#52 – Dick Bernard/Carol Ashley: Views on Economic Stimulus

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UPDATE:  Carol Ashley joined this conversation July 11 (her substantial contribution follows the initial post.)  This will be held open till July 21, 2009. 
Dick Bernard: This is the first blog post I have specifically posted in Draft form.  I solicit specific, brief,  comments to my regular e-mail address.  When this paragraph is removed, the Draft will be in more or less final form.
Among the kettle-full of national and international issues roiling about this past week, discussion was stirring about the Stimulus.  The usual suspects were saying the usual things about whether Round One was working or not, and whether or how a Round Two should be.  Apparently the President is not in favor of a Round Two, at least not at this time.
All I can say is that I am glad I am not having to make these decisions.
It appears that, after the major crisis of 2008, that ordinary Americans are both saving more and spending less.  Fewer people are earning any income, and those who are earning an income are not making as much as they were before.  Times are tight.  It doesn’t take a lot of looking to see that we’re not as flush as we were.  Some think we’ll never recover; that the worst is ahead of us.  Some would welcome such a failure, for differing reasons.  Opinions are a dime a dozen.
Lately I have been wondering if, perhaps, we Americans are, right now, our own worst enemies.  We are a nation whose prosperity was built on consumption.  We can argue whether that is good or bad, but that is how capitalism thrived.  And we are a capitalist society.
If my observation is a bit correct, rather than waiting for the government to print more money that we don’t have, perhaps a reasonable solution to propose is that we loosen our own individual pursestrings, and spend a little more of what we have, including our savings, to help stimulate the economy, particularly for those who really need the money the most.  I’m not advocating randomly throwing money on the street, but finding ways to help people who will truly put the money in circulation, and help the economy recover.
We are not, even now, an impoverished nation: A single dollar per person would generate $300,000,000 in circulation; a little over $3 per person would generate one billion.  Before long, there would be serious additional money in circulation.  And if we did the seeding reasonably carefully, it would be spent to help others who need it.  I once heard that a dollar spent multiplies by seven times if in circulation.  $1=$7.  It really isn’t funny math.  Some folks would make the multiplier a different number than 7, but economists would agree that there is a multiplying effect when money is actually in circulation.
Of course, my idea of spending to prosperity isn’t new.  I remember well the proposition of George W. Bush adminstration after 9-11: we Americans were admonished to go shopping.
The difference I see between his proposition, then, and mine, now, is a pretty stark one: were we to dig deep enough, the motivation for his proposal was to maintain and even build profits for business, using money we didn’t have (credit) to do that.  We have seen, and we are experiencing directly,  the results of that foolhardy policy.
In my case, I am proposing using money that is actually in existence to help people with real needs either stay on their feet, or get back on their feet.
Saving is great: I’m all for it.  Spending is okay, too.  I think we can help build our own recovery…and change the direction of our nation in the process.
Your thoughts?
Carol Ashley: I like your idea, but not because I think it would stimulate the economy. Helping others out with whatever we have that’s extra is a good idea because it is compassionate and there are so many people in need. In terms of the economy, I think we as Americans need to rethink how we live…as many are. We need to focus on what we need and not on what we want. We need to think about a more equitable society. The talk of stimulus is just a way of thinking in the same old ways that have, in part, brought us to this impasse. (And I do think it is an impasse.)
We need to create jobs that focus on real needs. Renewable energy is a good start because we need at least some energy, even if we all devote ourselves to conservation of energy. I expect that large companies will be the ones to do this because that is how our society is and larger companies are the only ones who could afford to do it. That is sad because we need to focus on smaller businesses that won’t be too big to fail.
There are lots of other things that we could do that are unrealistic to suggest because they just won’t happen because our country is too split and too selfish.
And now, as an aside I turn to something I’ve been hit with recently.
I confess that I am a Baby Boomer. I don’t do that easily. You see, I’ve always had the Boomers connected in my mind with the 60’s social justice issues. That’s in spite of stories my nephew has told me, in spite of what I’ve seen and heard from others of my generation, in spite of hearing us referred to as the Me Generation.
It wasn’t until I read more of The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe that I realized just how selfish my generation is. Of course there are exceptions. But I think my generation has had a lot to do with the current attitudes and the resultant crisis we are in. All the way from the good values of the 60’s to this! Of course, I now realize that many young people in the 60’s were in just for the ride, the excitement, the rebellion against authority. Perhaps they each had good reason and good cause. Perhaps most came to accept the broader values that came to the front at that time. But after the riots, after the end of the Vietnam war, and after a bit more equality for women, the Boomers really turned and stayed inward.
The focus turned to self-actualization, personal growth. I saw in the Charismatic movement of the 60’s and 70’s the focus on personal “spiritual growth.” The message was that if they saw a problem in your life, the answer was that you either didn’t have enough faith or the devil was in your life. If you were poor, sick or otherwise suffering, it was your fault. I saw the same thing from the New Age Movement. Many of the New Agers I have met through the years had originally turned from traditional churches to the Charismatic Movement and then became New Agers. The common theme I heard was that Christians were too judgmental, but I heard the very same judgment from them. If you were poor, sick or otherwise suffering it was your karma, you had not grown beyond that. It was your fault.
The one thing that bothered me as I followed that Boomer movement was the lack of compassion, the lack of any sense that we lived in a society that did have effects on people and a lack of any regard for science.
I do think a distrust of authority wasn’t all bad. I don’t think self-actualization is all bad. But anything can be taken to an extreme. It’s not good to throw out the baby with the bathwater, pardon the old cliché.
And now back to your suggestion. I think it is a good one, again not because of a need to stimulate the economy, but to take things into our hands to create a better society where we can help others out. I would like to see us use extra money we may have to start cooperative businesses that provide needs as well as provide jobs for people who have lost theirs. I think this would need to be done community by community.
What do you think?
Carol

