Let's go to the Animal Fair

 A funny thing is happening in Washington.

Well, that’s not saying very much. A funny thing is always happening in Washington. Not funny “ha ha” either. I mean the other kind. 

Now, amid all of the posturing and praying, preying and threatening, lobbying and firing up the faithful voters, an even bigger funny thing is going on, even if it’s not really clear to everyone just what it is.

So, let me tell you. A lot of Republicans in Congress are acting like a bunch of animals. But, which ones? It’s hard to tell when you are looking at a whole zoo.

The rats are leaving the sinking ship. Someone is dragging a horse to water, but can’t make it drink. Some of them are being chased by a bear, and realize they don’t have to outrun it, just outrun the other guy.  And there’s poor Mitch McConnell, who has a tiger by the tail. Just don’t let go, Mitch.

See what I mean? Pick your favorite Republican in Congress, and decide what kind of animal they are acting like. Remember, if the behavior fits…

Now, this is not just taking a cheap shot. It’s a good lesson in politics, one that people in elected office learn over and over again.

Let me put it a different way. It will be a lot clearer. The meltdown in Washington is caused by the realization that support for Donald Trump among Republicans is a mile wide. But, for a lot of them, it’s also only an inch deep.

A rash statement? Well, when things were going well - remember only three and a half years ago - the entire GOP delegation lined up to take a picture with their President who was celebrating their big tax cut. A trillion dollar tax cut.

Well, anyone the President liked and who cut taxes for their constituents was in good shape for the next election. Well, that was when things were good.

Now, they are not. And here’s the thing.  We live in a big, wonderful country, but every single gerrymandered Congressional district is different - different people, different values, different problems.

Some voters didn’t get big tax cuts, certainly not big enough to help Uncle Louie who lost his job. Some of them had huge medical bills, and were waiting for the Republican insurance plan, the one President Trump said would be better and cheaper than Obamacare.

Heck, maybe there are even one or two people out there who are still waiting for Jared to unveil his wonderful plan to bring peace to the Middle East. Who knows, they might visit Israel and Egypt once it’s safe to travel again.

In short, big generalizations don’t mean much to voters who are dealing with very real problems. They stop taking things on faith.

Anyway, here’s where I share some sage political advice with you. It’s something every public official discovers after they are first elected, usually about half-way through their first term.

You can’t do everything you want or everything you promised. Certainly not in your first term. To do things, you have to get re-elected.  Doesn’t matter if they are noble, loving people who ran to make life better for everyone, or if they are nasty, grasping people who want to get along with lobbyists, dump their spouse for a newer model and  get a big, cushy job in the private sector when they retire.

It’s the same for both of them. You have to get re-elected to do anything.

Now, normally, this would mean getting along with party officials, supporting the right people, and using what influence you have to help some influential people. And, of course, taking credit for everything. “Violent crime in my district went down 11 per-cent in the past two years” works well. Just don’t tell people the only big factory in the district closed and 18 per-cent of the people who used to live in the district have moved away.

Our upcoming election is, certainly, about the President. He made it that way, and Republicans in Congress supported him in doing it. Loyalty to Trump was not something optional. 

But now, some districts have a Republican electorate which is split. Some love Donald Trump. Some would love to see him go away.

That means incumbents are doing some very important re-calculating. Are they better off sticking with Trump - keep holding that Tiger tail - or upsetting his supporters and going in a new direction?

Those are the ones who are starting to take out ads which don’t use the name of their party. Or running for office and running ads that don’t mention the President.

It’s not just a bunch of balky Senators and member of Congress deciding to suddenly buck Mitch McConnell. It’s a bunch of incumbents who know what their voters want and don’t want.

Campaign strategy is different in different places, and the “one-size-fits-all” approach the President is using doesn’t always play well in specific districts across the country.

Let’s test it. Quick - everyone who wants federal police patrolling their streets raise their hands. Quick -everyone who wants to see their local taxes go up dramatically because the federal government has cut back on aid to municipalities raise their hands. Quick - every soldier who can’t get base housing because the military budget was cut so Trump could build his wall and likes the idea raise their hands.

So, we have lots of elected officials running in lots of different directions, and a political party that can’t name its priorities, can’t put on a convention that President Trump was touting for months, and no clear road map for November.

So, you can see why I’m having problems in deciding how to explain all this running around, or seeing members of Congress claiming some things at the top of their lungs and running away from reporters the next day.

