It has a US Court. (The US has judicial jurisdiction left over from their World War II occupation).  He made a deal with the US Department of Justice.  Assange pled guilty to charges of aiding an American soldier (Chelsea Manning) to reveal classified documents and received a five year sentence.  And since he’s already served five years in jail in Great Britain, awaiting extradition to the US, he  is now “free” in his native Australia.

Julian Assange, may be responsible for the death of men and women who helped the United States as informants, revealed in his “journalism”.  He published the Russian hacked Democratic Committee computer information in 2016.  So, if nothing else, Assange has some responsibility for the Presidency of Donald Trump.  Assange definitely put US secrets out in public.  Not just a few, but millions of pages of documents.

Assange is a “hero” to those who are against the United States, to Republicans who wanted to embarrass the Democrats, and to Russians who used his material to advance their cause worldwide.  He’s a “maverick”, a man convinced that nothing should be kept secret.  Sunlight cleanses all (or bleaches everything white).  In our conspiratorial world, his view appeals to many.  

Rip it Off

And in his five years in British prison, plus seven years in self-imposed imprisonment in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, he has been a foreign policy thorn in the side of  President Obama, Trump and Biden.  This plea deal “rips off the bandage”, furthering US relations with Assange’s native Australia, and lets the British breathe easier (Assange was popular in the UK). 

Here’s my “dream”. He lands in Saipan, and is “adjudicated” by the Court.  He then gets on a private plane, free to fly home to Australia.  Somewhere over the Pacific, maybe near Howland Island (where Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937) his plane just…disappears…along with Assange.  But dreams are just wishes: Assange is a free man walking in Canberra, Australia today.

I believe in the freedom of the press, and the power of journalism.  And I remember the “Pentagon Papers”, stolen from the Department of Defense and given to the Washington Post to prove that the Pentagon and the President knowingly lied to the American people about Vietnam.  But those papers didn’t get anyone killed.  They embarrassed the government, and furthered  public opinion against the war.  Chelsea Manning is no Daniel Ellsberg, and Julian Assange and Wikileaks ain’t Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post, either.

Anti-Hero

He’s Australia’s problem now.  No doubt, he’ll try to revive Wikileaks, where purloined secrets go to be revealed.  The difference now, twelve years later, is that in our current climate of “alternative facts” no one knows whether the secrets are real, or just some “dream” created to gain clicks and internet sales revenue. 

Assange vows to make every secret public, no matter how he got them.  He takes no responsibility for the consequences; if he gets it, the whole world sees it.  And even worse, he not only published information, but he worked with Chelsea Manning to break the passwords to steal it.  When he crossed over to active espionage, he lost all hope of having “Freedom of the Press” protect him.  He’s just a spy, a saboteur.  Seven years exile in the embassy, and five years in jail,  really isn’t enough.  

Grim Reaper

President Biden was at the Camp David Retreat last weekend.  He took the time to prepare for this Thursday, the first 2024 Presidential Debate.  I know, it’s exactly what we’ve all been waiting for.  The eighty-one year old Biden will debate against the seventy-eight year old Trump, in spite of the fact that neither has been nominated by their Party for President, yet.  It’s more than four months before the election, in the middle of summer and the baseball season.  But it just underscores our reality.  

Barring the “Grim Reaper” making a surprise appearance, both this President and the last one will be the major party nominees come August.  In fact, Biden will be the nominee before the Democratic Convention even begins, thanks to Ohio’s refusal to allow him on the ballot after his formal nomination. There will be a national telephone vote by the Democratic delegates prior to the arbitrary deadline set by Ohio’s Republican legislature.

Binary Choice    

If you didn’t want a rematch of 2020, so sorry.  If you were hoping for “new blood” on either side, you’ll have to wait another four years.  And if you don’t want the “binary choice”; Trump v Clinton, Trump v Biden; too bad.  Two old men are running for President.  Each side will try to convince you that their opponent is “enfeebled” by age.  There will be deep fakes, AI enhanced “proof” that Biden, or Trump, has lost it.  The reality is that both still have their minds.  But, like any old men, there are “gaps”; lost words, and misplaced names.  Hell, I’m fifteen years younger and it already happens to me.  

And what of the “other” candidates?  The third party run of Robert Kennedy Junior hit a little snag.  He can’t get on the ballot in several states.  And besides, ever since Kennedy confessed that a “worm” ate part of his brain, his poll numbers have slithered down.  For those “old folks” with good memories (better than Bobby’s), it’s kind of like when Ross Perot said that black hooded operatives invaded his home and threatened his daughter’s wedding in the middle of the 1996 campaign.  True or not, if you sound like a crackpot, voters will think you’re a crackpot:  worms ate my brain.

Cornell West is still out there, as well as the Democrats least favorite candidate, Jill Stein.  And if you missed it (and you probably did), the Libertarian Party booed Trump off of the stage, then nominated Chase Oliver.  All told, Americans have the right to vote for whoever they choose, or not vote at all, in November.  But our reality is, one of those two old men is going to be the President, and you have a choice, a binary choice, between them.  Any other (or no) vote is simply dodging the question.

Issues

So back to the issue at hand:  the debate on Thursday night.  CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate with strict rules.  There is no audience; and microphones will be turned off when the other candidate is “up”.  Will the mics be turned off when time expires; will either candidate be allowed to “filibuster”?  That remains to be seen.

What can you expect?  Somewhere along the way, Biden will say the words “Convicted Felon”.  And somewhere else, Trump will say the word “Hunter”.  If you have those on your bingo card, it’s a good start.  Trump will claim that the border is out of control.  He’ll insinuate that all of those illegal migrants will rape you daughters, or worse, someday vote for Biden.  Biden will say “come on, man”, then talk about Trump torpedoing the Congressional immigration deal. 

Trump will claim that he could bring peace to Ukraine in a few days.  Biden will say that Trump is just shilling for his “buddy” Vladimir Putin.  And the word “Chiy-nah” will come up, probably from Trump, and the word “abortion” will certainly come up from Biden.

Visions of America

In the end, Biden will try to show that America is moving forward.  Inflation is and unemployment are down, wages are going up, and that he is responsible for the best Covid recovery in the world.  And, in the end, Trump will paint a picture of America in decline, with dangerous cities filled with (dark) evil people, and a disastrous economy that only “he” can fix.   Both will predict the end of the American experiment if the other is elected.  At least one of them will be right.

Not ready for your first dose of binary choice?  Like it or not, they’ll be on your screens come Thursday.  My advice: don’t wait for the late-night talk show hosts (or the morning-drive radio shows) to determine what happened.  Check out the debate, and try to stay awake.  Remember, it’s probably harder for them, than it is for you!

This is a sort-of Sunday story.  It’s the story of why there’s been fewer essays recently here on Our America, and what I’ve been doing instead.

Officiating

“Track season” ended this week.  After over five months of officiating track, and then another month of coaching at pole vault camps, the season finally came to an end.  I put my equipment up in the rafters for a well-earned rest.  The tapes, cones, “measure stick” and level will come back out come next December.  But for now – it’s time for a break.

May and June got pretty crazy.  I officiated twenty-one pole vault competitions in thirty-one days, and served as an official in two other meets as well.  I know it was a lot; Jenn started talking about how it felt like I was coaching again.  Even I started feeling that way – especially when the heat set in.  The first week of May I remember shaking from cold, soaking wet in Lancaster (a total failure of old Gore-Tex rain gear).  But after that, the goal became how much Gatorade I could consume in a competition.  It’s no good if the “official” starts getting dizzy from the heat.  Especially in that last stretch at the State Meet, re-hydration became my serious focus in the hot summer sun.

State Meet

By the way, the state meet was an absolute honor to be part of.  I had the best pole vault officiating crew; everyone highly experienced, willing and able to assume every role in the operation.  They were “assigned” to boys and girls competitions, but they all helped with all six vaults, boys and girls.  We were doing all we could to make the “STATE” the best experience for the athletes and even the coaches.  They earned the right to be there; it’s something I worked hard to achieve in my forty years on the “other side of the line” as a coach.  I wanted to make it special, for the kids, and for those coaches as well.

 Being a part of that ultimate high school track experience, the state finals, is amazing.  Athletes and coaches are primed and focused, dealing with all of the “issues” of competition like crosswinds and delays.  To steal an old Jim McKay line, there’s the “Thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat”, six times over.  Perhaps the best part for me:  escorting the state medalists to the podium for medals and recognition.  The joy, the relief, the recognition that they are literally at the top of the state in their event; it’s always exciting.

Camp Coaching

And two days later, I was working with younger kids; remembering how much I love the profession that I followed for forty years.  Coaching pole vaulting sounds like an “arcane” exercise, a true “niche” in the coaching world.  And it is.  But, like almost all teaching and coaching, the efforts and rewards are the same.  Through a series of words, examples, exercises, drills; trying to advance every vaulter from where they are to where they want to be.  It is the whole task.  You can feel their frustration when they don’t “get it”.  And you can see the “light bulb” come on in their eyes when they figure it out.  