#51 – Dick Bernard: Death: Michael (Jackson), Robert (McNamara), Sarah (Palin)

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Yesterday while I was donating blood, I asked the nurse if she had watched any of the Michael Jackson memorial or other goings on surrounding his death.  Mostly, she was non-commital, but her response was pretty succinct and wise.  There are two things certain in our lives, she said: we are born, and we die.  This led to a little sidetrip for the two of us into another reality: unless someone really truly plans their death, none of us know when or how our end will come.  All we know for sure is that there is a temporal end.  We agreed that is good that we don’t know the details about our dying….
Of course, nobody knows what’s on the other side of life.  There is endless speculation, and opposing absolute certainties, expressed about that too.
About all that matters, some of which is within our control, happens between the beginning and the end.  In this middle is where we make our mark, whether for good or ill or not at all (by taking a pass from working for change we feel is important.) 
Michael Jackson (51) and Robert McNamara (93) walked into the unknown in recent days.  Sarah Palin walked into another kind of potential – and horrible (for her) – death.  Political death.  All of them are celebrities; all of them are more a window into who we are as a people, than personalities unto themselves.
Of the three, certainly Michael Jackson got the most attention.  Probably Sarah Palin came in second; Robert S. McNamara third.  Full disclosure: I never followed Michael Jackson, and saw only snips of the service yesterday; I have gained a certain amount of respect for McNamara, solely because he seems to be the rare individual, especially a powerful one, who’s willing to expose the possibility that some of his decisions were flat out wrong.  Palin?  I think that when the dust settles – I give it a year – she’ll have made a few million, and be yesterday’s news. 
There are millions of other deaths too, of course; some make the papers, most don’t.  But these three dominated recent news.  I don’t pretend to have anything other than my own opinion, and I’ll take them in order, very briefly.
Michael Jackson was immensely talented and ultimately a victim of our societies slavish devotion to celebrity.  He reached the pinnacle, and what did it get him in the end?  Our celebrities become our targets.  He’s dead now, and his riches (or his debt) is of no personal concern to him.  People will make a mint off of his memory and fight over the remnants of his economic carcass, like so many vultures.  What was good or bad about him will be flogged mercilessly for as long as it will attract attention. 
Robert S. McNamara was brilliant and loyal and what did it get him in the end?  He took a huge cut in pay to leave a high-paying corporate job with Ford Motor Company to become Secretary of Defense in early President John F Kennedy times.  In a temporal and governmental sense he was powerful, and trusted.  He thought he knew what he was doing; his certainty(and that of others) ended in disaster.  He rose and fell during my early adult life.  I will mostly remember his documentary, “The Fog of War”, as well as a commentary of his, published in August, 2003, entitled “We must minimize cruelties of war” (reprinted at the end of this post.)  At the end, his certainty was replaced by his doubt.  He will be judged on his certainty.  “As I speak”, there’s teams of people attempting to rewrite the history of Vietnam, so that it seems like a necessity and even a success.  I wonder what McNamara would say. 
Sarah Palin ?  In a physical sense, she is very much alive.  But I can’t escape the thought that when she resigned from the Alaska Governorship this past weekend, she effectively committed political suicide, one of the more horrible deaths: yesterday’s darling, tomorrow’s irrelevancy.  Oh, initially she’ll make a ton of money inspiring her base, but even they will tire of her, sooner than later.  And she won’t have the Michael Jackson legacy to bank on.
So it goes…life and death, in all their many forms.
There is something to be said for lacking fame, and not being well known.  Best that we do what we can in our relative anonymity.  In the end, what little we seem to do can make as much or more difference, than that of the celebrities and those seemingly more “powerful”.  It just doesn’t seem so.
FOOTNOTE:
Robert S. McNamara: “We must minimize cruelties of war” as printed in the St. Petersburg FL Times, August 8, 2003.  Many thanks to Eugenie Fellows, who sent me this article years ago.