To try and be fair and balanced, the Democrats are having some problems with a consistent message as well. But, Joe Biden is doing remarkably well in not stirring the pot.

What does it all mean? I can’t tell you yet. I’ll just have to keep watching the Animal Fair.

So, Where Are They?

More than a century ago, an American poet named James Russell Lowell asked a question that has stayed with us to this day.

Not his whole poem, of course, but the question in one brief line - What is so rare as a day in June?

I keep thinking about that question as life unfolds, wondering what other rare and wonderful things have been more and more difficult to find.

Where, for example, are the Republican deficit hawks - the ones who opposed our growing national debt. They carved out an exception - debt is bad unless the debt grows at the same time a lot of wealthy people get to pay a lot less in taxes  - you know, the ones our President told at a Christmas party at Mar-a-Lago in 2017 “You all just got a lot richer.”

Trump’s tax reform cost about a trillion dollars. The same amount of money we can’t afford to pay for all the medical equipment and coronavirus testing our nation needs and to help those thrown out of work because the virus trashed our economy.

Just as rare as the Republican deficit hawks are the brave defenders of our Constitution - you know, the ones out West who proudly march around with guns, go to their own secret training camps, and warn of the threat of government agents in black helicopters and unmarked cars, pulling innocent civilians off the street.

Those Patriots vow to fight government oppression every time they get near a TV camera. So, with government agents in military-looking uniforms and with military-looking weapons doing that very thing, where are those patriotic protesters? Maybe I missed one. Maybe I blinked.

Now, as long as we are on the subject of individual freedom, I’m wondering just how far to take it. If you have the right not to wear a mask, do I have the right to go as fast as I want on the road?

Driving too slowly makes me uncomfortable, and I have to breathe in the air on the highway longer. We all know air on the roadways is full of carbon dioxide. Besides, if that stuff gets into my lungs it might kill the Coronavirus - who knows? Maybe it could substitute for cleaning fluid, or chlorine, or whatever our President said might work.

Now, I remember when Republicans stood for law and order. They seem to do it every four years.

Now, our President is talking about sending federal police into those unruly Democrat-controlled cities, saying that if those local officials can’t do the job of keeping order, he will do it.

And, President Trump says he has a force of 50,000 or 60,000 people to do it. It will only take a few weeks to get things under control, he promises.

So, why not test him. What could be rarer than bringing down crime in some of our uncontrollable cities?

Well, it would be hard to find a really good one. Crime rates in most cities have been going down for years, and while courts are clogged all over the place, laws seem to be pretty much enforced, and order pretty much maintained - if you don’t count those federal troops protecting our federal courthouses and monuments by going out on roving patrols and shooting tear gas at protesters.

Which, by the way is a sound technique. You can best protect a courthouse by making sure that any trouble starts far, far away from the building. See, it makes sense in a Trumpian sort of way.

So, where should we put those unidentified guardians of law and order in their unidentifiable vehicles. (You know, of course, they do say “police” on them, but if one of their vans hits your car and drives away, just try figuring out who to sue? One of a hundred similar vans? No identifying numbers or other markings? Even Bill Barr could defend that one.

Anyway, I am getting away from the main point. Let’s send those officers to Chicago, which is experiencing the worst wave of homicides in years. In a two month period, the city saw 1,130 shootings which resulted in 212 deaths.

Now, people in Chicago say the shootings were caused because the city is awash in cheap, illegal guns. But, the gangs which did most of the shootings can afford - and pay for - some of the best weapons that can be smuggled into the city from those other states where buying a hand gun is very legal.

Chicago has one of the largest police departments in the nation - about 13,500 sworn officers and about 2,000 civilian employees. So, those 60,000 federal troops could probably easily put an end to all those gun deaths.

If I were the mayor of Chicago, I would certainly ask for that help. And, of course, the President could take care of all the details, things like where to put them, where to keep their prisoners, what courts to send them to and little things like room and board.

You can’t just go to your local Burger King and order 120,000 hamburgers for lunch, with a side order of fries. Especially if those restaurants are already closed because of a Democrat Anti-Trump plot designed to make him look bad.
Just saying. I watched his last press conference. Nothing rare about that, just another day. Not even June.

Those Nasty Questions

 Sometimes, when its seems the world is going to hell, it’s hard to figure out what to look at first. With a pandemic killing well over 100,000 people, unemployment rates hitting levels haven’t seen in generations, race relations collapsing….well, just take your pick.

I will bet those nasty questions President Trump complains about all the time won’t be on your short list. Or on anyone else’s.