As a coach, I say the same thing in twenty different ways, hoping some way or another to connect with a pattern in the athlete’s brain.  I tell them to “press off the ground, jump longer, drag the takeoff leg, push the back leg back farther, toe-off, get a ‘split’”. It all means the same thing.  Hopefully one of those fits the image in their head of what I want them to do, press the takeoff leg back as they jump from the ground.  And when they do it, the whole vault changes – the light bulb comes on.  And away we go to the next problem.

Archbold

There was a camp at Newark High School, then an “elite” camp at Circleville, and finally the camp at Archbold High School in Northwestern Ohio, just a few miles from the Indiana and Michigan borders.  Archbold is always interesting: on the runway are complete rookies, not sure how to hold the “stick”.  

And along with them was one of the kids I escorted to the state podium only two weeks before.  For him a new visualization:  get completely upside down, inverted on the pole, while the pole is still bent.  That way when it unbent it would “shoot” him vertically, higher in the air.  “Press long, swing fast, invert tight” was my cue.  And he started to get it.  Maybe he can move up those podium steps next year, from seventh to – maybe – the top?  I hope I can escort him there again.

Summer

Track’s over.  There’s lots to do at the house, and, of course, there’s dogs to take care of.  Atticus needs another surgery, to take the metal plates that he no longer needs out of his leg.  Hopefully it’ll go smoother than the operation to put them in.  And there’s more time to spend with Jenn – to take a walk, to go for a beer by the lake, to laugh and have some fun.  It’s summer – the Fourth is literally right around the corner.  Pataskala is getting ready for fireworks; and so are we!

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
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23
• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24

Fixing Education

The state of Louisiana has an education problem.  Their public schools are ranked 40^th out of 51 in the Nation (KTAL).  So you’d expect the state legislature would look for ways to improve their standing:  work on early childhood education, or remedial literacy education in the fourth grade, or alternative mathematics programs for middle schoolers.  Maybe Louisiana should pay their teachers more:  the state ranks 46^th  nationally in average teacher pay (NEA).  The old adage, “You get what you pay for” works in education as well.

But the super-MAGA Louisiana legislature isn’t looking at any of those alternatives.  Instead, they just passed an education bill, signed into law by the MAGA Governor, Jeff Landry. According to the governor’s webpage: 

“Today, surrounded by legislators, educators, school kids, and community leaders, Governor Jeff Landry signed into law monumental bills that will transform our education system and bring back common sense in our classrooms.”  

Too bad the ceremony was marred by a little girl who passed out in the back of the crowd around the signing table (no symbolism there).  The Governor seemed unaware of her condition – probably not “the look” he was going for as a “national leader” in education.

The bill “fixed” such critical education issues as:

• Rescinding Covid requirements
• Allowing unvaccinated kids to go to school
• Requiring parents consent to their child’s pronouns
• Allowing “chaplains” in schools
• Giving scholarships for private schools. (Louisiana.Gov).

Establishment Clause

But that’s not what anyone was talking about.  As part of this package “transforming our education system”, is the requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public classroom in the state.  In 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled on this exact point.  In Stone v Graham (449 U.S. 39 1980) the Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law “…has no secular legislative purpose, and therefore is unconstitutional as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

So why is Louisiana flying directly in the face of a forty year-old Supreme Court precedent?  And why is the state committing their limited financial resources to a legal fight,  already filed in the Louisiana Federal Courts, that will undoubtedly go to the Supreme Court in a couple of years?  

Well, first of all, it’s easier to go to the Supreme Court than it is to get third graders to pass a literacy test.  And it’s easier to “bring common sense” to education by imposing state-sanctioned Christian symbolism, than it is to pay for the real needs of public school classrooms.  So, Governor Landry and the Legislature made a national “splash”, without really doing anything at all for those kids in the schools of failing Baker City School District in East Baton Rouge Parrish.  

Governor Landry wants to be the “leader” of the Christian Nationalist movement to “retake” American institutions, including public education. That’s a great way to get in the National spotlight. And he might get a leg-up in the post-Trump MAGA-Republican Party; stepping right over the actual fallen body of some poor little grade-school girl.  And with today’s Supreme Court, Hell-bent on remaking America in their own image; Landry might be right.

Teachable Moment

For many Christians, putting the Ten Commandments up in classrooms is a “no brainer”. According to them, it gives children the basic “rules” of life. (I know – many of us kind of remember them, if not from Sunday School, then from all of those Easter Sunday evenings around the TV watching Charlton Heston carry the tablets down the mountain).  So, just as a reminder,  here’s the Ten Commandments:

• Thou shalt have no other Gods before me
• Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord they God in vain
• Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it Holy
• Honor thy Father and thy Mother
• Thou shalt not kill
• Thou shalt not commit adultery
• Thou shalt not steal
• Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
• Thou shalt not covet.

Let’s look at that “teachable moment”, when the third graders lose focus on the math lesson on fractions, look up at the wall and start asking questions.  It might get very religious – especially when the Hindu or Buddhist or Moslem kids in the class ask about “their” God(s) which can’t be “before” Governor Landry’s God.  What about the whole Christian Sunday versus Jewish Saturday – which is the Sabbath?  And then there’s  that “graven image” of Jesus on the Cross in the front of the church – why is that different?  How about the flag in the classroom, little Suzie the Jehovah’s Witness girl doesn’t even stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Sure, there are the easy teaching points: don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t lie; honor Mom and Dad.  But adultery – really going to go into that with the third graders?  Isn’t there some other Louisiana law that prevents teachers from uttering the dreaded three-letter word – sex – in class?  

Fake History

The Christian Nationalist movement operates on a false premise.  They believe that the United States was founded as a “Christian” nation, and that the founding fathers were using Christian doctrine as the template for American law.  In fact, real history is exactly the opposite.  Many of the American colonies were refuges from religious oppression in Europe.  Sure some had their particular religion; the Puritans and Pilgrims in Massachusetts, the Roman Catholics in Maryland, the Quakers in Pennsylvania.  But they were actually running from Government sanctioned religion in Great Britain. 

The Founding Fathers were well aware of that. They specifically made no mention of a/the “deity” in the Constitution, and in fact, prohibited Government sanctioned religion in the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment religion…” – the first words of the First Amendment). 

Congress is “the government”, and so is the state of Louisiana.  America, the “home of the free”, was founded on the principle (not Christian) that religious belief is personal, not a Government issue.  But Governor Landry and the good folks in the Louisiana Legislature have a different answer:  believe in what we believe in. And more, there’s the unspoken corollary:  if you don’t believe, you’re wrong.  

And that’s not the lesson about America that Louisiana third graders need to learn.

Interpret the Law

The Supreme Court of the United States has a duty to “interpret” the laws passed by Congress. The Court also determines whether those laws are consistent with the United States Constitution.   All of that seems pretty cut and dried – but of course, it’s not.  The “cut and dried” cases are all determined at the lower court levels.  It’s always the hard ones, the fifty-fifty cases, that reach the highest court in the land.

Trying to guess how the nine Justices will come down on any of the “fifty-fifty” cases is always tough.  And one area that is most difficult to call, is the one involving “administrative law”.  When Congress creates laws, they often include creating some agency to figure out the details.  How far can the agency can go, how much authority it has, what limits are applied? What determines the  extent of that agency’s power often is decided by the Supreme Court.  But one thing is sure – normally the Court deals in “law”, not in “facts”,

Last week, we saw two examples of this process.  The first was about the power of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The second is the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

Drugs

It’s actually pretty simple.  Congress didn’t want to be in a position of approving every single drug created in our changing world.  They neither had the time, nor more importantly, the expertise, to make those decisions.  Citing their Constitutional power to control interstate commerce, Congress wrote the Pure Food and Drug Act at the beginning of the 20^th century.  They delegated those powers to the FDA, created in 1906.  The administration ended the era when drugs like cocaine were in soft drinks and “elixirs”: the original “coca” in  Coca Cola.   

So instead of every new drug, cancer treatment, weight loss breakthrough or blood pressure medication going through Congress, decided on by 535 non-experts; it’s the FDA’s job.  Imagine the Pfizer Covid vaccine undergoing the “legislative process”.  Instead, it went through a careful scientific process of evaluation, and final approval by the FDA. 

Judges with Agendas

So it was a shock when “rogue” Federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk  in Amarillo, Texas, ruled the abortion drug Mifepristone was dangerous, even though it was FDA approved more than two decades before.  Kacsmaryk is an avowed “anti-abortion” judge, and the only Federal judge located in Amarillo. As such, his is the target court for those trying to get Federal anti-abortion rulings.  And it worked.  The surprise wasn’t his ruling, but that on appeal the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with him. It brought into question the entire FDA drug approval process.

The case went to the Supreme Court, where the majority ruled to keep the FDA decision in place.  If you are in favor of access to Mifepristone, that’s the good news. But, they also based their ruling on a legal technicality, declaring that the group that brought the case in the first place, “the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine”, failed to prove that they should have standing in the case.  That’s the bad news. Practically, this kept Mefepristone on the market for the moment. But the Court did not get to the basic question of the role of Federal agencies, and they didn’t preclude other groups from raising the question (probably in Amarillo) in a different way.  In the end, the decision only decided that “the Alliance” couldn’t sue, not that the FDA could decide.