On the night of March 9, 1945, when the lead crews of the 21st Bomber Command returned from the first firebombing mission over Tokyo, Gen. Curtis LeMay was waiting for them in his headquarters on Guam.  I was in Guam on temporary duty from Air Force headquarters in Washington, and LeMay had asked me to join him for the after mission reports that evening.
LeMay was just as tough as his reputation.  In many ways, he appeared to be brutal, but he was also the ablest commander of any I met during my three years of service with the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
That night, he’d sent out 334 B-29 bombers, seeking to inflict, as he put it, the maximum target destruction for the minimum loss of American lives.  World War II was entering its final months, and the United States was beginning the last, devastating push for an unconditional Japanese surrender.
On that one night alone, LeMay’s bombers burned to death 83,793 Japanese civilians and injured 40,918 more.  The planes dropped firebombs and flew lower than they had in the past and therefore were more accurate and more destructive.
That night’s raid was only the first of 67.  Night after night – 66 more times – crews were sent out over the skies of Japan.  Of course we didn’t burn to death 83,000 people every night, but over a period of months American bombs inflicted extraordinary damage on a host of Japanese cities – 900,000 killed, 1.3 million injured, more than half the populaiton displaced.
The country was devastated.  The degree of killing was extraordinary.  Radio Tokyo compared the raids to the burning of Rome in the year 64.
LeMay was convinced that it was the right thing to do, and he told his superiors (from whom he had not asked for authority to conduct the March 9 raid), “If you want me to burn the rest of Japan, I can do that.”
LeMay’s position on war was clear: If you’re going to fight, you should fight to win.
In the years afterward, he was quoted as saying, “If you’re going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force.”  He also said: “All war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”
Looking back almost 60 years later – and after serving as secretary of Defense for seven years during one of the hottest periods of the Cold War, including the Cuban missile crisis – I have to say that I disagree.
War may or may not be immoral, but it should be fought within a clearly defined set of rules.
One other thing LeMay said, and I heard him say it myself: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.”  We would have been.  But what makes one’s conduct immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
The “just war” theory first expounded by the great Catholic thinkers (I am a Protestant), argues that the application of military power should be proportional to the cause to which you’re applying it.  A prosecutor would have argued that burning to death 83,000 civilians in a single night and following up with 66 additional raids was not proportional to our war aims.
War will not be eliminated in the foreseeable future, if ever.  But we can – and we must – eliminate some of the violence and cruelty and excess that go along with it.
That is why the United States so badly needs to participate in the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, which was recently established in The Hague.  President Clinton signed that treaty on New Year’s Eve 2000, just before leaving office, but in May, 2002, President Bush announced that the United States did not intend to become a party to the treaty.
The Bush administration believes, and many agree, that the court could become a vehicle for frivolous or unfair prosecutions of American military personnel.  Although that is a cause for concern, I believe we should join the court immediately while we continue to negotiate further protection against such cases.
If LeMay were alive, he would tell me I was out of my mind.  He’d say the proportionality rule is ridiculous.  He’d say that if you don’t kill enough of the enemy, it just means more of your own troops will die.
But I believe that the human race desperately needs an agreed-upon system of jurisprudence that tells us what conduct by political and military leaders is right and what is wrong, both in conflict within nations and in conflict across national borders.
Is it legal to incinerate 83,000 people in a single night to achieve your war aims?  Was Hiroshima legal?  Was the use of Agent Orange – which occurred while I was secretary of Defense – a violation of international law?
These questions are critical.  Our country needs to be involved, along with the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, in the search for answers.