But here’s the funny thing. Sometimes, something that seems relatively trivial is really not trivial at all. It touches on a lot of problems, and illuminates others too often left in the dark.

So, I am devoting this blog to nasty questions. I’ll start by asking you one of them. And, I’ll finish the same way. See if you have a different answer when you finish reading this.

How come so few reporters and columnists are asking nasty questions, and why aren’t we demanding that more of them do it?

Now, what do I mean by nasty questions? Is my idea of them the same as yours?

Well, here’s a definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster.

Nasty can be disgustingly filthy, like a nasty living condition. Also physically repugnant, mean, indecent or obscene. Even extremely hazardous or really unpleasant, like nasty weather, or hard to understand, like a nasty problem. My personal favorite is lacking in courtesy or sportsmanship, like a nasty trick.

You get the point. Nasty can mean anything you don’t like, for any reason. President Trump feels that any question that embarrasses him or that he can’t answer is a nasty one. A lot of his supporters seem to feel the same way.

So why do reporters ask them? Well, you can’t build a career as a reporter by being mean to people for no reason. You won’t last long that way working for a small media outlet, and not long working for a large one either.

On the other hand, unless you get to those nasty questions - and every story worth writing will lead to a couple of them - you just aren’t doing your  job. That’s because those questions usually involve facts. Prove what you are saying, or how does what you say square with other facts.

The only exception to this rule are the news outlets that play to people with closed minds, who enjoy watching cheap insults. Say whatever you want about the enemy. You know, people from that other party. Some commentators on the radio or TV can go a long way doing that, but there are only so many of those jobs available, and unless the audience can grow, it can get really ugly when advertisers start cutting back.

Now early in my career, on a small circulation daily in a small state, I learned quickly that most people I interviewed looked at questions two ways. The ones with answers that made them look good were good questions, while the ones that made them uncomfortable or look bad were nasty ones.

Ask a politician how they were able to cut taxes, and that is a good question. The “I’m glad you asked that” kind. But ask how that tax cut would impact road maintenance or new parks, and you’re just being speculative, or missing the point, or just being nasty.

As it turns out, the easy questions are the ones many people in the audience like. Any story that says taxes are going down is generally well-received. The qualifications down at the bottom of the story are easy to ignore.

But, when things go really bad, guess who gets the blame. The elected officials, of course, but also the media who didn’t warn their readers or viewers.

“How come my taxes are going up? Why didn’t you tell us about it?,” the readers will ask. Why didn’t you warn us about this health crisis any sooner? And, they are right.

Most reporters know from experience that nothing is as simple as it seems at first glance. Which means most stories need a lot of context or background. They also know when an editor says 500 words, that is all you are getting. When the B segment of the news broadcast has 90 seconds for your story, that is all you get before going to commercial.

So, reporters learn to skip the subtleties. If things are worth mentioning, you can get to them in the next story. Besides, the readers who complain that you didn’t tell them something important are the same ones who never read the whole story anyway. Sad, but often true.

Still, if you have to decide just what to put in those 500 words or those 90 seconds, you need to ask a lot of questions just to know what to leave out and how much weight to give to what you leave in. Inevitably, those are the things that get called “nasty.”

You say your proposed tax cut will mean an average reduction of $500 per family for our town, but how is that calculated? Do 100 families get $100 each and one family gets $40,000? Does it favor people who live in bigger houses and pay more in taxes? Just how is that tax cut written?

How about a big financial aid program the federal government creates, designed to help small businesses keep their workers. But a lot of companies already making millions in profits get the money before the small stores on Main Street.

What happened to the nasty questions about how that money was getting distributed? Some were asked, but too few and too late.

Now, we are talking about a vaccine for Coronavirus, and some reporters are starting to ask things like how much will it cost, who gets it first, how much will be available for distribution and how long will it take for everyone to get it?

If someone in government says there will be 30 or 40 or 50 million doses available early next year, maybe you should remember there are nearly 330 million people living in the U.S. and 7.8 billion people across the globe.

So, I’ll finish where I started. How come so few reporters and columnists are asking nasty questions, and why aren’t we demanding that more of them do it?

So, what's really in a name?

The president’s insistence a few weeks ago that he will not allow the names of U.S. Army bases named for Southern Civil War generals to be changed - there is a military commission looking into the matter - got me thinking.

It is, of course, a distraction from the far more important problems facing our nation, but it’s a really great distraction. I’m a Civil War buff - I think it was the most transformative event in our nation’s history - and at least 10 military bases named for rebel traitors who fought against the U.S. Army - all of them Southerners - now face re-naming.

Duh, you may say. But, is it right not to name even one fort or airfield for a northern officer who betrayed our nation long, long ago? Where is the fairness in that?

So, let me propose one. I think one of those southern bases under review should get the name of a really good Revolutionary War Major - a favorite of George Washington himself - who was ready to sell West Point to the British, who fled the country when he got a chance, and died rich and happy in exile in England.

Just think of the pride some future Army officer will have when he is made commander of Fort Benedict Arnold!

To be completely fair, there is a monument to Benedict Arnold at West Point, or at least part of him. It is just a boot - his leg was blown off in combat - and it was put up by people who wanted to memorialize the only part of him that remained loyal to our country.

But, enough of that. Let’s take a look at a couple of the worthy Confederate generals some bases were named for, an honor they don’t really deserve. Unless, of course, they were honored for their contribution to the loss of the South in the Civil War.

(To be fair, there were lousy generals on both sides in the Civil War. Why that happened is worth a whole semester’s study. Let’s just say that’s the way it was back then. After all, there are no Army bases named for bad Union officers.)

I will start my list with Fort Bragg, one of the largest military bases in the world. It takes up 251 square miles of North Carolina and has about 57,000 military personnel, including the 82nd Airborne and the Special Operations Command.

It was named for Braxton Bragg, a hero of the Mexican-American War, who is on several lists of the worst generals of the Civil War. He rarely gave clear orders, abandoned an important defensive position and fled to Chattanooga using a six-month old order as an excuse, then fled Chattanooga thinking he was being attacked by a massive Union army which was nowhere near him.

Then there’s Ft. Hood, which covers 332 square miles of Killeen, Texas,  named for Confederate General John Bell Hood, who commanded the Texas Brigade during the Civil War. Nearly 90,000 military work there.

Hood commanded the Army of Tennessee in 1864, and had a perfect record of losing every major battle he fought in. After the surrender of Atlanta - remember Gone With The Wind - he lost the battles of Allatoona Pass, Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville, allowing the Union Army to drive through the heart of the Confederacy.

Not on the list for re-naming - but it should be - is Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Originally named for Union General A. A. Humphreys, the name was changed in the 1930’s by a Virginia Congressman who hated the idea of an army base in his state being named for a Yankee general. He never said anything about the statue of Humphreys at Gettysburg, but that was in Pennsylvania.

Anyway, Fort Belvoir - it’s French for good view - wasn’t named for a person, but for a slave plantation run by a British loyalist in the Revolutionary war.  William Fairfax first bought the property in 1738 and built an imposing brick mansion on the Picnic River. The Fairfax family lived there until George William Fairfax sailed away to England on business in 1773 and never came back. Somehow, the slaves were never able to deal with a fire that destroyed the manor home in 1783. But, the name survives as home for the Army Corps of Engineers.

To be fair, you can find a record of some military installations named for failed Union generals as well, if you look hard enough. General Ambrose Burnside, for instance, lost nearly 1,000 men at the battle of Antietam, but did go on to become Rhode Island’s Governor. His major contribution to history was his unusual hair style. He wore his hair long down his face, a style that gave us the word “sideburns.”

Anyway, in 1942 a coastal defense fort was built on Beavertail Point in Newport, Rhode Island and named Ft. Burnside, The 16-inch guns were never fired at an enemy, and the facility was abandoned by the Army at the end of World War II.

See what a great distraction.

No More Cops?

You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.

It’s an old saying. Noel Coward used it in a play in the 1930’s. Some credit it to Desiderius Erasmus, a philosopher who lived in the 1400’s.

Over the centuries, it has been used for a lot of things. Women, of course. Husbands as well. Lawyers, bankers, politicians, military leaders, Even the bacteria in our stomachs. You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. Literally.

So, it should come as no surprise that I am using that tired old saying yet again, this time for police.

Yep, cops. We can’t live with them, and we can’t live without them.

Now, I am not a cop. Let me be very clear about that.

None of my close friends are cops, no one in my family is a cop either.

So, who am I to be talking about the problem our society is having with police, or why the spark of protest against police abuse is spreading across the nation like wildfire, and why the “de-fund the police” movement is oh, so right and oh, so wrong at the very same time?

Well, here are my credentials.