What’s a Machine Gun

The other question the Supreme Court decided last week is a technical one:  what is a machine gun.  Again, Congress created an agency, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Administration in 1972, under the Department of Treasury (taxing all three items).  After 9-11 and the reorganization of the National Security agencies, the regulatory actions were transferred to Homeland Security, while the taxing authority remained in Treasury.  

The Firearms division is responsible for regulating legal guns, and controlling illegal weapons in the United States.   ATF defines generally what is and is not a legal firearm.  But it was back in 1934 that the Congress banned machine guns (and sawed-off shotguns).  What is a machine gun or “sawed-off” shotgun?  That was left to the ATF, just as Mefepristone and other drugs were left to the FDA.  And the ATF has a further restriction, the Second Amendment to the Constitution’s mandate to “the right to bear arms”.  ATF balances that “right” with the reality of advancing gun development (and marketing).

Into the Weeds

Unlike the Mefepristone case, in this one the Supreme Court dove into the technical “weeds” of how does a machine gun work, and what is the actual definition.  In fact, the Court majority ignored the fact the “bump stocks” allowed ninety rounds or more to be fired from a supposedly semi-automatic rifle in a minute.  It was the weapon of choice of the Las Vegas shooter, who killed sixty and wounded over 400 more – that’s one man, shooting over a thousand rounds from one window at a crowded concert venue, in less than ten minutes.

The majority determined that since “technically”, the trigger of the gun was being “pulled” multiple times by the bump stock, it was not “fully” automatic, and therefore did not meet their definition of a machine gun as “…a gun that could fire multiple rounds with one pull of the trigger”.  It’s the kind of “in the weeds” definition that administrative law is made for, and usually made by agencies just like the ATF.  But, because the Court majority seems so deeply wedded to the supporters of the Second Amendment, they became the “fact” experts as well as the determiners of legality.

Way Out

But the Court gave Congress a “way out”.  Re-define a bump-stock equipped semi-automatic rifle as a machine gun; pass a law saying so, and the Supreme Court, for the moment, might acquiesce.  At least until they decided that the whole process violates the Second Amendment.

That’s not going to happen in Congress this election year.  It certainly isn’t going to happen in the  current era of partisan divide.  And it’s not going to happen in a time when we can so quickly forget the death of so many, so quickly.  So bump-stocks are legal – again.  And everyone can have their own “not” a machine gun that fires ninety shots a minute.

Feel safer?

Afghanistan

There are two places in the world where the “major powers” have been abject failures.  The first is Afghanistan, where both the Soviet Union (now Russia) and the United States went in with high hopes, and left decades later in utter failure.  The Soviet failure was a “brick” in the wall in the fall of the Soviet Union. The US, could claim success in gaining vengeance against Al Qaeda.  But we switched to “nation-building”, removing the Taliban and inserting more “democratic” forces. And that ended up in the longest war in our history.  

The Taliban proved more resilient and dedicated than we were; willing to sacrifice far more than we would ask our own troops.  It took over twenty years to say “enough”, and as ugly as the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was, it was the only possible end to an interminable war.  Vietnam had folks hanging from the last helicopters; in Afghanistan they were hanging from the landing gear of the last C-17’s.  Both were awful, but inevitable; the images of hope going to die.

Middle East

The other location where “high hopes” go to die is the Middle East, and particularly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Almost every President has tried to use the substantial influence of their office to find some ultimate solution to the “twice-promised” land; and while there were limited successes (Carter at Camp David, Clinton at Oslo, Trump and the Abrahamic Accord), in the end, they proved to only dampen the fire for a while.  

Approaching a solution is perhaps the most dangerous point of all.  When President Carter got Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Egyptian President Sadat to agree to peace at Camp David, Sadat was soon assassinated by extremist Egyptian military forces.  When President Clinton negotiated a two-state agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin in Oslo, both were undermined by extremists in their own camps.  Arafat could not bring all of the Palestinian extremists, notably Hamas, in line. And Rabin lost an election to Benjamin Netanyahu, who had no interest in allowing a “two-state solution” to continue.

And when President Biden seemed to have Saudi Arabia in position to normalize relations with Israel, Hamas struck in such  horrific way that it triggered an inevitable response of Israeli invasion.

Biden

President Biden faces a similarly difficult conundrum now.  It started with the full moral justification of Israel’s response to the October 7^th  Hamas terrorist assault.  Every sovereign nation has the right to defend itself.  To Israel, October 7^th was more than equal to the 9-11 attack on the United States that triggered our involvement in Afghanistan.  Biden, reasonably, pledged full US support to our single best ally in the Middle East, a pledge that even included a physical hug of sympathy and support from Biden to Netanyahu.  

But, predictably, Netanyahu took the “opportunity” of October 7^th to seek the ultimate extinction of Hamas, regardless of the non-Hamas civilian casualties in Gaza.   Hamas is deeply embedded among the civilians, in a region where over half the population in under twenty.  The casualty numbers include both Hamas “soldiers” and civilians; and neither Israel nor Hamas bothers to differentiate between the two.  But there are so many children killed, it’s hard to contemplate or justify. 

Who is a Fighter?

The most recent example; the rescue of four hostages from a densely populated urban environment, proves the point. Israeli Special Forces were discovered and a huge firefight broke out.  While they managed to extract the four hostages with only one Israeli death, estimates range from 100 to 250 civilians dead.  How many of them were Hamas fighters, and how many were innocents caught in the crossfire, it’s hard to tell.  Israel justifies the damage by saying it’s Hama’s fault for hiding hostages in the middle of civilians.  The American answer seems to be, “Yes, But…?”

Politically all sides have a stake in the game.  Netanyahu must have absolute victory, the destruction of Hamas, or face removal from office and worse, perhaps imprisonment for corruption.  Any solution less than that is unacceptable to him.  Hamas, of course, wants to survive.  They want time to regroup, and get their leadership out of the tunnels and safely into exile (perhaps in the luxury hotels in Doha, Qatar).  

Hope

And Joe Biden has his own political needs.  The wanton Israeli bombings, and the looming threat of Palestinian famine pressure Biden to find some “ending”.  It’s not just for humanitarian reasons, but also to mollify Democrats who sympathize with the Palestinian cause (different than sympathizing with Hamas).   So Biden is pressing Netanyahu to “bend”, quietly using Israeli dependence on US military assistance to apply force. And Biden is offering Hamas the time they so desperately need.   But Hamas is demanding more than just a six-week pause in the destruction.  It’s hard to see where either will find a political “up-side” to Biden’s plan, now endorsed by the United Nations.

But, no one seems to have an alternative.  Israeli destruction of Hamas has made them a pariah state in the world.  The International Court already charged Netanyahu with war crimes.  And Hamas earned every bit of the retribution that Israel is so happy to give.  The bloody, savage, assault of October 7^th is unforgiveable.  But Biden sees what the world sees:  a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinians that live in Gaza.

How much pressure can Biden put on Israel?  And who will put the pressure on Hamas to “take a deal”?  Or is this, like Afghanistan, a place where hope for all sides goes to die?

Contact

I heard from an old friend the other day.  He was “lost”, a casualty to the political “wars”. Our differences were so great and divisive, that there seemed no way to civilly communicate.  So I “blocked” him on social media, and cut off all contact with him.  It’s been years.

But, in our current “electronic” world, there’s always a way around the blocks.  And I got a message from him the other day.  He’s still reading some of what I write (there’s always a way beyond Facebook; my essays also are on “X” and can be directly accessed on my website).  And I see that as an honor:  after all of the vitriol he’s still “listening”, even if it probably makes him feel like swearing – but I bet he doesn’t.  He is a sincerely religious man, and his faith is so strong, I bet he doesn’t allow the venial sin of profanity.

The essay he responded to was one of the series on Justice Alito and the flags.   I suspect my friend knows all about the pine tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag that the Justice flew at his beach house.  But his response wasn’t directly about that.  He asked the following:

      “I would love to hear your insights on the disaster at the border and the guilty verdict in Trump’s trial”.

I suspect this is a “gotcha” question, designed to point out the weakness in the current Democratic Administration.  But that’s alright.  It’s important to explain the vulnerable issues, the “gotcha” problems, as well as crow about the unemployment rate, the infrastructure plan, the stock market, or the economic miracle of the “soft” Covid landing.  So here goes:  my old friend, this one’s for you.

The Trial

I haven’t said anything about the Trump trial yet – May and June is a busy time for a track official/pole vault coach (ask Jenn!!). But it all seems pretty straight forward to me.  I watched and listened to as much as the coverage as I could.  The premise of the trial was simple:  Trump paid for Stormy Daniel’s silence so that his dalliance wouldn’t become public information at a critical moment in the 2016 Presidential campaign.  IF it had, in an election that hinged on a 77,744 votes, we might have dodged the entire Trump era. (Go ahead, click on the link.  I wrote an essay on the subject back in 2017, one of my earliest).  