#50 – Mary Ellen Mueller: Back to the future with Technology.

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Moderators note: Mary Ellen apparently had e-mail long before I knew what it was.  She defines for me the best among the many ‘progressives’ I know: “with it”, but carrying many bedrock ‘conservative’ values as well!  Thanks, Mary Ellen!
Mary Ellen: I was amused to see my ancient email address mentioned in [your] P&J#2028A [an e-mail network on Peace and Justice issues: “P&Jer’s Grace Kelly and Mary Ellen Mueller were busy photo and video documenting the [Al Franken] event [July 1]…. Mary Ellen has easily the oldest existing e-mail address that I know of: it consists of 9 numbers #####.####@ compuserve.com I seem to remember her telling me once that she and her husband never got around to joining the 21st century and giving themselves a name. Who said Progressives were “progressive”?!”]

Here’s the story:
There are many progressive values. We were progressive enough to have one of the first email addresses in the 1980s. There are other factors involved here.
We are fans of historical technologies, with several examples to show the evolution of mimeographs, typewriters, and various computer systems (from the Zenith Z-100 dual floppy computer my husband built from a kit in 1983 – running C/PM and Z-DOS 1.0, to a 286 running DOS 5.x, and a 1996 laptop running Win95.) We volunteer at the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, and Newspaper Museum at the Minnesota State Fair.
Last year I brought our Win95 laptop with dialup modem to show my 7th graders. It was older than them, and they couldn’t imagine computers without Twitter, FaceBook, or wireless Internet access. (Volunteers at historic house museums report that rotary dial phones confuse children.)
We use the best of the technologies when appropriate, both historical and current. I also have a solar radio, windup lanterns, and a solar oven used every sunny day. We also have Windows XP computers.
If we changed our email address, I would lose a lot of people. People claim they can’t keep track of my house address because I move so often. My last move was 27 years ago. Given that, how many would keep track of my new email address? The nine digits remind them I am contrary.
Avoiding aggravation is the main factor. Dealing with ISPs is such a nuisance, so “if it still works fairly well, don’t change it.” The thought of converting my existing system makes me want to scream and run out the door. I don’t like the idea of computer systems being obsolete so quickly, so I wait to see what new features I will actually use. I’m tired of being a guinea pig, so I wait to see when new features work correctly and reliably. That way I keep things out of the landfill, and more hair on my head. I also avoid being a “fool and her money are soon parted.”
I value my time, and try to spend it wisely. Computers can eat up huge amounts of my time. So I limit myself to a certain amount of Internet time each day, just to keep my life balanced.
My husband and I decided to have one person use the Internet at a time, for the same reason we have one car. We have to talk to each other more often, and coordinate our time and schedules. It sounds unnecessary and odd, given the technology advances, but it improves our lives.
Retired telegraphers are amazing. They will always have the latest technology. Telegraphs were the cutting edge in communication technology at one time, and telegraphers know how quickly it all changes. So they keep current with their profession’s innovations. I bet the telegraphers use Twitter!
Moderators PS:  July 4, we breakfasted with my cousin who has long association with the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting  http://www.pavekmuseum.org/; and The Bakken Museum of Electicity http://www.thebakken.org/, both in the St. Louis Park MN area.  If Mary Ellen hasn’t been there (I’d bet “yes”), she’ll be there soon.
 