I covered police as a reporter for years. I went out on drug raids with police teams, covered riots that police were trying to contain, talking to both sides. I have also been at more homicide scenes than most police officers will ever see.

I have been to natural disasters where police are working hard to keep people safe, knocked on the same doors detectives have knocked on looking for the same witnesses. And - oh yes - the U.S. Army, in its wisdom, decided to put me in an MP reserve unit where I got to go to summer camp and patrol the streets with civilian officers.

So, what’s my great insight into this national problem?

In one way, it’s simple. In another, it is nearly overwhelmingly complex.

First, the simple.

Imagine that you would never get a speeding ticket in your life. Would you go speeding down the road? Of course, you would.

Imagine that you would never be arrested for driving drunk. Or never be stopped by a cop and arrested for getting into a fight with someone.  Let’s say that, no matter what you did while on duty, you would almost never be charged with anything. 

Now let’s say complaints about your behavior by civilians were mostly ignored. And, even if you killed someone on the job, you would be protected with a special “limited” immunity, and that even if you were fired you could go to another department and get another job without anyone knowing about your background.

Finally, let’s say you spent a lot of your time at work alone - no one else to see what you did - or with a partner who knows that you have their back, and they have to protect yours.

How do you think that would work?

Yes, police are a victim of their own success. Every privilege they have acquired has come because society has decided its need to be protected from the scary unknown is more important than a few people getting abused, especially if those people are poorer, live in “bad” neighborhoods or are the wrong ethnic group.

How about the other side?

Well, if you are in danger, have been in an accident and are bleeding badly or if your mother has fallen and can’t get up, who do you call? If you go to the theater at night and have to walk three blocks to get to your car, who do you want to see on the street.

If you are a real idiot and go speeding at 90 miles an hour down a big multi-lane highway in a car that doesn’t have the proper suspension, bad tires or don’t look far enough ahead to know when to change lanes, who do you need on the side of the road to stop you? The same police highway patrol officer who has seen a dozen mangled bodies pulled out of wrecked cars.

Now, to stay with that highway patrol officer for a moment, consider this. They sometimes park where you can’t see them, radar active and just waiting to catch speeders. Other times, they park right there in the median where everyone notices them.

Believe it or not, the whole road slows down for a bit. It is called deterrence, which is one of the most important and hard to evaluate things police officers do.

They stop crimes by just being there. Or, in some cases, they shift crimes. You can’t stop drug sales on every corner of the city or rural town, but you can make sure it happens somewhere else.

Which brings us to the heart of the problem with police and the defunding movement. Police really enforce the often unwritten desires of the government which hires them. And, that government - like a creaking old ship sailing along a stormy path - eventually follows the course that we as a society demand.

Easy to say, but it needs some explanation.

Police aren’t told where to work by civilians. The mayor or the councilman doesn’t demand that an officer be assigned to a certain neighborhood or not to give parking tickets at a church fundraiser on a Summer weekend.

But, if people living near a school complain enough to their elected officials about kids parking on their streets despite the no parking signs, sooner or later someone will go out and write 10 or 20 parking tickets. It’s a lot easier than having the school board raise taxes to build a parking lot to meet the needs of the high school.

Some neighborhoods are safer than others for a lot of reasons, and police have a lot of different jobs to do every day. Still, response times are determined by how many officers are available, and how many officers are available depends on how many are assigned to a particular area.

That usually comes up every year at budget time. Interesting negotiations when the county executive has to figure out how many parks to open or close, how much money goes to keeping roads and bridges maintained, how many courtrooms will have to be added to meet the needs of civil cases…well, you get the idea. The pecking order usually favors the establishment, which is why it is the establishment. It establishes things.

So, there is a good conservative argument to be made that if police officers decided they would no longer tolerate bad actions by bad cops, there would be less social strife to deal with. You could also argue that five  highway crew members would be more effective and a lot cheaper than three police officers assigned to sit on the road with their flashing lights on because a construction crew is working and no one wants a distracted driver hitting them.

Heck, those highway workers could be at two sites instead of one. Look at the money we would save.

But you can’t keep any police department at its current level  and at the same time hire paramedics and highway crews, town code enforcement agents and the dozens of other people needed to fill the various jobs police do - jobs which do not really require law enforcement training and the power of life and death over the people they meet.

Besides, if someone really gives that traffic enforcement officer a hard time and ignores their directions to stop, all they have to do is remember the license plate number. Then, they could call a cop - one of the many who would be freed from a lot of other things so they can deal with real crimes and real emergencies.

That could work for everyone.