But that’s not what was against the law.  Trump then went through a series of financial maneuvers to hide the payment of what was essentially a campaign expense.  As the old Nixon adage goes:  the coverup is worse than the crime.  And that’s what the Trump trial was all about:  the coverup to hide the expenditure.

Twelve New York jurors were convinced that Trump intentionally committed the crime of falsifying documents to hide the expenses, and they convicted him of thirty-four felony counts.  It’s a hallmark of American Justice; even a former President, even an avowed billionaire, even Donald Trump, can be held to justice by a jury of his peers.  And, before you say it, the same is true about the Hunter Biden case – though that former addict isn’t running for President of the United States (as opposed to Bobby Kennedy, a former addict who is).  A jury of his peers found him guilty.  Agree or disagree:  the system worked.

A Solution

The border is a more difficult problem.  But, first thing first; the border problem had a solution, authored by both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress.  It had broad support from both sides, including the Biden Administration.  That solution was on the verge of passage, a huge accomplishment in this age of partisan warfare.  There was a strong majority in the House of Representatives, and more than the sixty Senators signed on in support of the deal.  It would have strengthened the border, added more agents and judges, provided more aid to migrants, and been the first substantive legislation in decades.

Only one man stood in the way of this momentous step:  Donald Trump.  It was a bill that, actually, his Administration could have authored, not particularly “progressive” at all.  But Trump wanted this issue to campaign on, the same issue he started with in 2015 at the bottom of the “golden escalator”.  So he muscled the Republicans in the House, and ultimately the Senate, to vote against the measure.  When he did that, he lost all creditability on the subject.  He doesn’t care about the border, he cares about the campaign issue.  God forbid (sorry) that the Congress actually had a substantive solution.  So credit where credit is due:  Trump killed the deal, and left the real answer to the border crisis dead on the table.

Politics on Both Sides

And the politics of the border don’t end at the Rio Grande.  Mexico also was in the middle of an election, and migrants are as much or more of a problem for them as they are for the United States.  So keeping thousands of migrants on the Mexican side, or strengthening the Mexican borders with the Central American countries is a “hot potato” there as well as here.  No one in Mexico wanted to step in before the votes were counted.

So the Biden Administration took the action they felt appropriate, really duplicating an action from the Trump days.  They restricted access to legal migration, basically squeezing the border to a trickle, in order to control how many were “in line” for asylum requests.  Meanwhile the line is still so long, it will take decades at the current rate to resolve all the requests.  That was one of the issues the “deal” would have resolved:  blame Trump for that failure, not Biden.

Migrants or Workers

And there is one  other point to make here.  The United States is in job shortage situation.  There are more jobs available then people to fill them.  So two things happen.  First wages are going up (usually a good thing, though that’s also a driver of inflation).  Second, the lowest wage jobs are often left unfilled.  Here in Pataskala it’s easy to see:  why work fast food at $15/hour when you can go down the street to Amazon for $22?  So maybe we could use some of those waiting migrants, looking to come to the US for work, to ease the shortage.  

Again, the “deal” would have helped resolve this issue as well.  And again, the “deal” failed:  blame Trump for that failure, not Biden.

So, old friend, that’s my response.  I suspect it won’t satisfy you, and I’d be happy to continue a “civil” debate, but not a civil war:  your turn.

Prologue

This week was the 80^th Anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe in Normandy, France.  It was a pivotal moment in  World War II, and for the “Greatest Generation”, the pivotal moment of their lives.  It was especially true for my parents, both born in 1918.  But for the war, they never would have met and  but for “luck” or “fate”, they never should have survived.  But they did both, met and survived, and lived what really is a great love story of a life, together.  

This week’s ceremonies, with the few remaining veterans in wheelchairs celebrated by all, brings up memories of my parents and their friends.  In their youth, they fought a war to “save the world”, literally.   And then they went on to “normal” lives. 

Here’s what I wrote five years ago – but it’s worth printing again, as the sacrifice of the  “Greatest Generation” slips into history.   

Mom and Dad

Both my parents passed away in the last few years.  They were in their nineties, and lived a wonderful life together.  They were active, travelling and enjoying, until just the last few years.  Dad was on the tennis court into his 90’s, and Mom walked the beach for miles. They were very happy, and very in love, and our family was very lucky to have them for so long.

Mom was born in London, Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor. As the baby of her family she was nicknamed “Babs,” the name she used her entire life.  She was British, and educated in England and later in Belgium.  She married Donald Lee Dahlman of Cincinnati, an American soldier who was part of the vast US Army preparing to invade Europe.  They joined in marriage on March 27^th, 1944, in a civil ceremony in England. 

He was a finance officer, and made sure the troops got paid.  Mom supposedly worked in the Old Age Pensions Office in London, but was actually a part of the SOE, the Special Operations Executive.  It was an elite unit who carried on the fight against the Germans in Occupied Europe, slipping into France on small aircraft to plot espionage attacks and communicate with the Resistance.

War Wedding

They were supposed to be married in June, but moved their wedding date up because it was clear that the invasion of Europe, D-Day, was coming.  Both had received orders to report, so their ceremony was accelerated.  Bab’s mother got all of her friends to pitch in part of their sugar rations for the cake, and her brother Leslie contributed champagne he had managed to get off the beach in Dunkirk during the evacuation.  

Dad’s cousin and friend from Cincinnati, Buddy Levine, served as best man, and the two were married. It was a civil ceremony because Mom was Roman Catholic and Dad was Jewish.  The Church wouldn’t accept their union unless Dad promised to raise any children in the Catholic faith, and he wouldn’t.  In the end, the British end of the family had less trouble with the religious differences that those back in Cincinnati.  

Secrets

As part of her secret life, Babs spent time in the “War Rooms” in London.   Those were the secret underground headquarters of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his generals.  SOE was a small group, developed and used by those top leaders to carry out their particular missions.  She became acquainted with some of the commanding Generals; the telegram congratulating them on their wedding from Omar Bradley  is still in the scrapbook.  She adored Bradley, but didn’t have much good to say about Eisenhower, who disparaged her “uniform.” The SOE was improvisational in much of what they did, both in Europe, and in their uniform choices.  Babs didn’t appreciate criticism from a “Yank General.”

Like most British citizen, Babs adored Field Marshal Montgomery, “Monty.”  He was their “winner;” the man who drove the Nazis out of North Africa and led the successful invasion of Sicily.  She had a sketch of Monty, a small color drawing, done by a friend during a planning meeting.  It was on the wall of Mom and Dad’s home for sixty-six years and it’s hanging in our family room today.

Short Honeymoon 

After the wedding there was little time for “honeymooning,” just a couple days of hiking in the countryside.  Then Don reported to Southampton, the debarkation point for much of the Army heading to Normandy.  He would say he hit the beach “…with the third wave of WACs (the Women’s Army Corp).”  He spent the next several month in France, making sure the GI’s got their pay checks, and putting his University of Cincinnati finance degree to use trying to deal with the complications of French, Nazi, and Occupation currency.  

Babs left their wedding to report to headquarters, and was soon flying out of RAF Tempsford on a small single engine plane called a “Lysander.”  The plane could land on a short farm field, only 600 yards, and was designed to fly low and close to avoid enemy radar.  Agents were dropped off in the night, often met by French Resistance operatives who put flashlights out to outline the “landing strip.”

Normandy

She flew into Normandy, and helped prepare Resistance plans for D-Day.  Phone lines were cut, rail lines disrupted; the Resistance did everything they could to confuse and delay German response to the invasion.  She was in a village just days before the Allied paratroopers arrived on the night of June 5^th. A Resistance cell she was working with was captured and killed by the Nazis.  She escaped.

The D-Day invasion, the greatest amphibious landing in history, took place during a lull in the storms on June 6, 1944.  156,000 men hit the beach or parachuted behind the lines.  Ten thousand died, but the Allies gained a foothold in Europe, that ultimately led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. 

It would be ten months before Babs and Don would see each other again.  Her missions would take her from France to Yugoslavia, and his work would follow the invasion across France into Paris.   They were reunited at the end of the war, when Don was transferred back to London.  The couple spent several months together there, while he arranged for their passage back to America, and a life in Cincinnati.  But that’s another story.

It was the spring of 1966.  The Civil Rights movement was in full swing, and Vietnam was the major issue on college campuses.  Meanwhile, Percy Sledge recorded his ballad to love in a studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama – When a Man Loves a Woman.

• When a man loves a woman,
• Can’t keep his mind on nothin’ else, 
• He’d change the world for the good thing he’s found.
• Is she is bad, he can’t see it, 
• She can do no wrong,
• Turn his back on his best friend if he put her down.
• When a man loves a woman,
• He’ll spend his very last dime
• Tryin’ to hold on to what he needs.
• He’d give up all his comforts
• And sleep out in the rain, 
• Is she said that’s the way
• It ought to be.

Flags Again

I know.  A lot’s happened since I last wrote about “Our America”.  There’s the Trump verdict, the complete sell-out of the Republican Party (thanks Lisa Murkowski for giving us some hope) and the conundrum of a failed Gaza Peace Accord.  Meanwhile, I was working back to back to back track meets and now pole vault camps.  There wasn’t time left to write.  