 

#49 – Dick Bernard: "A million [tea bag fax] copies…."

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Early July 4 I received a long, rambling e-mail whose focus was Tea Bags, specifically, the need to send a million Tea Bag faxes to the U.S. Congress to protest taxes.
The e-mail came with an Orange, California PO Box address and included the disclaimer that because it included a postal address, it could not be considered spam.   
“Our nation could be gone by the end of the year” was its basic message.  Congress needed to be inundated with this Tea Bag fax.
It had another message too:   for only $20.09, a participant could have his/her fax sent to all 535 members of Congress (100 Senators, 435 Representatives.)  Full retail value of such a service was $57.00 so: in Minnesota parlance, the buyer was getting “a heckuva deal”.   Of course, you could sign up and pledge $25 a month to have someone else be vigilant in your behalf on the issue of the day, week or month.
“A million copies” is not a foreign concept to me.
Two years ago, I heard an elderly gentleman lead a group of us in singing Ed McCurdy’s ca 1950 song, “Last Night I had the Strangest Dream“, in which the phrase “a million copies made” is an integral phrase. 
I was so taken by the gentleman, and the song, which John Denver popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s, that I created my own website, http://www.amillioncopies.info to memorialize the initiative John Denver and the gentleman, Lynn Elling, were advancing.  (You can hear John Denver sing the song, in 1971, at the website.  It is an inspiring song, about peace.)
But that’s not the point of this post.
In 1950, “a million copies” was serious business.  Not only was the U.S. population much lower, but making and distributing “a million copies” was no small feat, for reasons which don’t need enumeration here.
Of course, today, if by some wild chance “a million copies” could be achieved, it would be a serious accomplishment too, but how serious?
“A million”, today, is .003% (one-third of one percent) of the U.S. population.  The technology is obviously accessible to send hundreds, thousands, of e-faxes which (in my opinion) simply dilutes the impact of such an initiative. 
The same goes for things like on-line petitions and the like.  They are in some ways useful, particularly for fund-raising, but were I the person receiving them, they wouldn’t have much impact on me.
Making an impact, politically, is a “contact sport”, a matter of personal engagement.  There is no passive, easy, way to make a difference.  It takes time and effort: letters to the editor; visiting with friends and neighbors, etc., etc.  It is a slow process, which means that it is frustrating.
But without engagement of others, it doesn’t work.
I would predict that the e-Fax folks will reach their goal of 1 million faxes.  Even if they don’t, it is a certainty that they will claim they did. 
Now, if their million individuals sent fresh tea bags as part of a real letter, that would make a difference….  That won’t happen.
On June 15, 2009, I did a blog-post on Lobbying, to which I received this response from Coleen Rowley: “It’s fine to write directly to elected representatives but it’s not enough – one must also publish open letters to them, or op-eds or letters to the editor.  They count for a lot more than private communications…no one has the big money to compete in that [big money] arena…so you have to try everything else available to reach the public.”
By no means am I perfect at this trade of words.  But I have learned the value of practice.   And I think most of us are better at this than we give ourselves credit for…we just talk ourselves out of trying.

#48 – Dick Bernard: the 4th of July

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For several years now, we’ve gone to the annual 4th of July Parade in nearby Afton MN.  Afton is a tiny place on the St. Croix River, part of Minnesota’s eastern border, and mostly known for its big Marina and as  an artsy place.  Yesterday we were there.
On the 4th of July Aftons population increases dramatically for the noon-time Parade, which is the only one I know of which goes to the end of Main Street, then doubles back.  The spectators can thus see the parade twice; the participants in the Parade can actually “watch” it themselves as the units return on the other side of the street.
The latter fact would have been approved by my Grandpa Bernard who had a 1901 Oldsmobile (it’s still a working automobile in California), and was often asked to drive it in the local July 4th parade in his town of Grafton ND.  He rarely took the bait for this since, he would complain, “I can’t watch the parade, only the back-side of the unit in front of me“.  Those days – he died in 1957 – there weren’t means of recording the parades for replay back home on cable television or otherwise.  You saw it in real time, or you missed it. 

Grandpa Bernard (in the suit) in his 1901 Oldsmobile, Grafton ND July 4 parade, sometime in late 1940s or early 1950s

Grandpa Bernard (in the suit) in his 1901 Oldsmobile, Grafton ND July 4 parade, sometime in late 1940s or early 1950s


I have sometimes walked in parades, usually for political candidates, so I understand Grandpa’s complaint. 
I like parades.
Yesterday’s, though, for some reason seemed a bit flatter than usual.  There were fewer units and less enthusiasm. 
As is usual, the parade was headed by a couple of old (my age) military veterans carrying the U.S. flag.  People, including myself, stood, doffed their hats, and applauded either the veterans, or the flag, or both. 
Following behind was a gigantic Armored Personnel Carrier, and behind, and included with, it a troop of Boy Scouts.  It was a rather odd combination, I felt, but I’m used to odd combinations.
Back home, afterwards, the cacophony, and dissonance, of the internet brought endless competing views of what July 4 means, or should.  Some enterprising bunch was selling robo-faxes at a steal, to send fax’ed tea bags to every member of Congress (it’s worth a blog entry of its own, to follow tomorrow): an anti-tax protest on the 4th of July.  A patriotic piece came around that caused me to check on the urban legends website, and indeed, the piece was part fact, and part fancy, with no effort to separate myth from real.
On the other side, came an appeal to do more Peace vigils in the coming months.  Etc.
The President weighed in with a brief statement of the signicance of the day with the concluding sentences “It is a day to celebrate all that America is.  And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.” with an ending “P.S — Our nation’s birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community.  You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov. “
Last night  there were the annual fireworks in a nearby park.  A particularly loud crescendo of the traditional “bombs bursting in air” woke me from a sound sleep.
I think, wouldn’t it be nice if some day in this country, the Parade would be headed by some kind of group carrying a World Peace flag, and people were applauding them.  
To hear John Denver sing “Last Night I had a Strangest Dream” go to http://www.amillioncopies.info.  Click on Denver’s image at the left of the home page.  And wander around in the website for a bit….
UPDATE 5:20 p.m. Sunday, July 5, 2009
Immediately after clicking ‘publish’ on the above, I went in to my Church, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, for the usual Sunday Mass.  Basilica is a very large and very diverse Parish, at the edge of downtown on downtowns historically premier street, Hennepin Avenue.  Typically Basilica has lots of visitors; it is conservative and it is liberal, rich and poor.  On a typical Sunday, a fair number of homeless show up for coffee and donuts.
Basilica is also a Peace Site, and a year ago made a formal commitment to Peace as a key part of its Centennial celebration.
Today I saw that commitment before and during the service.  A large “Peace” sign welcomes people to the church (see photos from Basilica calendars at the end of this article.)
In today’s service, the opening song was Sibelius’ “This is My Song” from Finlandia: (“But other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”)  In the sermon, a key part of the message was recollection of a young man at a July 4 celebration who carried a sign “God Bless the whole world.  No exceptions“.  The intercessions included prayers for Peace and for those in service to this country of ours; the recessional was America the Beautiful, and the Postlude was Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.
I had nothing to do with how today’s service was put together.  But I liked it, a lot.
In short, Basilica seems to cover all the bases towards a better world.  Basilica is a formal Peace Site, #419 at http://www.peacesites.org/sites/map