But one event sticks out in my mind from the past few weeks.  I’ve already written two essays  about “Flags”, particularly historic American flags that have been “turned” (some literally upside down) to represent some outlandish and extreme political movement.  And I specifically wrote about the flags that Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Alito flew over his houses in the past few years. 

Sleeper Agents

Alito, the seventy-five year old, Yale Law School graduate reached the pinnacle of the legal profession when he was nominated to the Supreme Court by George W Bush.  With the rise of the Conservative Majority in the Court, he is a leader working to cancel the expansions of personal rights made by the Court in the last seventy years.  I heard it described aptly last week on a broadcast.  The commentator said, “Think of (Justices) Thomas and Alito as ‘sleeper agents’, lying in wait for decades, only able to express themselves in caustic dissenting opinions.”

 But now they are “in charge”; influencing the Court even more than the Chief Justice John Roberts.  They are the leaders of a majority created by the political machinations of Mitch McConnell, the Federalist Society and the appointment pen of  then-President Donald Trump.  They have decades of frustration to overcome, decades of failure to revisit, and decades of insults to “right”.  And they’re doing it.

Ethics

So how dare anyone challenge Justice Alito’s ethics, when he has so much to do.  Who would dare call him into question, the one who waited so long to finally gain control?  And the answer to that question was that bastion of American “liberalism”,  The New York Times.  The Times questioned Alito’s legal ethics, judicial integrity, and his basic honesty.  The newspaper published multiple stories about those “damn” flags flying over Alito’s residences.  

Alito, the proud child of Italian immigrants from Trenton, New Jersey, could have done what most men would do when their integrity was questioned.  He could have stood on the long conservative tradition of taking responsibility for his actions. But Alito did the least courageous thing:  he blamed the whole thing on his wife, Martha Ann.

You know, I’ve only been married for a few years (coming up on twelve), not the near-forty years that Justice Alito and Martha Ann have been joined in wedlock.  But even from my relatively brief experience, I know my duty, my obligation; my commitment that all marriages demand.  Even the law that Alito supposedly holds so “dear” makes it clear:  a spouse cannot be legally required to testify against their “better half”.   But, not for the Justice:  it was all her fault, and he couldn’t stop her.

A Man

Then there’s perhaps an outdated view of “manliness”.  Does a “real man”, something that the MAGA right is supposedly enthralled with; does a “real man” blame his wife?  And not just blame; but, publicly, in writing, on Supreme Court stationary in open public letters?  Does a “real man” throw his own wife “under the bus”, and not just any vehicle, but the behemoth of the National media?

And there is one other point.  Justice Alito is the author of the “Dodds” Decision, the one that allowed many states to take away the fifty-year old right of women to determine what happens to their own body.  Women were denied that power, mostly by older white men.  Now Samuel Alito, also an older white man, says he can’t control what flag his own wife flies over the homes he shares with her.  She, and other women like her, can’t determine whether an abortion is right or wrong, but they sure as Hell can tell their husband what to do about flags.

Percy Sledge outlined what a man would do for a woman he loved.  He’d change the world, turn his back on his friends, refuse to see the bad in her.  He’d sleep out in the rain, if that’s what it took to prove his love.  Justice Alito showed us what a man will do to maintain power.  You can see it yourself, the tire tracks clear on the back of Martha Ann.  And that tells us so much more about the Justice, even more than the bitter opinions he writes for the Court.  Maybe Percy should have written:

            “When a man loves his power, can’t keep him mind on nothin’ else…”

Not to Play

We learned a new “phrase” in the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  The Republican Party spent decades making Clinton look bad (including seven million of taxpayer dollars on the multiple “Benghazi” hearings in the House of Representatives).  And Donald Trump was the candidate of division from the moment he came down the “Golden Escalator” in Trump Tower.  Both of their “negative” ratings were underwater (over 50%), and yet they were the two candidates we had to choose from.  It was a “binary choice”.  To take a phrase from the early 1980’s Matthew Broderick movie, War Games, the only other choice was “Not to play”.  

We all know the outcome of that election.  

Covid

Joe Biden was a failed Presidential candidate in 2008, but the perfect match to a relatively young and inexperienced Senator Barack Obama.  After eight years as Vice President, 2016 should have been Biden’s “turn”.  The ultimate tragedy, the death of Biden’s oldest son in 2015, made it emotionally impossible for the Vice President to run for the top office.   With Hillary’s loss, it looked like both Clinton’s and Biden’s political careers were over.

But America had never experienced a President like Donald Trump.  In 2020 to many; especially after the disaster of Covid response; Trump represented an existential threat to the American Democracy.  For the same reasons that Biden was the perfect choice for Obama’s Vice President; experience, stability, foreign policy expertise; Biden was the now the perfect choice against the “bull in a China shop” Trump.  It was, again, a binary choice.  And as the results show (the largest election vote ever), few chose “Not to play”.  

It’s now 2024 (so fast, is this what happens when you get old??).  There is a collective hole in America’s memory, a hole we label simply as Covid.  We don’t remember what we did, what we missed, what we lost.  There are folks that just disappeared.  Even today, I hear, “What happened to old so and so”.  We have little memory of their passing.  When I look back, it’s hard to remember the “toilet paper” lines, the literal battles in the grocery store for the last can of “something” (even here in Pataskala), the cheap gas because there was nowhere to go.  Are we better today than we were four years ago?  Of course – IF – we really remember what we were doing four years ago.

Spring Chickens

No one, really, no one, wants two octogenarians running for the Presidency of the United States.  On energy, blood pressure, slurred words and stumbled stairs alone; Americans are rightly concerned.  We thought Reagan was old, elected President at seventy.   Looking back, he still wasn’t a “spring chicken”, but definitely not a “stewing hen” either (until the Alzheimer’s crept in). 

But it is what it is.  We have a binary choice, again.  To vote against “old”, you either have to throw your vote away on a seventy-year-old, worm-eaten (his words, not mine) Bobby Kennedy, or choose “not to play”.  But it’s not just a binary choice between two (too?) old men.  It’s also a black and white choice on multiple issues.

Rights

Stop the Steal:  a vote for Trump is a vote in favor of voter suppression.  His Supreme Court is already eviscerating the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  The six conservative Justices, led by the Chief John Roberts, somehow believe that discrimination is “over” in America.  In our increasingly minority-majority nation, the notion of “white power” is real.  Many states (including Ohio) are doing whatever they can to make voting harder, actions which impact lower economic and minority communities more.  The whole point:  maintain power, in the state legislatures and in the National government.   As the Nation approaches the time when whites are no longer the majority (around 2040) the pressure of some to keep power will only grow greater.  And who represents them best:  Donald Trump.

Abortion:  a vote for Trump is a vote for banning abortion nationwide, regardless of the reason.  It’s really that simple.  Trump can say whatever he wants right now, but the seminal “deal” of his political career is his deal with the Christian-right, an agreement based mostly on ending the right of women to make their own choices for their own bodies.  That agreement alone allows “Christians” to accept a morally bankrupt candidate as their “imperfect vessel”. It’s not just three Supreme Court Justices (and young replacements for two if Trump is elected).  It’s all of the other “wedge issues” that come with it; LGBTQ rights and the whole other litany of alphabetical issues:  DEI, CRT to name two.

Foreign Policy

Ukraine:  a vote for Trump is a vote for Russian victory in Ukraine.  It’s not only about Trump’s known affinity for Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin.  Among other traits, Trump is known for getting “revenge” (“I am your retribution”).  Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy failed to “play ball” with Trump against Biden in 2019; if Trump is elected his “retribution” will result in the Russian conquest of the nation.  And what is the outcome of that?  Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania all are on the block, with Poland right behind.  Putin’s appetite to rebuild the Soviet Union really has no bounds.  

Israel and Palestine:  a vote for Trump is a vote to suppress Palestinians.  And that might sound “OK”, but it also means that Palestinians will use the only remaining outlet available to them, terrorism.  It’s how this all started in the first place, in the 1970’s.  The only solution is to somehow give Palestinians an opportunity to have their own nation, a real nation with real sovereignty (not the occupied West Bank).  But getting Israel to do that will require political change in their government, and Trump is massively allied with the current regime.  It’s not a coincidence that Benjamin Netanyahu is Jared Kushner’s godfather.

Retribution

Democracy:  Maya Angelou said it best, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”.  Trump, and his notorious advisory staff, have made it clear what they will do on gaining office in 2025.  It’s what they wanted to do in 2017 with the first flurry of executive orders (remember the Muslim Ban?).  They didn’t understand how to get things done then, but they’ve had eight years to get better at it.  Once Bannon’s pardoned, and with Steven Miller back in the saddle, the Justice Department will be the “Department of Retribution”.  

Sure there are lots of good reasons to vote FOR Joe Biden.  But in the end, it’s a binary choice, one that’s even made if you choose “Not to play”.  In fact, that entire quote is:

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”

But, to be clear, not choosing is not a “winning move”.  It simply means abandoning personal responsibility to help govern America.  And, if you don’t care, you deserve what you get.  

Old Glory

Here’s one of my favorite topics!!!  Let’s talk about American History – specifically the history of American flags!!