Art Work on 2007 Basilica of St. Mary annual calendar. Note Peace sign in lower left.

Art Work on 2007 Basilica of St. Mary annual calendar. Note Peace sign in lower left.

 

Peace Pole featured on Basilica of St. Mary calendar for September, 2009

Peace Pole featured on Basilica of St. Mary calendar for September, 2009

#47 – Dick Bernard: Driving up the negatives

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Less than 24 hours after I’d heard soon-to-be Senator Al Franken speak at the State Capitol, the home town St. Paul Pioneer Press carried a short article headlined “Poll: Franken’s national numbers are negative“.
Reading further in the six paragraphs, the numbers gleaned from the national survey (Rasmussen) showed 44% of those surveyed had an unfavorable view of Franken, 34% had a favorable view, and 22% didn’t have a view of him at all.
The article didn’t say how many were polled, but typically less than a thousand are asked to respond to such questions.  If that number is somewhat correct, 20 Minnesotans (out of 5,000,000) were asked to comment; how those 20 felt wasn’t part of the report: too tiny a sample.
The article was a waste of perfectly good newsprint.  Or maybe it served a more useful purpose: to drag down the public opinion of the new Senator before he even takes his assigned seat in the U.S. Senate.   As of a few minutes ago, he’s not even listed as a Senator by the U.S. Senate – I checked.
Negative politics is nothing new in this country.  I well remember touring the exhibits in the basement of Ford’s Theatre (where Lincoln was assassinated), and seeing an 1860 political poster for Lincoln with the caption “political campaigns of the mid-19th century featured parades and pagaentry and vicious attacks on the opposition.  Campaigns offered people a major form of entertainment.”
Tomorrow’s July 4th events will represent what passed for political theatre back then.
Of course,  there was no radio or TV in 1860, and political decision making was still made by the privileged few, basically white, male, literate, property owners.  In the 1860 election, only a few million out of the total national population of over 30 million were even eligible to vote.  Women, slaves and similar officially lesser persons were denied the franchise, and it was not until 1920 that women even secured the right to vote. 
The Nov. 2008 Smithsonian magazine had a most interesting article about the election of 1860, when Abe Lincoln won his first term as U.S. President at age 51.  

Among many interesting tidbits from that article: In 1860 the candidates for President did not campaign at all once the nominations were made by the respective party conventions.  About four million white men were eligible to vote in 1860.  Lincoln got about 40% of the popular vote, and a majority of the electoral votes.  (The remaining votes were split among three other parties.) 

Some would say, today, that those were really the “good old days”….
Today, of course, the environment is different.  Most everyone who is an adult has the opportunity to be well informed and a theoretical right to cast a ballot for his or her representatives.  There are plenty of efforts to disenfranchise certain kinds of people, but those efforts need to be more covert.
Virtually everyone is susceptible to bombardment by “information” conveyed through newspapers, magazines, radio and television, computers and other means.  We are awash in good information and bad, and the information is not always shared by people with our best interests at heart.
“Caveat emptor” – “let the buyer beware” – is good advice.  The public is daily played for fools, and needs to take responsibility for their own actions.
Polling a national audience, then publicizing the poll, about a United States Senator who has not yet even arrived in Washington makes no sense other than to attempt to drive up the negatives for future political advantage.
The soon-to-be Senator is likely well aware of this.
It is good for us to be aware of this as well.