There are a few historic flags I’d like to “zoom-in” on, flags somewhat obscured by the lens of time, but now back in the “common vernacular” of our discussion.  The first is the actual flag of the United States of America, the Stars and Stripes (all fifty stars for fifty states, thirteen white and red stripes representing the original thirteen states that signed the Constitution).

Stars and Stripes

It’s not quite the “Star Spangled Banner” Flag (fifteen stars, fifteen stripes – designed before the they realized the pin-stripe effect of adding a stripe for each state).  And it’s not the “Iwo Jima” flag either, thirteen stripes but forty-eight stars.  It’s the flag that’s represented the United States since 1960, when Hawaii entered the Union as a state.  And it’s the flag that could still see more stars:  Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to mention two.

 Star Spangled Banner

“World War II” Flag

Throughout US history, flying the Stars and Stripes upside down was a sign of extreme emergency.  But in our recent history, the upside down flag has been appropriated as a symbol by the extreme MAGA crowd (as opposed to the only “crazy” MAGA crowd?).  The Stars and Stripes upside down (The World Turned Upside Down, played by the British as they surrendered at Yorktown) was outside the Capitol on January 6^th, used to beat the Capitol and DC Police officers.  But it wasn’t the only flag there.

Extreme Distress – US Flag

Of course there were a whole lot of “Trump” flags.  But there also were some other traditional American flags, some specific to the groups that gathered to overturn the election and support the losing President. 

Historic Flags

There was the “Betsy Ross” flag, thirteen stripes with thirteen stars in a circle.  It’s been the traditional flag of the American Revolution, the flag flown over George Washington’s army.  It’s been absconded by the “Three Percenters” (with a Roman Numeral III added) a far-right extremist group.  Five years ago Nike marketed a Betsy Ross Flag sneaker, triggering a whole protest against racism.  I wrote an essay (Flags and Shoes) about it at the time.  Nike didn’t have the stomach for the fight, and the shoes “went away”.  

Betsy Ross  Flag

There was the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” snake flag. officially called the “Gadsen Flag”.  In the first decade of this century, the Tea-Party movement took it as “their” symbol, and it is often used as a “private” symbol of MAGA’ism.  It’s the “insider” information, rather than just put a Trump flag in front of the house.  Now, when you see one you’re an “insider” too!!

Don’t Tread on Me Flag

And, of course, there’s the Confederate Battle Flag (actually the flag of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia).  That flag became the symbol of the Ku Klux Klan, and continues to represent the white extremist movements.  But it also became the symbol of “country-boys”, and can be seen in a lot of Country music songs and videos in the past forty years.  Lynrd Skynrd and Hank Williams Jr (you can buy a Battle Flag with Hank’s face in the middle) are two examples.  Seriously though, in the Civil War a major goal of the Confederacy was to march the Battle Flag through the Capitol.  It didn’t happen in four years of  that war, nor in one hundred and fifty-five years of American history afterwards.  But it did happen on January 6^th, 2021.

Confederate Battle Flag

Insiders Know

This week we have another American flag emerging as an “undercover” representation of the MAGA movement.  This is the “Pine Tree” or “Appeal to Heaven” flag, originally designed for the first Continental ships of war during the Revolution.  It shows a Pine Tree, with the words “Appeal to Heaven” or “Appeal to God” written above it.  But today it is symbolic of Christian Nationalism, a growing extremist movement that erroneously sees the United States as founded as a Christian Nation (it was, in fact, established diametrically opposite, as a secular nation).   It’s another “insider” flag.  Wink-wink, nudge-nudge; only those “in the know” knew.  Now you do too.

      Appeal to Heaven Flag

Of course this is really about that ultimate “insider”, the Justice of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Alito.   He’s been “winking-winking, nudging-nudging” to those “in the know”.  We all knew he was a conservative Justice, but we now know he’s been “signaling” the MAGA-extremists that he’s “one of the boys”.  First it was the “distress flag” flown in front of his house in the week between the Insurrection and the Inauguration.  Now it’s the “Appeal to Heaven” flag flown over his vacation home on the Jersey Shore.  

Of course, the Justice could argue that it was a “naval” flag, and he was just honoring the few, proud, Continental Naval forces.  But he could have done that “honoring” with the official ensign of the early Navy, the “Grand Union Flag”.  Instead he chose the loaded “Appeal to Heaven” flag, with all the baggage of Christian Nationalism that we hope our Judicial System would avoid.  He puts his own extreme political views up front, raised to salute in front of his homes.  

Grand Union Flag

If he’s so anxious to have a “personal” flag – he could put the “Seal” of the Court on a flag and fly it.  That would be a real “insider” flag – without declaring his alliance to insurrection.

Seal of the US Supreme Court

The First

What about the First Amendment?  That’s the first question everyone asks, when they hear about United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito.  He is an American citizen. Isn’t he “endowed” with the right to freedom of religion, speech, the press, peaceable assembly and to petition the government for redress of grievances?  That’s the very first “thing” the Founding Fathers added to the Constitution. It was part of the agreement that got the Constitution passed by the states in the first place.

In case you missed it,  here’s the story.  In the days following the January 6^th Insurrection in 2021, the Alito family flew an American flag upside down on the pole in front of their house.  Flying the flag upside down means extreme distress. But at that specific moment it was symbolic of support for those who broke into the Capitol building and disrupted the peaceful transition of power.  According to Alito’s “courageous” statement, “my wife did it”, in response to a “F**K TRUMP” sign down the street.  But it wasn’t just a momentary statement of rage. The flag stayed up, upside down, for several days between the Insurrection itself and the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20^th.    The Alitos’ were making a point.

Freedom from Responsibility

The First Amendment “freedom of speech” is kind of an odd thing.  First of all, the Amendment doesn’t create an unqualified right to “say what I want”. We always go back to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes limit: you  can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. But there are other, more stringent requirements.  And the entire “right” is simply a protection from the government making political speech “illegal”.  There is no “right” to cuss out your boss, or threaten your neighbor, without repercussions.   Sure, you can tell the “boss” he’s a “$&@!!”. But he can still fire you.  The freedom of speech carries with it the responsibilities that come with exercising that right.

So if Sam Alito was Sam Smith, plumber; then fly the flag upside down: protected speech.  Now if Sam Smith was in the Capitol, battling police, he might get fired from his job.  But the flag thing, probably would be OK.  I’m thinking of the woman who saw President Trump’s limo driving by, and decided to “fly” the universal middle-finger of disrespect.   She was just “expressing” her view , but fired from her job. Fired, because she worked for the government. Essentially she was flipping-off her own boss.  

Jerseys or Hats

But Alito is not Smith, and he’s not a plumber.  He’s a Justice of the Supreme Court.  He is one of the nine top judges in the Nation, sworn to uphold justice without fear or, as importantly, favor.  Sure we know that there are six “conservative” Justices on the Court, and three “liberal” Justices.  That’s how they view “the law”.  But we still expect that they will set aside their personal politics and determine cases in front of them “by law”.   To use a worn analogy, we do not expect Supreme Court Justices to don “Blue” jerseys or “Red” hats.  And we certainly don’t expect them to side with those attempting to stop the ultimate symbol of American democracy, the peaceful transition of power from President to President.

Peaceful Transition

How big a deal is that transition?  Long before we ever thought about Trump or Biden or MAGA or Insurrection, we taught the election of 1800 in school.  Vice President Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, were running against then-President John Adams and his running mate, Charles Pinckney.  At the time, each elector in the Electoral College got two votes for President.  Every Jefferson elector, all seventy-three of them, chose Jefferson and Burr.  Every Adams elector, sixty-five, chose Adams and Pinckney.  But the original setup of the Electoral College (later changed by the Twelfth Amendment) did not make a distinction between Presidential and Vice Presidential votes.  So Jefferson and Burr were tied for President.

A tie is broken by the House of Representatives,  then controlled by Adam’s Party, the Federalists.  Only the tied-two were on the ballot, so the Federalists had to choose between which Democratic-Republican they wanted for President.  The “elder-statesman” of the Federalists was Alexander Hamilton, who supported Jefferson over Burr (continuing a long-running rivalry with Burr that would ultimately end four years late on the dueling field in New Jersey – “Everything’s legal in Jersey”). 

After all of that, John Adams did not stand in the way of Jefferson’s inauguration.  He left town for Quincy, Massachusetts, the morning of the ceremony, and Jefferson, his political enemy, was peacefully installed as the new President of the United States.

Without Violence

We taught this as a seminal moment in American history, the first peaceful transition of political and Constitutional power without guns or bombs or violence.  That tradition was maintained, even in the Civil War, even in the Great Depression, even when the electoral tiebreaker failed and a committee chose the President in 1877.  The peaceful transition held even when ballots were messed up in Florida, and the Supreme Court itself weighed in to stop the count and chose George W Bush as President in 2000.

Alito, the ultimate legal arbiter, took a side against the peaceful transition in 2021.  At the minimum, he should recuse himself from decisions about actions on that fateful day.  But he hasn’t, and he won’t.  He sees himself as “above” the normal rules that govern judges, even Supreme Court judges.  And, short of a politically improbable impeachment and conviction, there is nothing to require him to fulfill the rules.

Norms

Normal rules – what we define as norms.  They are the “standards of behavior”, not set in stone or in law, but accepted as the “way to get things done”.  The peaceful transition of Presidential power has some legal standing, but is mostly about “norms”.  And the Justices of the Supreme Court are, but for impeachment and conviction, unfettered by rules. But they are subject to higher “norms”, because of their legal invulnerability.  And that’s the point.  When a Supreme Court Justice openly supports insurrection, the disruption of the peaceful transition of power – he’s blown the “norms” right out the window.

What is the “norm” for a Justice of the Supreme Court?  In the case of the ultimate refusal to accept the actions of the current government, Justice John Archibald Campbell set the standard in 1861.  After eight years on the Supreme Court, he resigned his seat to join the Confederacy, ultimately as Assistant Secretary of War.   While you may not agree with his sentiments, at least respect his decision to follow “the norms”. 

Alito can’t even do that.

So this one isn’t about politics.  It’s the championship season in high school track and field.  I’m a literal bystander now, the official calling “make or miss”.  But I see what’s going on, and high school sports are changing, not always for the good.  And there’s a larger story here about education, and the twenty-first century.

Forty Years

I was a public school track coach for forty years.  For many of those years we had big teams, with sixty or more boys vying to get onto the “varsity” squad.  I didn’t “cut” kids from the track team, mostly because I saw the changes that impacted boys from a fourteen year-old freshman to an eighteen year-old senior.  The kid that “didn’t have a prayer” of making varsity as a freshman, might be a State Qualifier three years later.  It was worth the wait.

I did my best as the Head Coach, to get the most qualified assistants I could find.  But my primary criteria for hiring wasn’t necessarily technical knowledge.  The most important factor was how did the candidate work with kids.  Was he or she, a positive role model, the kind of coach that inspired as well as instructed.  I could teach an assistant “technique” but I couldn’t make an assistant inspirational.  As time went on, I found that the great assistants not only learned the “nuts and bolts” of their events, but were able to get their athletes to achieve far beyond what they thought possible.  Many of them are still doing so today.

Negotiations

Athletics has changed in the past couple of decades.  Not to be too cynical, but parents are willing to “buy” improvement for their kids.  I guess it one way they show they care and support their child, by putting their “money where their mouth is”.  So “private club” coaches are more and more a part of high school track and field.   And since parents are paying a lot for their services (as much as $500 a month), that coach has a great deal of influence on what the parents, and the athlete, will do.

The axiom, “You get what you pay for,” still sounds true in the mid-twenty-first century. So, that $500/month coach must know more than that “free coach” at the school, I guess.  As I watch my friends coach teams today, I realize that public school coaching is no longer just going out and “teaching” track.  It’s also a series of negotiations, with the athlete, with the parent, and with the “club coach” – the one that has to justify the parents’ huge expense.  The “my way or the highway” head track coach of my day probably can’t get away with that any more.  The parents, the Administrators of the public school, the kids, won’t go for it.

Championship Season

One close friend has coached state and national contenders.  She’s highly educated in her events, as well as being a former highly skilled collegiate competitor herself.  And, in her own way, she inspires athletes to try new techniques and events that leads to even greater success.  But she’s a woman in a “man’s world” in track and field, the “weight” events, shot-put and discus, (and hammer and javelin).  

In the final weeks of high school track, the best compete in a series of meets to get to the culmination of the season, the State Championship.  Unlike other sports, there aren’t usually fences and security personnel keeping spectators far away from the competitors, especially in the throws.  Parents, teammates, friends and just spectators have the same access to the athlete as coaches do.  And since “club coaches” want to coach “the best” (success breeds success breeds, more kids at $500/month), some see these competitions as recruiting opportunities.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all club coaches.   Many are very ethical, taking kids (and parents) that come to them, and staying out of the way of the school coaches.  There were a couple of years when I had both roles, a school coach and a club coach. I worked hard at  knowing my place, and being an ethical coach.  But there are some that give the whole group a bad name.

Chicken Hawk

They try to “chicken hawk” athletes, right in the middle of competition.  As a kid tries to focus on getting their best effort, listening to the coach “that brung ‘em”, all of a sudden there’s another voice pitching their abilities and making suggestions.  It’s all about sales, and it tells a lot about what kind of coach the “hawk” is.  Maybe they know about the technical event, maybe they took other athletes to higher success.  But the kind of coach I want to hire, the kind that inspires kids as well as technically coaching them – that kind of coach would never interfere in competition, never take that most delicate moment and try to interpose their sales pitch.

And in the throws, a definite “male bastion” of track and field, there is a “hawk”, who has no ethical problem interfering with a highly qualified, highly successful coach who happens to be a woman.  Sure it’s unethical.  It’s also something that wouldn’t go on in other sports.  No one comes out of the stands at the basketball game, or onto the sidelines at the football game, and calls another play.  But in track and field, it happened.  

Preparation

I had the privilege of coaching my team’s pole vaulters for decades.  We developed a whole pole vault “culture” and had tremendous success.  One of the issues we actually had to deal with was other pole vault coaches “kibitzing” in, making suggestions to my athletes in the middle of the competition.   They weren’t trying to steal my kids, or sign them to their “club”.  A lot of  the time, they really just wanted to help, to be a part of the success.  I prepped my kids for it – be polite, nod affirmatively, then walk away.  It wasn’t that “we were right and they were wrong”.  It’s that our “process” included making corrections, and we usually were right.  Other folks didn’t know our “process”, and might literally be fixing the wrong thing.

Of course, my friend has established rapport with her increasingly successful student.  He knows who to listen to in a meet.  But the focus required for maximum athletic performance is fragile, and easily disrupted.  The “chicken hawk” is just one more factor to “prepare” for.  It shouldn’t be.  She shouldn’t have to make that part of her “regional prep”, the last meet before the State Finals.  But in “modern” track and field, it’s just another cost of success.

Background

Tuesday,  I wrote a long piece explaining the controversy and evident corruption involving Ohio’s Governor, Attorney General and the Ohio’s State Teacher Retirement System (STRS) (Crooked Men and Crooked Staffs).  If you aren’t familiar with the situation, it would help to read that essay first.  The summary is  this: STRS controls over $90 Billion of retirement money for teachers.  In the past decades, they failed to increase the investment, in fact, losing money, despite the markets climbing steadily, even including the Covid drop (the Market indexes set record highs just yesterday).  But private equity investment companies, and the professional investment staff of  STRS itself, have made millions.

Both retired and active teachers, frustrated by ongoing cutbacks in retirement benefits, increased teacher retirement costs and longer work-years requirements, moved to change the governing membership of the eleven member retirement board.  Since 2021, the elected members of the Board (five by active teachers, two by retired teachers) were altered.  Currently five of the seven elected members are “reformers” in support of STRS changes.  The other four Board members are appointed by the state government.  One of those, the Governor’s appointee Wade Steen, is also a “reformer”, giving them a six to five majority.

In the 2023 election when a reformer won decisively, the Governor tipped the balance of the Board back to the “old Board” by illegally removing Mr. Steen before his term was completed.  After several months of litigation, Steen regained his seat.  When he took his seat at the April Board Meeting, the Chairman of the Board, Dale Price, (an “old Board” supporter) just walked out, throwing the meeting into the chaos which ultimately ending it.  There was no “legal” motion to adjourn.

This Week

This week it was announced that another reformer, Michelle Flanigan, was elected to take Price’s seat in September.  Just before that result was announced, the Governor presented an anonymous letter claiming that his representative, Mr. Steen, and another elected reformer, Rudy Fitchembaum, were “colluding” with a private company to make a “hostile takeover” of the Board, in order to invest $60 Billion with that same private company.  Steen and Fitchembaum deny this, and the 2021 meeting records also refute parts of that claim.  The Governor referred the letter to the State Attorney General for investigation.

All of that got us to Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon, the David Yost, Ohio’s Attorney General, conducted his “investigation” in less than a week, and filed a lawsuit demanding the Steen and Fitchembaum be removed from the Board.  Wednesday, the STRS Board met, with the reformers in the majority for the first time.  The Chairman Price was “ousted”, and Mr. Fitchembaum was put in his place. An “old Board” member was also replaced by a reformer as Vice Chairman. 

Today

The Governor continues to rely on the “anonymous letter” (now supposedly authored by a member of the STRS staff legal team).  He and the Attorney General are doing whatever they can to prevent the reformers from exercising control of STRS policy, regardless of the fact that they were legally elected by the constituents of the System.  My best guess:  Yost will seek a temporary injunction to stop the current majority from “acting” until his lawsuit is heard, sometime in the summer of 2025.

He better hurry.  Come September, the Board will have a majority of reformers even without Mr. Steen.  

But the question remains:  why are the state politicians so worried about changes in the STRS?  Why aren’t they worried that STRS requires the highest teacher contribution rate (14% of their annual income) in the country, but doesn’t pay the consistent Cost of Living Allowance that they promised up until 2015? (All of the other state retirement funds have annual COLA increases). Why aren’t they concerned about a multi-million dollar investment staff that has managed to lose money in the biggest market gain in history?

My answer is in the title:  there are crooked men with crooked staffs who have a vested interest in the “old” Board, and the “old” ways.  The “powers”, Governor DeWine and Attorney General Yost, are abusing their authority to protect that interest.

This is a long story – about teachers, power, pensions – and a lot (a lot!!!) of money.

Ohio Mud

In the past few months I’ve written several essays on political corruption in Ohio.   The leaders of the state have been “steeped” in corrupt activity, from Gerrymandering to paying-off private industrial debt with public money.  But somehow, Ohio comes across as politically “clean and pure”. 

 In fact, Ohio’s politics are as ugly as New Jersey, or Texas, or even Illinois.  Our state just doesn’t bother to send folks to jail. (But one – ex-House Speaker Larry Householder, the notable exception to the rule.  He “only” took a $60 Million bribe from power company Direct Energy).

Now, there is a battle over corruption at the Ohio’s State Teacher Retirement System (STRS). It’s been going on for the past several years (What’s the Deal), but this week, it boiled out into the open.

The System

The big picture:  Ohio’s public school teachers have a separate retirement system from the rest of the world. Teachers don’t even pay into social security. They had no choices about how their retirement money was invested.  It was “all in” to STRS, originally for at least thirty years of teaching to get a “full” retirement. (Teachers would get about two-thirds of their best three years).  Teach an additional five years, and get almost equal to their best years as a pension.  

The money; a percentage of the teacher’s salary matched by their school district, was “carefully” invested by the investment staff “wizards” at STRS.  And for decades that system worked, living up to the self-anointed claim to be a “premier” retirement system.  Retired teachers got annual Cost-of-Living-Allowances (COLA) of 3%. And for decades, they even received a “thirteenth” check at the end of the year.  Insurance was cheap, and life was good for retirees.

The Market

But the near back-to-back stock exchange disasters in 2001 (9-11) and 2008 (housing bubble bust) shook the retirement world.  Add that to the number of “Baby-Boomer” teachers reaching retirement age, and the “wizards” were concerned.  Could they keep up with the financial needs of ballooning retirees with fewer “active” teachers paying into the system.  In addition, actives were giving the option of splitting their contributions into a “defined contribution” plan, more like a 401-k.  That money wouldn’t remain in the investment “pot”. 

Meanwhile Ohio’s Republican Governor and state legislature gave the state retirement systems, including STRS, autonomous authority to change the structure of the pension plans, and to invest in private equity firms.  It freed up the almost $90 billion in STRS investments for much more “creative” investing.   It also let the legislators off the hook. They didn’t have to vote to cut retirees.

The Wizards

Retirement contributions increased from 10% to 14% of annual salary, now one of the most expensive in the Nation.  School district contributions also increased to 14%.   Retirement benefits were cut.  The “thirteenth check” disappeared,  insurance costs went up, and the COLA was cut from 3% to 2%. Ultimately it was suspended indefinitely.  

STRS began hiring “private wizards” for the “in-house wizards”.  Twenty percent of the over $90 Billion in investments went into private equity companies; $20 billion privately controlled and invested rather than direct open control by STRS.  And the “in-house wizards” also went into the real estate business. Almost 10% of the Fund was invested in Columbus, New York, Texas, Illinois and California (STRS).  

The nature of the investment fund became murky, as those “private” funds were shrouded in layers of non-disclosure agreements.  Even when the overall portfolio lost billions of dollars in value ($5.3 Billion in 2022 alone), the in-house  “wizards” still paid private equity fees. And they continued to get millions of dollars in “performance bonuses” themselves.

Meanwhile active teachers were paying more into retirement, and retired teachers were losing more and more of their spendable income.  From 2014 to 2023, the “value” of their original pension lost 32% in purchasing power without a cost of living increase.  The cost of health insurance increased, and many retired teachers were forced back into the job market just to make ends meet.

The Board

The Board that “governs” STRS is made up of eleven members.  Four are appointed by the State Government (one each for the Treasurer, Legislature, Department of Education and the Governor).  Two are elected by the retirees, and five are elected by active teachers.  For decades the Board served as a “rubber stamp” for the investment “wizards”, routinely approving bonuses and even allowing the Executive Director control over the Board’s own agenda. 

 The Board didn’t exercise oversight, and didn’t seem to be concerned.  And with the state government controlling four seats, and the major teacher union, the Ohio Education Association, controlling most of the other seven seats, STRS went on it’s “merry” way, despite the growing cries of retirees and the loss of confidence by many active teachers.

In 2021, retirees, dissatisfied with the “premier” pension that left them with lower standards of living, organized to elect a reform slate to the Board.  The Ohio Retired Teachers Association (ORTA) teamed up with the Ohio STRS Members Only Forum (MOF, based on Facebook) and STRS Ohio Watchdogs to change the elected Board members.  The goal:  to get Board members more concerned with the impact of STRS cuts on retirees, and on “future retirees” as well.  

The issue was clear:  if the STRS fund had simply been invested in “passive” funds, indexed to the stock market, over the past twenty years the fund would have doubled.  It didn’t take “wizards” to figure that out.  Even with obvious buffers for market performance, the fund should have grown by billions, and never actually lost money.  And STRS shouldn’t be paying millions in private equity management fees, and millions more in professional staff bonuses, regardless of loss to the fund.

The Money

It’s public money.  It is the “fruit of the labor” of decades of teachers. (And for those who note that half of that money came directly from employing school districts – keep in mind that but for the teacher’s labor, that money wouldn’t be in the pension fund).  It’s “survival” to the teachers and retirees who depend in good faith on the System.  And clearly, it’s been mismanaged, with no one held accountable.  And who benefits from this mismanagement?  

First of all, it’s the “wizards”.  The “wizards” work for STRS, get to set their own performance goals, hire the firms that determine whether those goals are achieved, and then pay themselves handsomely (last year, over $10 million in bonus money on top of six-figure salaries).  Second, it’s the private equity firms, who make millions in management fees, and have non-disclosure contracts preventing public scrutiny of their actions, even by the Board members.  

And, third, and perhaps most importantly, it’s the politicians who receive campaign contributions from those private equity firms.  They are “vested” in making sure the pension fund monies are available for “their guys” to make money on.  The politicians get their “cut”, even if it’s a legal contribution to a political fund.

And where does the Ohio Education Association (OEA), the teacher’s union, my union; stand? (In full disclosure – I am a former OEA local President). They are all-in behind the “wizards”, and refuse to answer why.  It’s only speculation – but is there some tacit agreement between the union and the politicians they normally oppose?  Is there some secret quid-pro-quo?  It’s hard to know.  But what is for sure is that OEA is positive in their support of the “old” board, many of whose members moved onto state-level OEA governance positions.

The Governor

Over the past three years, both “retiree” seats on the board, and three of the “active” teacher seats, were won by “reformers” in legal, audited, fair elections.  (Only retirees can vote for retired seats, only active teachers can vote for active seats).  When the last active seat was won by Pat Davidson, an ORTA and MOF reformer, it looked like real change was at hand.  The Governor’s appointee, Wade Steen, had “seen the light” and come to the reformers’ side.  For the first time, there would be a “reform” majority on the Board.

Governor DeWine stepped in.  He removed Steen from the board, replacing him with – wait for it – a real estate and securities manager and $100,000 DeWine campaign contributor.  Steen sued to serve out the remainder of his term, and after several months the Common Pleas and Appellate Courts agreed with him.  The tens of thousands of dollars of Steen’s legal expenses were paid by ORTA.  Steen regained his seat in April and went to the Board meeting to take his place.  Then the lame-duck active representative and Chairman of the Board, Dale Price, walked out of the meeting without a motion of adjournment. That caused the Board to be unable to do business, and  the meeting just ended.

The Doubt

Last week, Michelle Flannigan, a reform candidate, was elected to fill Price’s seat on the Board.  Now with or without Steen, reformers will have control when her term begins in September.

And DeWine received an “anonymous letter”. It claimed that the reform board members were in the “thrall” and “colluding” with a business that does market indexing, called QED.  In fourteen pages, the letter implies that QED has somehow “rigged” the multiple elections held for Board seats in the past three years.  DeWine, just “doing his duty”, referred the letter to Ohio’s Attorney General Dave Yost, another beneficiary of the private equity campaign money.  Yost promises to “protect” the retirement fund from “undue private influence”. 

So here we are in “clean and pure” Ohio.  If you’re a gambler (or investor), don’t bet on the reform majority actually taking control in September.  Odds are, Yost will do a “speedy” investigation, and somehow disrupt things before there are seven votes to clean things up at STRS.  The winners will be the governing party and, sadly, the Ohio Education Association, I guess. 

 But there’s no guessing about who the losers will be:  the retired teachers of Ohio, and just as importantly, the students of Ohio. Why the Students? Because the “premier” retirement system was a big draw for new teachers, even making up for the reduced salaries. Now those rookie teachers can look forward to joining current retirees in one thing:  a retirement filled with financial doubt.