Ford's Theatre Washington DC June, 2006

Ford's Theatre Washington DC June, 2006

#46 – Dick Bernard: Sen. Al Franken enroute to Washington

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This noon Senator Al Franken stood in front of the Minnesota State Capitol to acknowledge the end of the 238 day quest to ratify his election to the United States Senate.  
I went over to the event, and I was glad I took the time to attend.
The crowd was perhaps a few hundred.  Perhaps this was partly due to the reality that the Minnesota public has long ago become tired of the interminable delay in finishing this election contest – a delay which, depending on point of view, some would say was necessary, some not.  In the end the law was satisfied and the proper person, Al Franken, was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Al Franken (Franny at his right) July 1, 2009 State Capitol St. Paul MN

Al Franken (Franny at his right) July 1, 2009 State Capitol St. Paul MN


Today’s was an unusual political event in some ways.  The speechifying was serious; there was no blaming, at least none that I picked up.  The entire event was over in less than an hour, and basically began on time.  This is pretty remarkable these days. 
The usual array of celebrities were introduced, but introductory remarks were very brief. 
Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, who was heavily invested in making sure the electoral and post-electoral process went properly and legally, wisely chose to not attend.  Mr. Ritchie and his staff, both at the state and local levels, deserve immense credit for running an impeccable election within well-formed rules.  Nit-pickers had to greatly extend themselves to find even small points to criticize about the pre-, during, and post-election time period. 
The mainstream press (which was publicly complimented for its work during the time of the election) was there in force, as was the more informal grassroots media.
What Mr. Franken had to say today will be dissected by many sources, today and later.
Some of the things I saw and heard which impressed me:
1.  The obvious partnership of Al and Franny Franken.  She was a part of the event, rather than a part of the background.  She’s an impressive lady.  The incumbent Senator mentioned that they first met 40 years ago this summer.
2.  Franken talked from the perspective of supporting the middle class.  He acknowledged that decision making will be difficult and complicated, but he understands middle class issues, and acknowledged that it is the middle class that is really the key to the proper functioning of our country.  He acknowledged the importance of Unions, including in his own life.
3.  Sen. Amy Klobuchar talked briefly about the reality of having only one Senator representing Minnesota for the last six months.  Most of us never need a Senators direct assistance, but don’t say that to someone who’s having trouble with a specific issue, say a delayed adoption of a child from another country.  A fully staffed Senate is essential. 
4.  Sen. Franken will enter the Senate as a Freshman, and for all of us who have ever been a Freshman, anywhere, we know it takes time and effort to pay the requisite dues to become accepted.  The Senator is fully up to his task, I am certain.
5.  The new Senator made specific reference to his friend, Paul Wellstone, whose last major public appearance before his untimely and tragic death in 2002 was apparently made at the exact spot from which Mr. Franken spoke.  Wellstone acted with both courage and with common sense bi-partisanship during his dozen years in the U.S. Senate.  We would be well served to have a Franken that approaches public policy in a manner similar to Wellstone.  (I wore a Wellstone button to the event, today, and was reminded of the web-spot I have reserved to the memory of the Wellstones. http://www.chez-nous.net/wellstone.html .)
Near the close of the event, Sen. Franken made the single comment I wrote down: “I know for a fact that without you, we in Washington cannot succeed.”
Too often we view the people we elect as responsible for all the outcomes after their election.  What Franken was saying is that we, the body politic, have to do far more than just vote, or work for somebodies election.  We need to do the necessary work both ‘on the ground’ with neighbors, friends, family, as well as making sure our representatives know our opinions.
I predict that Sen. Al Franken will do a great job.  I wish him well.  Some general information about Sen. Franken is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken