#1160 – Peter Barus on politics; plus, an opportunity to view the entire 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Forum.

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NOTE from Dick Bernard: Peter commented after last weeks post on Swiftboating Hillary Clinton. His always perceptive remarks are below. He writes from Vermont. His previous posts can be found here.
In addition, recently I received the link to all of the plenary session talks at the outstanding 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Minneapolis. The Forum was outstanding, and I was privileged to attend it. At minimum take a look. The Forum was especially great this year.
PETER BARUS:
In the political discourse effectiveness is measured against what we’re after in the first place. Are we seeking to support a candidate by defending their “narrative” (meaning, the carefully focus-grouped, workshopped and spin-doctored story saturating the corporate media channels)? That’s defending the story, not the candidate. Are we seeking to hold a candidate’s actions and words up to the light of proven fact? Usually we test for consistency of word and deed, and leave fact out of it. Are we hoping for some break in the timeworn, corrupt and entrenched “system” that might finally, for once in all of history, provide for an actual election that is actually free and fair? And results in the elevation of an incorruptible and honest leader? Well, we do almost universally profess to be in favor of exactly that.
The candidates know this terrain very, very well. Bernie Sanders (my Senator) knew from the start that he would fail to be nominated, much less elected: he knows how things are done in America. But it was a kind of reverse-Reagan action: he hoped to shift the center to make an election include values and voices that are always marginalized. Clinton is of course a master of the Way of Washington, and has achieved real and incontestable stature the old fashioned way: she is more “pragmatic” (ruthless and cunning) than all the other aspirants to the Oval Office dare to be. Saving only the Republican Nominee. As for that celebrated personality, his expertise is in fighting by his own rules: on his turf, with him as referee.
In a fight, the first thing is to choose the ground. The Republican did this years ago, and has owned it completely. We may think it is a stupid choice, an insane choice, an immoral choice; but it is the ground on which the candidate stands and hurls his challenges. And it is going to be very tricky for the Democrat to fight him on some other battlefield than the one where he is already fighting. Consider that to hold a debate, the venue will have to be TV, and that’s the ground the Republican has staked out. Clinton’s ground, of international relationships, deep personal understandings with and of world leaders in their political contexts, the management of continual wars around the globe, and the staunch backing of Wall Street – all that is already on TV, and out of her hands. Her ground is part of his ground. Welcome to my world. Said the spider to the fly.
The second thing in a fight is never box a boxer, or wrestle a wrestler. Somebody is going to have to fight a Reality TV host. On Reality TV. That’s two fundamental principles of warfare that he has, and she doesn’t, going in.
The real assets in this campaign are not the money, or the power-brokers, or the smoke-filled rooms. Not the people you insult, or those abandoned by the American Dream, or disparaged for loving Jesus, or too proud to take a government handout. No Minorities or Special Interests matter here. Nor the battle-scars of the top diplomatic office in the United States Government. And most certainly not your “gender”: Lucretia Borgia? Imelda Marcos? Maggie Thatcher for heaven’s sake? What’s sex got to do with it?
No, none of that. What really matters now is attention. Human attention, focused not on the candidate, but on that candidate’s pointing finger, moment by moment. What do they point at? Is it the moon? A reflection? Which candidate will garner the highest ratings while giving us the finger? We will hear all about the type of fake nails on hers, and the exceptional length and girth of his.
There is this funny thing about the human brain. What it perceives it also acts from. This happens before the intellect is engaged. All the intellect can do, after attention has been seized, is rationalize the accompanying behaviors. And there are two basic reactions to the Reality TV candidate’s performances: apathy or outrage. And both of these human responses stoke the fires of his campaign. Outrage for or against, it doesn’t matter at all, the campaign balloons. See, it’s not a “for or against” switch: it’s an On/Off switch. And the light goes on either way while we’re frantically fighting over who gets to flip the switch.
Meanwhile, one candidate trumpets ever more crazy bigotry and xenophobia, and outright lies about economics and his penis; and the other candidate, already trapped in the same discursive space with the opponent’s genital dimensions, sounds like a teacher from a junior high school civics class, going hoarse trying to yell above the noise of excited teenagers as the bell goes off. “DO. YOUR. HOMEWORK! THERE. WILL. BE. A. TEST!”
Whichever candidate’s chosen ground becomes the scene of the big showdown, the real issues will not get any airtime. Instead, one candidate will throw any reasonable discussion into chaos, and the other will flounder helplessly grasping at straws to regain some fraction of public attention. That fraction will hear defensiveness and righteous disdain. And that triumphant, derisive laughter. And the pundits will analyze each nuance of foreign policy, the cost of a wall on the Mexican border, and and whether Clinton killed Bin Laden to silence him about their relationship. But most of the viewers will have passed out by then, after the cathartic relief of seeing the Strict Father put the Nurturant Parent in her place.
Never mind that the former Secretary of State has conducted war after war in precisely that way, sowing chaos. With the Air Force, the Marines, the Army, the Navy, the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA, and organizations that fund aspiring dictators, like the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute. Pragmatic, utilitarian (non-partisan) tools of State. And her opponent has no experience whatsoever with actual invasions, airstrikes or drone-killings; he just uses metaphorical weapons, like the Big Lie, the verbal sucker-punch, the innuendo, the question-as-fact, the straw-man, the begged question, the categorical denial, the stonewall. And of course, mockery and derision. Tools of Reality TV.
It’s happening on TV. The President is elected on TV. We’re in the domain of attention, remember. In this campaign, a shooting war might get attention, except what’s new about a war? War is just background white-noise now, to most Americans. If it comes up at all it will be to blame the former Secretary for losing it. Whereas a good one-line chant like “lock ‘er up!” will cut to the bone.
But. There is hope. We are not just stimulus-response machines. Your attention please: it is your attention. You can direct it elsewhere. Your attention is yours alone to give. Don’t let them snatch it away. Make them work for it, at least. Take ownership of your attention. Talk with people who are like you, and not like you, face to face. Ask questions, and listen to the answers. We could, theoretically at least, elect a President in an election, and not Reality TV.
Then when those politicians point at something, you can tell whether that’s the moon they’re pointing at, or just the reflection in a mud-puddle.
COMMENTS:
from SAK, in England: Thanks Mr Bernard,
Mr Barus’ comments about choosing the ground for a fight brought to mind part of the reason the UK voted to leave the European Union. The nationalist far right politician Nigel Farage chose the ground to fight on, the same ground Mr Trump has chosen: immigration. The EU means free movement of EU citizens among the member states – it does not mean borders open to all & sundry as the poster Mr Farage hung on his bus seems to imply [hordes of apparent non-natives coming into somewhere]. Furthermore the UK is nowhere near “Breaking Point” as far as welcoming European citizens who wish to live and work there. It seems truth is the first casualty not only of war but of political campaigns as well.
POSTNOTE: Pertinent and timely: Today’s Just Above Sunset, “Under the Volcano“
SECOND POSTNOTE, a column in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, the headline says it all: Threats replace political dialogue at State Fair. The exact same example the writer uses in her article was used by some guy I had never seen before out in small town North Dakota in March, 2014, commenting on Hillary Clinton outside a building. At that time, 2 1/2 years ago, Hillary Clinton had not been a politician since being appointed Secretary of State in 2009, and when she was a politician, she was simply one of 535 members of the United States Congress. Hatred without benefit of fact is still easily transmitted. The guy who accosted the woman in the op ed would have been a good candidate for the ruffians who enabled the Third Reich in the early days.

#1157 – Dick Bernard: Two Books Well Worth a Read: Shawn Otto’s "The War on Science"; and Lois Phillips Hudson’s "Unrestorable Habitat"

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Back in January a mysterious e-mail appeared in my in-box from someone named Cynthia. She had googled the name Lois Phillips Hudson to see if anything would come up, and found me. More on Mrs. Hudson’s book, “Unrestorable Habitat“, “below the fold”…
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SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES
A few months later came an invitation to hear Shawn Lawrence Otto read from his new book, “The War On Science“.
I know of Shawn’s past work, always first rate, and I bought the book, and it made my summer vacation book list.
I read, and learned a great deal from, both books.
They are, on the one hand, very different; but on the other, very similar. One is by an old lady written when she was my age range. Mrs. Hudson, is a retired college professor, quite obviously grieving the loss of her daughter to illness. She writes about the deep conflict she sees between today’s natural world and technology, compared with her youthful days in the midst of the worst of the Great Depression and World War II which followed.
(The retired college professor died before she finished her book, so one has to speculate on what her ending would be, but that actually contributes to the richness of her passionate expression of feelings on her past and present, and our future.)
The other book is by an author who painstakingly and expertly documents not only the very real “war on science”, but on other areas susceptible to manipulation of public opinion. Shawn Otto expertly reviews the problem, and then devotes much of the meat of the book to ways towards solutions.
SHAWN OTTO’S “THE WAR ON SCIENCE”
I highly recommend “The War on Science” to anyone with even a tiny bit of interest in topics like science, marketing, politics, and the incessant manipulation of personal and public opinion (propaganda) in our own country. Get to know the name “Edward Bernays”…. He enters the story by name at page 257.
You don’t need to be a scientist to understand the book, which is a very interesting history of science and its not always consistent position of esteem in our society (thus “war”); in addition, The War on Science is an equally interesting history of propaganda as it has been used in America especially related to marketing of products and ideas going back as far as WWI.
There is so much interesting and well argued information in the book that I would do a disservice by simply doing a once over in a review.
You need to read the book.
Best to take a look yourself. There are many formal reviews of the book at Amazon.com. One of them is mine.
You will see the book is being very well received.
Personally, I found “The War On Science” to be unusual in a couple of respects:
1. It nicks most everyone, including scientists, who get complacent and think they have found and can sit righteously on their own truth, as they define the term “Truth”. The book is heavily footnoted: 59 pages of sources.
2. Most importantly, fully 87 pages of the book discuss ideas for how individuals and groups in our society can move toward solutions to what seem intractable problems.
The War On Science is an excellent basis for book club discussion, as is Lois Phillips Hudson’s Unrestorable Habitat (following). Give both a serious look.
Unrestorable Habitat001
LOIS PHILLIPS HUDSON AND UNRESTORABLE HABITAT (continued)
A few days ago I was at a nearby park, completing “The War on Science“.
This day my phone rang, and on the line was long-time friend Nancy, from Hibbing, calling to comment on Unrestorable Habitat which I had sent her some months earlier and she had set aside and was just getting around to reading.
She had set it aside, but was finding it to be a marvelous book, a strong compliment coming from a retired teacher of English.
Unrestorable Habitat is one elderly woman’s reflections about her life, a certain huge business in her hometown of Redmond WA, some local fish, the loss of ability to imagine, and really, about all of us, everywhere in the so-called “developed world”.
Hudson’s book centers on an issue much on her mind as she grew older: the conflict she saw between salmon and big business in her town with lots of looks back at remembered pieces of richness flowing from her own very real hardships as a farm daughter during the worst of the Great Depression in North Dakota, then in Washington state, and forward into WWII in Washington. (She graduated from Redmond WA high school in 1945.)
Hudson died before she completed her book, but there is far more than sufficient “meat on the bones” to be published exactly as left by her: her opinions about post-9-11-01 contemporary U.S. society.
*
Some years back, I had blogged several times about aspects of Hudson’s 1962 well known book, “Bones of Plenty“, written about the worst of the Great Depression in rural North Dakota, and that is what Cynthia Anthony found in her random internet search. Cynthia, this mystery lady from New York, had become archivist for Mrs. Hudson’s papers, and asked permission to link my posts, “numbers 490, 495, and 565, which reference Lois Phillips Hudson” to her Lois Phillips Hudson Project, a website dedicated to preserving Ms Hudson’s rich but now basically unknown legacy.
It was Nancy who had earlier called my attention to “Bones of Plenty“; and now I was the one who had called Nancy’s attention to “Unrestorable Habitat“.
(Nancy had Mrs. Hudson as a teacher at North Dakota State University 50 years ago, and had vivid memories of her. She was a great teacher, Nancy said. She mentioned one quote by Hudson – at page 24 – that particularly caught her attention: “As..the mother of two daughters and the daughter of a father who frequently assured me that the brightest woman could never be as bright as your average man….” Unrestorable Habitat is peppered with such reflections.)
Once into Unrestorable Habitat, she found the book very interesting and thought-provoking.
Unrestorable Habitat so caught my attention that I purchased and distributed 100 copies, starting about 100 days ago.
Nancy was one of the recipients.
Here is the letter I enclosed with each book: Unrestorable Habitat
*
Let me leave it at that. “Unrestorable Habitat” is worth your time, as is “The War On Science“. Each can encourage you to “Do Something”.
The two books complement each other.
I hope you “take the bait”.

August 21, 2016

August 21, 2016

POSTNOTE:
1. Some readers might say, about “The War on Science“, that I don’t know enough about science to learn.
Not at all true. In my own review of the book (it’s probably the 22nd or so, link above) I acknowledge that I had virtually no science education in the tiny schools I attended growing up. My opportunities to know science were basically ad hoc, like watching Sputnik blink in the North Dakota night sky in 1957, or getting the Salk Vaccine not too long before. “The War On Science” is more than just a primer, but written to an audience who knows nothing about science. It is a learning tool in itself.
2. In the solutions section of “The War on Science“, Shawn Otto has a section entitled “Battle Plan 1: Do Something” (p. 371).
In her own way, Mrs. Hudson in Unrestorable Habitat was (I think) trying to begin a conversation: where can or should the new ways fit with the old, and complement, rather than compete with, each other? She wrote at least some of her draft on a laptop in a coffee shop, so what some might perceive as a rant against technology, at least part of her text was simplified because of the very technology she railed against.
There is room for conversation. She was Doing Something.
Earlier today I was at Mass at Basilica of St. Mary, and afterwards noted again the three trash containers downstairs (photo above).
This experiment goes back a couple of years, when my friend Donna and her committee got a small grant to get recyclable containers for use in the coffee area. They were Doing Something.
The experiment has never worked as it was supposed to. If one looks in the bins, there are admixtures of items, despite the verbiage on the containers. One can say it failed.
But I don’t agree. Who knows, among the hundreds of us who visit that area each Sunday, there is someone who gets an idea for use back home, maybe if only in their own home? Great ideas start with experiments that seem to fail. But to start them, someone has to “Do Something”.

#1152 – Dick Bernard: The Newspaper; Government by Twitter

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Those interested in why I very strongly support Hillary Clinton for President can read my post from Sunday here. The post includes several comments pro and con as well.
Personally, I always find the perspectives of Just Above Sunset informative. The latest is here.
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The Packing Crate, June 7, 2015

The Packing Crate, June 7, 2015

Dubuque paper001
Monday evening came one of those far too infrequent “faceoffs” (as Dad would say) with my cousin and her husband from Winnipeg. We had a too-short but animated visit over dinner in Edina, and covered lots of bases, a small part of which touched U.S. politics, which is a natural point of interest (and concern) for Canadians, who share thousands of miles of border with us.
My relatives, who grew up in the border area just north of the Minnesota/North Dakota border, still speak their native French as first language. At the same time, they are equally fluent in English, and have been dual citizens of the U.S. and Canada for years.
The conversation drifted to Ovila, my Dad’s first cousin, and my cousins father, born in the early 1900s.
How did Ovila learn English in the days before television, living on a farm in a section of Manitoba whose first language has always been French?
The answer to this question is complex, but as I recall, the newspaper was a primary vehicle, and as I recall from my own conversation with him years ago, catalogs, a primary source of information about goods for the farm. He self-taught himself English.
Ovila read every word of the newspaper, as did his neighbors. They were very well informed. Made no difference who wrote what, agree or not, it was consumed.
It caused me to think about my German grandparents, whose now-former farm has been my preoccupation for the last two or three years.
Being male, my focus was on Grandpa. Their country mailbox was full of paper: the weekly newspaper from LaMoure; the Jamestown and Fargo papers; the Farm Journal; catalogs; on an on. And they were religiously read. People like my Mom occasionally contributed a piece of poetry; I have articles Grandpa wrote soliciting membership in the fledgling Farmers Union in 1928. And on and on and on.
Last year, while going through the abundant detritus after my Uncle died, we looked through a well constructed coffin like packing crate obviously used to bring possessions to the North Dakota farm from Wisconsin when Grandma and Grandpa moved there in 1905 (see photos above, and following). Among the precious contents (at the time), Grandma’s wedding dress, and assorted ‘stuff’, then to be saved, now of little interest, except in passing.

The Packing Crate revealing its contents, May 24, 2015.

The Packing Crate revealing its contents, May 24, 2015.

In the box were two crumbling Dubuque newspapers, one in English; the other in my grandparents native German. Probably they had been delivered to the Wisconsin farm, and were handy when they were packing stuff for shipment to ‘Dakota. The articles in the English edition covered the waterfront (photo above); I’m sure the same was true for the German edition. What is certain, every page of each of these newspapers had seen many eyes. (Grandma and Grandpa married Feb. 28, 1905; he, his brother and his cousin came west first to build a house and such; Grandma came about six weeks later. The crate likely carried her belongings.)
Fast forward to today, August 3, 2016.
Those old newspapers, with readers whose education seldom was past 8th grade, were astonishing pieces of literature.
Today’s small town newspapers, like the LaMoure Chronicle, carry on the tradition of the past. They are a treasure to be savored.
But now we’re in the “Twitter Generation”: news by headline. I don’t need to define that any further. We can pick our own particular bias, and pretend that it is not only the only perspective that matters, but that it is the only perspective. We know that’s not true, but…. Our collective narrowness, made possible by infinite organs of “communication”, serve us ill. I think we know that, but it is easy to deny this reality.
Today far too many of us choose, freely, to be uninformed, EXCEPT to confirm our own biases. Our Elders had less means to receive and share communications, but in many ways they were much better informed and prepared to participate in a civil society than we are.
We are not at our best, these days: watch the political polemics. Hopefully we’ll survive our collective and intentional ignorance particularly of other points of view.
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#1150 – Dick Bernard: The Latest Deadly Nutcase.

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This mornings headline in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “The Gunman’s Rampage At German Mall Kills 9”
This latest killing strikes me even more than most because just a few hours before the murders happened, I was visiting with my friend from Paris, who has friends and relatives in Nice, France (none of whom were in harms way during the Bastille Day truck massacre on the boulevard.)
Nice, and the earlier attacks in Paris and Brussels, Belgium, impact her powerfully, of course.
I asked a question: “what is the population of France?” I think she said 69,000,000.
In general, I said: are the people of France to be immobilized by essentially random acts of violence, perpetrated by assorted evil actors, impossible to stop?
Now we have the Munich disaster. (Munich urban area: 2 1/2 million people; Germany, 82 million; Paris urban 10 1/2 million; Minneapolis-St. Paul MN urban 3 1/2 million)
Are we to stop living every time one of these things happens? Are we to arm ourselves to the teeth to avoid the really infinitesimally tiny possibility that we’ll be next? Not for me.
I recall our dear friend, Annelee, describing being under the allied bombs when Munich was bombed nearing the end of WWII – she and her fellow prisoners, all of Munich, essentially, underground basically were waiting to die – a lifelong consequence for her was losing her hearing; my brother-in-law, Mike, an Army man, was in Munich for part of the 1972 Olympics when the terrorist hostage situation occurred there.
Recently I did a post about the 100th anniversary of the battles of the Somme and Verdun in France. My friend Jeff, in my July 7 post: “consider 100 years ago now, two ongoing battles, ending in stalemate, with 1,200,000 dead on both sides, and another 1.2 million casualties over the 6-8 months each battle lasted.”*
And now we are transfixed over yet another nutcase out to do damage: in the Munich case, killing himself rather than surrender.
Unfortunately, in the greater scheme of things, historically, Munich is hardly “news”, much less front page.
I think it was the Oklahoma City/Murrah Building disaster(April 19,1995) which began my informal inventory of such catastrophes. Afterwards came places like Columbine (in the near neighborhood of which school my son and family lived) in April 1999, etc.
I never wrote anything down but:
1. who were the killers?
2. why did they kill;
3. what did they use to do the killing;
4. etc.
Lots of the murders were school related; virtually all of them with an accomplice: one or more guns. We tend to forget that the mass murder by bomb in Oklahoma City were two anti-government white guys who were, if I recall, both military veterans, lifelong U.S. citizens.
Terrorism is something of a recent innovative term, and even more recently automatically and instantly attached to some scary “them”.
Even more recently, we have become perpetrators: authorized torture in Iraq and Guantanamo; celebrating talk of violence or imprisonment against a candidate for President of the United States just this week…
The enemy is ourselves, folks, till we get a grip, and understand our cause in this matter of being civil to each other..
My condolences to every member of every family who has lost someone to a killing, like Orlando, like Falcon Heights, like, now, Munich.
We need to keep this in perspective.
* Some months ago I did a bit of research to give some context to “war” as we in the U.S. have experienced it. It is here. Today we Americans and most others as well are in very safe times compared even with recent history.
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Human Cost of War001

#1147 – Wendell R. Anderson, Minnesota Governor, World Citizen, Feb. 1, 1933 – July 17, 2016

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Today’s local news will be full of news about Wendell R. Anderson, Governor of Minnesota, 1971-78; Minnesota legislator from 1959 forward.
I will be hoping for mention of the Governors key role in Minnesota’s Declaration of World Citizenship, signed March 26, 1971, by Governor Anderson and the entire range of Minnesota’s political and civil leadership; followed in early 1972 by a 30 minute film, Man’s Next Giant Leap, which featured a great many prominent political and civic leaders of the day, including Governor Anderson, speaking publicly of achieving World Peace through World Law and Justice to the citizens of the state of Minnesota.
The film and Declaration feature a literal “Who’s Who” of Republican and DFL (Democrat) leaders of the time, as well as civic, education and religion leadership. Gov. Anderson was doubtless a key person in moving the bi-partisan initiative. Singer John Denver, who donated his time, is prominently featured in the film.
You can view the Minnesota Declaration of World Citizenship, and the 1972 film, Man’s Next Giant Leap, here.
If you’ve not heard of the film or the Declaration, you will be amazed at how a state’s political and civil celebrities could publicly come together around a common theme of World Peace through World Law during the most heated and polarized national time of the Vietnam War.
Gov. Anderson is at peace.
He made a big and very positive difference.
My thanks to him for his service to the people of Minnesota, particularly to the children, and to our future.

#1144 – Dick Bernard: The "Incident" in Falcon Heights MN July 6, 2016

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NOTE: Responses welcome, to: dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom. Indicate if you are willing to share your reponse; it and others will be included in a later post at this space.

Thursday, I posted about the 100th anniversary of the end of the awful carnages in 1916 at the Somme and Verdun, France.
Jeff, who recommended the reminder of the horrors of 1916, mentioned almost off-handed what had just happened just hours before in the Twin Cities suburb of Falcon Heights (my home address about 30 years ago). I had not yet heard of the killing of the African-American by a policeman during what seemed a routine traffic stop Wednesday night, but I had included something of a footnote to the main post, and called the killing in Falcon Heights an “Incident” in my headline.
My friend, Christine, Parisienne, was first to respond: “You would be crucified in France to call [the killing in the St. Paul suburb] an “incident”!!!”
I asked her for an alternative, and her comment, and my response follow Andrena’s below.
Jeff, again, in suburban Burnsville, sent a comment yesterday from a business person in his circle: “I got an email today regarding business, the guy is an Italian ex pat who has lived in Ethiopia over 30 years. He has an agricultural cleaning and exporting business. He is in his early 70’s.”
At the end of the Italian-in-Ethiopia’s email was this comment:
“St. Paul is very near to Burnsville [Jeff’s home area]. When the police asks for the driving licence do they ask at gun point?”
But today’s commentary, about how it is to be black in this country, in the raw, came on Friday from Andrena, a good friend of mine and others. Andrena is a professional woman, and gave her testimony about being black in St. Paul sometime a week or so earlier.
At the end of the post, I will add my own two cents. But first, Andrena, with her permission:
“I can’t deal with any of this today. I’m back in the crying and anger mode. Why? Because white folks are pissed off about [MN] Gov. Dayton’s comments yesterday when he stated, Philando Castile [who was the man killed by the policeman in Falcon Heights] wouldn’t have been stopped if he were white.
Also, they (white folks on WCCO radio) were questioning, the authenticity of the tape and wondering ‘what happened before the tape was rolling’. Well, it seems, Philando Castile was pulled over because he had a ‘wide nose’ not due to a busted tail light. And now, with the sniper killing in Dallas, those perpetrators will be punished to the fullest extent of the law (which they should be) but, more often than not, police are not held to the same standard when they murder innocent citizens especially, with a 4 year old in the back seat.
I wasn’t angry yesterday but I felt extremely sad and helpless as I do today.
What I didn’t post on FB [Facebook] last week is I was almost pulled over by St. Paul police last week.
I was leaving the Franciscan house after my rosary prayers located [at] Hamline and LaFond avenue [St. Paul]. I was headed to Cathedral Hill to meet a friend for a late dinner at Red Cow restaurant located [in] Selby/Western Ave. I took Thomas Avenue and crossed over Dale. As soon as I passed Thomas Ave and Kent Street which is the corner of St. Agnes Catholic church, the St. Paul police car spotted me and turned onto Thomas Avenue from Kent Street. The time of day was approx. 8:50 pm., nearing dusk. A black woman driving in Frogtown.
I looked in my rear view mirror and noticed the squad car was extremely close on my bumper, I purposely slowed down without hitting my brakes. As fate would have it, I saw the pastor of St. Agnes Catholic Church walking down the street as I was approaching a stop sign and the cop was literally on my bumper, I stopped, rolled down my window and spoke to Fr. Moriarity, waving my hand at him. Fr. Moriarity stopped and we talked for approx. 30 seconds while I was at the stop sign with the cop behind me.
I wanted the … cop to know, I’m not a bad person and I know this priest and he addressed me by my first name.
I then took Thomas Avenue to Western Avenue crossing over University Avenue and 1-94 while still on Western. … cop followed me on Western Avenue until Marshall. The point I’m trying to make is I knew I was being followed aggressively and yet, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I’m a professional woman with a high level…security clearance and yet, none of that made any difference. Why? Because in that officer’s eyes, I was a black woman, driving through Frogtown at dusk in a decent looking SUV who he felt was suspicious, probably up to no good, probably trying to score drugs. I’m certain he ran my tags and wanted to know [what] someone with a Woodbury address was doing in Frogtown. I don’t hate the police and they serve and protect us. The only problem is they serve and protect some of us.
Enough of my rant. I’m still weepy and pissed off today………………”
Dick: I responded back to Christine’s initial “incident” comment: “Perhaps I’ll be crucified here, too. Not really. What would it be called? I might change the word, if you give me a good alternative.
We are a basically decent country – you know that. But until the gun issue is dealt with, these outrages will continue. We are accustomed to people being killed by guns every day. It leads our news every night. The death in Falcon Heights has all sorts of different elements, which might make it more effective to demand change.
1) An apparently Innocent African-American who had a legal right to have a gun, which he said he had beforehand, was blasted away by what appears to be a frightened policeman.
2) He was a school worker who was popular and well liked in his job at an elementary school in St. Paul.
3) His killer was a young policeman whose name sounds Hispanic, but likely was 100% American. You can bet the policeman’s ethnic background will be talked about.
4) Most important, the victims girlfriend broadcast the entire incident live on Facebook and it will be seen worldwide, and people like you and I can talk about it.
I presume you saw the amended version of the post (I put up about 2 a.m.).
On July 2, in my usual understated way, I talked about the pre-eminence of gun violence in this country.”
Christine responded: “We would simply call it a mortal police blunder. I am not sure whether blunder would be strong enough…. accident might be better…
Une bavure policière mortelle
I am not trying to correct you but just comparing the way we would speak…The word incident would be understood as a non important event…and will bring millions of comments and threats and insults…”
Summary, from my personal point of view: Those of you who read these posts regularly know that I like “Just Above Sunset” to summarize the national scene, and the Friday night post, long as usual, does so well.
Personally speaking, we are all victims. We are held hostage by those g*ddamned GUNS which some insist should be almost completely unrestricted. Imagine a scenario in Falcon Heights in which a gun wasn’t a player. In the civilized world, restriction on guns works. Here we are less than civilized, too many of us.
I feel some empathy for that young policeman who did the killing in Falcon Heights. He was not a rookie, but nearly so, and he was probably scared, too. He had a wife and a kid, and now everything is gone for them. As I say, “imagine a scenario…in which a gun wasn’t a player.”
In my U.S. Army days back in 1962, we had a basic training drill with fixed bayonets on our old M-1 rifles. As we thrusted our rifle forward, in response to the chant, “what is the purpose of a bayonet?”, we said in unison, “To kill.” Yes, it sounds barbaric, but even back then, in the very early 1960s, the presumption was that you may have to do the evil deed of killing someone with an actual knife, hand-to-hand, person-to-person. That was also true in WWI.
By the mid-sixties we had the sniper in Texas picking off a dozen or so university students in Texas, and on we go. Our societal reverence for guns is insane.
Still, Andrena’s message is the one which most resonates with me. We have, we Americans, a major problem with relationships: the racial divide is real, and it is disgusting.
I don’t think we will ever get past racism: it is ingrained in everyone of us.
But I do think that there is potential for better, and as catastrophic as the last few days have been, we are making progress.
Yes, we are making progress.
COMMENTS:
from Jeff: Well done. [The following is] worth a good read: (from MinnPost, here.)
from Larry: The woman [Andrena, above] who was followed by the police tells an eloquent story that’s quite relevant to the horrible behavior of the Falcon Heights police officer. This pathetic excuse for a police officer, obviously poorly trained and unsuitable to carry a loaded firearm, seems (from what I’ve read so far) as a reincarnation of the TV character, Barney Fife.
The Falcon Heights tragedy started with the hiring process and then the training. Clearly, both of these processes failed in this case.
from Mary: Always interesting to read perspectives but I hesitate to blame guns – there is a real intolerance for difference and an unhealthy appreciation for angry rhetoric. The very unfortunate reality in America is that it is deemed judgemental and politically incorrect to be respectful of others and there remains an unhealthy willingness to escape into the safety of firewalled technology to avoid the 70% or so of communication that is non verbal. I am with Christine…this is far more than an incident. This is disgusting no matter what your color or persuasions are……we must grow up and learn respect for each other.
Response to Mary: Thanks. I have no problem for what I call “farm guns” – the old 12 gauge and .22 and the like, and someone going hunting for duck or deer or such. We are long past those innocent old days. Now, with communication being as you well describe it, a gun is like a lit match over a can of flammable liquid. If people had to settle their differences with bayonets and machetes, hand to hand, there would be a whole lot less killing…though the killing will never end. It is now out of control, at least in our civilized nation.
from Bill: Two comments:
1. The policeman who did the shooting had on a previous stop of a minor traffic infraction pulled his gun on a woman driver. This may indicate a character flaw in his personality unfitting for a policeman.
2.One commentator on TV about this problem of how police approach a black person said “if you are afraid of approaching a person with a skin color different than yours you should not be in the police profession.”
from Bill: Thanks, Dick…nice job with all the comments….Mary started with “I hate to blame guns….” and then she went into intolerance, etc. Go ahead and include guns in the blame, nothing wrong with that! We just returned from Norway where – outside of a maniac (singular) a number of years ago, their gun violence is nil. Same with the U. K. Police there, as you know, do not carry guns. Ya, we “hate to blame guns” but there are WAY to many of them in the USA and too many of the wrong kind: the models that are only meant for killing people. Look at any weekly circular from Mills Fleet Farm…always a couple of pages of Bushmasters with 30 round clips. Really sick.

#1142 – Dick Bernard: The State Department E-mails, and a Personal Reflection Back

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I write after FBI Director Comey has made his report on the Hillary Clinton e-mails a few hours ago. The assorted “spheres” will make of the report as they will, over, and over, and over, and over….
Permit me a moment to share a bit of historical perspective.
It happens that in the last few weeks I was tasked with writing an introduction to a near-1000 page publication entitled Chez Nous, whose contents will be 155 actual newsletters published by volunteers in a small organization in which I was long active, which existed between 1980 and 2002.
I had been volunteer editor of two thirds of these newsletters, and beginning about seven years ago I decided to make them potentially useful by creating an index of their contents. This required me to read every newsletter once again.
A few months ago a decision was made to publish the newsletters as part of the legitimate historical record of a time past, and here we are.
And so, an introduction (which quotes a few e-mails, by the way), was in order.
(For the curious, you can see and read everything here (click on the tab “library”, then on “Chez Nous”, then on the link to the newsletters.)
There are two sentences in the introduction to those newsletters which I wish to emphasize, and they are on page VI, as follows: “It wasn’t until Jan-Feb 1999 that an e-mail address appeared in the newsletter (p. 760)…We tend to forget how recently e-mail came to us common folks.”
It was 2009 when Hillary Clinton came to head the massive U.S. State Department with tens of thousands of employees world-wide. Some of these persons were originators of these now famous “e-mail chains” in which a few apparently “secrets” were referenced or revealed. Most, in a technology sense, were “common folks”, trying to figure out how to use this new way of communicating. My bet is that we can all tell our stories.
Of course, we commentators – all of us – will not know what these “secrets” were…they were, after all, secrets.
There is no need to invest more words. If you’ve read this far, you probably have already come to some conclusion about guilt or innocence of Secretary Clinton, or even if this whole business amounts to nothing at all.
It is part of history.
Six lines down from the statement I quote above, I say this: “Ten years in technology today is like 100 or more years in the older days. It can get confusing”.
Reflect on your own past with this technology thing, and remind others to do the same.
COMMENTS:
from Norm (himself a longtime and excellent volunteer newsletter editor): Gees, Dick, and to keep things consistent with the predictable reactions to the FBI report on Hillary’s use of emails, are you sure that there wasn’t some sort of cover-up or whitewash in all of those emails that you have decided to index and categorize? Isn’t there a severe risk that upon reading and reviewing your compilations that someone will come forward with the claim that your purposely omitted some of them or “lost” some of them or put them into the wrong category?
I mean isn’t there a significant risk, Dick, that someone might claim…or perhaps a group could complain…that your indexing and compiling “clearly shows an obvious” North Dakota bias or something like that?
Gees, Dick, one or more of those disgruntled non-North Dakotans might even insist on a public investigation of your work to determine if such a bias exists as they, of course, are absolutely sure that it exists.
I mean, goodness, a feeling could develop or being suggested that there is always something with Bernard’s always good work that reflects that doggone North Dakota bias?
There isn’t a little Kenny Starr among those potential critics is there who would want to take such an investigation to the end no matter how much the cost, is there?
Just in an all out effort to trump your work, as it were?
Response to Norm: Egads! I’ll have to delete that blog before it causes me problems!
One of my worries, with the newsletter “book”, is inadvertently misstating a page number in the index, or missing a cross reference I should have caught. It does happen, of course, And finding it after it’s printed is too late.
I did the initial indexing, and some years later essentially re-indexed to fill in the blanks missed the first time (there were many such blanks). Even now, when I’m pretty sure I’ve caught most of them, I’m sure I’ll still find mistakes. But those 155 newsletters are more thoroughly indexed that, I bet, you’ll find anywhere!
As you know, as a newsletter editor yourself, mostly you’re so starved for news, that you take almost whatever comes in, fact-checking be damned. If you read my piece, when I was doing that newsletter for an ethnic group (French-Canadian) I gave priority to whatever came into my mailbox (and that was the U.S. mail, by the way), and, of course, like you, because I was editing something, I was always on the lookout for items which might be of interest to the readership.
One of my many “weaknesses”, I suppose, in these ideological purity days, is that I like to hear and share opposing points of view…so long as the writer identifies him or her self. This factors out those ridiculous “forward” that are anonymous and passed from e-box to e-box forever…and there will be a lot of those I can bet.
Thanks for the comment: I’ll add to the post.

#1141 – Dick Bernard: The Fourth of July

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POSTNOTE: An excellent commentary on July 4 and the Declaration of Independence, here.
On Saturday, when I was doing some political leafletting in my town, I came across a Dad and two young boys putting small American flags on the edge of their lawn. I rolled down the car window and said “great job!”, and one of the little kids said “thank you”.
It was no time or place to take a photograph. Sunday I drove back to the address and took the below photo. Just add in a Dad and his two little kids, and you can complete the picture.
(click to enlarge)

Woodbury MN July 3, 2016

Woodbury MN July 3, 2016


Back home, on a nice July 3, I went for my walk, and a couple met me and the guy said “thank you for your service”. For a moment I was taken aback, but then I remembered what I was wearing: my “Veterans for Kerry” t-shirt from the 2004 Presidential Election. Kerry was defeated that year; “Swiftboating” comes to mind; some will remember how successful it was to turn a positive into a negative: the demonizing of a hero. We were less than two years into the Iraq War, then.
Mr. Kerry is, now, our U.S. Secretary of State, and a very good one….
I thought of the recent political parade I was part of, for a local legislative candidate: a young Mom joined us for a short time, with her children and their friends, all carrying American flags, and they walked with us for awhile – they were, after all, little kids. Here is their photo.
June 23, 2016, Oakdale MN

June 23, 2016, Oakdale MN


Oh yes, Mom was wearing her Hijab.
But my most vivid memory this 4th will be the one without a photo, from Thursday June 30, at Gandhi Mahal Restaurant in Minneapolis, where a roomful of people celebrated Iftar, breaking of fast during Ramadan. We overflowed the room, which must have meant there were over 100 in attendance.
We arrived at 8:45 p.m. and when we arrived, a young man was speaking to the assembled, most of whom were Moslem, about how difficult it is to be Gay and Moslem…. It was for him an act of courage, and all listened most respectfully, and gave him heartfelt applause at the end, and he mingled with the rest of us: a powerful coming out.
Whatever else we might do today – perhaps a parade in a neighboring town – these are the images I will carry with me on this July 4, 2016.
There will be lots of other images too. I notice that this mornings Just Above Sunset, “Our Fireworks”, is its usual interesting and thought-provoking self.
Have a great day, wherever you are.
AT THE PARADE IN AFTON:
At Afton MN Parade, July 4, 2016

At Afton MN Parade, July 4, 2016


COMMENTS:
From Norm: (Norm, Julianne and I are long-time active members of a group called the DFL Senior Caucus): Thanks for a great review of what the 4th of July means to so many people including all of us!
Julianne and I were invited to attend a brunch a beautiful home along the St. Croix ten-miles or so north of Stillwater this morning hosted by one of the prominent “old guard” of the DFL. We were invited largely due to our work with several of the “old guard” if you will, who are working on developing a follow-on organization to replace the Hemenway Forum that ran for over 30-years under the guidance of former state party chair, George Farr.
In addition to its absolutely beautiful location on the banks of the St. Croix River, the home and yard were all decorated with 4th of July red, white and blue paraphernalia including many, many American flags hanging on the magnificent White Pines that surrounded the house and bordered the river!
It was a great way to spend part of the 4th of July visiting, socializing and “brunching” with so many DFLers of long-standing. Julianne and I were able to make several contacts as well for both the new DFL Forum as well as the Senior Caucus newsletter, including lining up a very prominent state senator to write the Capitol Corner update for the October issue.
In any event, just like you noted in your blog, we also noticed several homes along the way with flags planted along the edges of their lawns just like the one you took a photo of. In fact, there were dozens on them between Roseville and the town where our hosts lived.
In addition, when leaving the home of our hosts, we found cars parked on both sides of the highway for at least a mile south of the small town where they lived. The small town was filled with people getting ready to enjoy the annual parade that was to begin at noon!
So wonderfully Americana and the 4th of July!
From Bruce: Pretty rosy picture you paint, Dick. The fear of Trump fuels the tyranny that allows for decriminalization of criminals and legitimization of corruption as the grease that makes government run. Fear of Trump clouds these new normals & forces us to vote for lessor evilism. We, as a people, should have organized strong third parties years ago in order to have real and positive choice instead of of what we have now. We only have ourselves to blame. My self interest lies in not voting for either of the majors’ candidates. I think, as it stands now, the voter turnout will be low. Who that benefits is hard to tell. I’m petitioning to get Jill Stein of the Green Party ballot access in MN . Anecdotally, I’ve found the Democrats are the most likely to be against ballot access for Dr Stein because they think it works against Clinton. At the very basic level of our country’s voting system, they are practicing voter suppression. It gives them a sense of power. I’m sure if the accusations of voter suppression by the Clinton campaign in the primaries are true, these democrats wouldn’t care. It’s all in the name of the fear of Trump and everything else that is wrong with the world takes a back seat on the two party system bus.
Response from Dick: Thanks. I’ll add your comment, and mine, at the post. I am trying to give a realistic assessment, which is far from the idealism of something like the Green Party. We are not a Green Party country. I think many of our attitudes are turning in that direction, but not through organized parties. The parties are the ones which make the national policy, and regardless of your criticism of the Democrats, they are a far better alternative than today’s version of the Republicans, and the other parties are fringe, and that’s it. In fact, in my opinion, they mitigate against the very change which they seek, as they take votes away from the moderate middle. My favorite example is Ross Perot, who certainly was no Bill Clinton fan, but weakened George H.W. Bush…. Of course, I can’t prove that, but neither could you, about alternative parties….
And interesting commentary in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune by Lawrence Jacobs and Vin Weber about “Democracy (as only we know it)” adds to this conversation. You can read it here.
from Lauri: So when the birthday of our country falls in a weekend as beautiful as this, it would be a shame to let it pass by silently. A play in the park, dog sitting my adorable nephew Gio, bonfire and banana boats. A little playtime at Chutes and Ladders followed by a surprise journey to the World’s largest Candy store in Jordan. Ended with some tuna noodle casserole back at home and a trip with Heather to the cemetery to deliver some flowers for what would have been mom’s 74th birthday. We have much to be thankful for…. In good times and in bad. The men and women who bravely fought on behalf of all us, to give us freedom and guarantee us a country where we are free to make mistakes without fearing for our lives and to succeed because of our own determination. Regardless of all the craziness and pageantry of elections and political endeavors, may we all remember the gift our forefathers gave us so many years ago. God bless all of my friends out here and beyond and most importantly, God Bless America!

#1140 – Dick Bernard: Dealing with Un-reason.

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The early morning Just Above Sunset, “Dreams of Vengeance“, was another excellent analysis. The column is worth a weekend read.
Among the insights: In the recent “Brexit” election a crucial segment of the electorate who voted heavily to exit the European Union, was also a demographic which had the most to lose from Britain’s actually leaving the EU. Effectively, they seemed to have voted against their own self-interest.
The column also talks about the dismay of the American “middle class” – angry and frustrated, while at the same time seeming to dismiss the amazing recovery of this country from the very near economic collapse of 2001-2009, of which a disastrous Iraq war was one of the causative factors.
Mid-morning, I left for my daily duties, one of which, this day, was a little political “leaf-letting” for an area candidate for state representative. It was a very nice day; I did my duty; hardly anyone was at home (not unexpected, on 4th of July weekend.) Those I met were most pleasant.
Back at the local office, another person on the same assignment was reporting on a conversation with a couple of older people somewhere in our town, apparently Democrats, who were thinking seriously of voting Republican in November.
The reasoning went like this: The Republicans are more likely to keep them “safe”; and they didn’t trust Hillary Clinton….
There is no time to be wasted arguing with such people.
Consistently, Hillary gets high marks for being as honest and as open as it is possible for a politician with many years of public service to be, while her presumed opponent; Donald Trump, is such a pathological liar that even the media has gotten tired of even “fact-checking” him. Nothing he says can be trusted.
Still he seems to get, among a certain segment, higher marks than she in the “straight talk” area.
The apparent illogic, both in last weeks British vote, and right now in America, seems essentially to be the reverse of the quantifiable reality.
Emotions “trump” facts.
*
Today caused me to think of the periodic stampede of people to buy lottery tickets. The stampede to buy tickets increases as the odds against winning also increase.
It seems as if it is hardly worth losing one’s dollars if the prize is only $5,000,000; but once the prize is $500,000,000, and the odds against winning astronomically greater, people are falling all over themselves to buy losing tickets.
Rather than buy low and sell high, many seem to be addicted to buying high, and losing it all….
And the Donald Trumps of the world reap the financial rewards by doing the opposite: buy low and sell high.
As for feeling more “safe” with Republicans in charge, there seems a very serious short term memory problem.
Given that we are in what may seem, at least via the “news”, an “unsafe” world (what else would the news have to talk about without daily catastrophes?), we in this country, and even in the world, are living in a very safe time* in our history, and it is largely due to sound government policy and a notion, at least, that we are part of a global community.
There are great problems, to be sure, but against our own, and the world’s, deadly history, this is a pretty peaceful time, at least so far as “war” is concerned.
There is an amazing amnesia about the disastrous eight years following 9-11-01. Then, our nation was led on a misadventure that costs tens of thousands of lives – ours and Iraqis in particular – in the wake of 9-11-01. The refugee crisis, ISIS and all the rest flowed out of our Iraq War.
Financially, I was most apprehensive about the future of our economy in September, 2008, in the last months of the Bush presidency.
I made an effort to quantify the human cost of war to the U.S. some months ago, specifically as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan 2001 through the present. The results are here and speak for themselves:War Deaths U.S.002.
I also made an effort to get some reasonably accurate data about death-by-Drones, then, but was unsuccessful. Todays paper had an article about Drone casualties, which includes other sources of data. (The comments are interesting.)
Even using the highest estimates of civilian Drone deaths, the toll by Drones is a tiny fraction of those who died in the Iraq War.
There have been few “terrorist” (defined as such) incidents on our shores, but even these are dwarfed by other incidents of wanton killing, especially with guns.
Statistically, we are overwhelmingly more likely to die at the hands of some ordinary looking citizen, than by some certifiable “terrorist”*.
But, it seems, data (facts) don’t really make much difference when dealing with emotions.
The only antidote is work for a strong voter turnout in November, for candidates who care about the future of this country and the world of which we are a part.
* – The notable exception, and it is an important one, is that we in the U.S. are killing ourselves and our fellow citizens with guns at an alarming rate, well over 10,000 U.S. citizens every single year. Here’s one data source that seems credible.

COMMENTS: from Larry: Excellent piece. The real “fear” that Americans should have is masked by the outrageous rants of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. What all of us should actually fear is his getting elected president of the most powerful country on the planet.
Fear mongering is Trump’s key campaign tactic. And he continues to express fear in a variety of ways, over and over again while providing no workable solutions to the problems he tells us to fear. As one of the most effective propagandists of all time said: “It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” That from Joseph Goebbels, a man who, in no small measure, helped the world’s worst narcissist (at least to that date) become the cruelest, most self-gratifying dictator in the world. The real fear Americans should have is not of Mrs. Clinton but of the kind of country we will become under another unmitigated ego-maniacal fool.

#1137 – Dick Bernard: "Politics" and "Politicians" and "Bureaucrats"

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Click photos to enlarge them. Tomorrows post on “Gridlock” in Minnesota and Washington.

Rep. JoAnn Ward meets with constituents Jun 20, 2016

Rep. JoAnn Ward meets with constituents Jun 20, 2016


The subject of this post has been on my mind for a long time. Very recent events make today an appropriate time to share a few thoughts and photos: Donald Trump has made his formal entry into the Presidential campaign by trashing Hillary Clinton (who I have, since 2008, and continuing) supported as an eminently qualified candidate for President of the United States. The Republicans have been attempting to destroy her for at least 25 years now).
More on Hillary Clinton in a post to come later.
Last night began the “sit-in” by Congressional Democrats to escalate the attempt to get some action on Guns (I support this action, strongly). Also yesterday a good friend forwarded to me one of those “forwards” full of “facts” with absolutely no supporting citations, or claim of authorship, and, thus, unbelievable (yet believed by many, especially old white guys with computers.)
In short, it’s time….
Cong. Betty McCollum MN-4th CD May 4, 2016

Cong. Betty McCollum MN-4th CD May 4, 2016


Even the use of the words “politics” and “politicians” in this headline will turn off some readers.
“Politics” and “Politicians” are words that can be made to have an unpleasant, even icky, ring. Here’s one definition. I think the part which applies most to our democratic society in this country is: “5a: the total complex of relations between people living in society.”
Candidate for SD 53B Rep Alberder Gillespie meets citizens May 24, 2016

Candidate for SD 53B Rep Alberder Gillespie meets citizens May 24, 2016


In my view, Politics is all of us; everyone of us have to be “politicians”.

We’ll be electing a President in a few months, and the flood of publicity can make it seem that that the Presidency is the only election that matters: make Trump the President and CEO of the United States and all will be solved. The idea is ridiculous on its face, but many think that.
I tend to follow “politics” more than most; and perhaps I participate more than most as well. We go to fundraisers for candidates we support; this afternoon I’ll be in a local legislators unit in a local parade; I’m on the Board of a statewide group called the “DFL Senior Caucus” of the Democratic (DFL) party in Minnesota; I write stuff. In short, I try to show up.
Every reader is like me in that they are represented in many ways at many levels in our society.
MN Gov.. Mark Dayton May 24, 2016

MN Gov.. Mark Dayton May 24, 2016


Speaking personally, with no pretense of providing a complete list, here are some of the positions I (and all of us) are called to select by our vote: (whether I vote or not makes no difference, every action or inaction or foolish action is the same. It is a “vote”):
U.S. President (and Vice-President);
Two United States Senator, and one member of Congress;
State Governor, and several Constitutional Officers (Treasurer, Auditor, Attorney General…;
One State Senator;
One State Legislator:
One County Commissioner;
A Mayor and Council People in my town;
Certain Judges;
School Board Members;
Homeowners Association Board officers and representatives;
and on and on and on.
State Sen Dist 53, Rep JoAnn Ward Dist 53A and Washington Co. Dist 2 Commissioner Stan Karwoski Jan. 31, 2016

State Sen Dist 53, Rep JoAnn Ward Dist 53A and candidate for Washington Co. Dist 2 Commissioner Stan Karwoski Jan. 31, 2016


I have an opportunity, and even an obligation, to help in whatever ways I can elected officials who are not on my ballot, by contributing money, or similarly. The tone of this country depends on who occupy the offices, as is ever more painfully obvious.
Then, there’s that “bureaucracy” that some love to hate:
Superintendent of Schools, Principals, Teachers
Fire and Police Department
City employees of all sorts
State Highway Departments and those who work for them, very visible in this season of road construction.
Public Hospitals, and Libraries, and Parks
This could also go on and on and on.
At the very least, we should be grateful that there are citizens who are willing to “step up to the plate” and seek and perform the duties of the very important jobs that need doing. Leadership is not an easy task.
At the very least, learn to know WHO represents you directly in the above positions, and others which are related. And consider developing a civil relationship with them, the more direct and active the better. They have a very hard job, trying to represent all of us.
At the Oakdale Summerfest Parade on June 23, with candidates JoAnn Ward, Betty McCollum and Susan Kent and perhaps fifteen others as part of this unit.

At the Oakdale Summerfest Parade on June 23, with candidates JoAnn Ward, Betty McCollum and Susan Kent and perhaps fifteen others as part of this unit.


Practicing the chant pre-Oakdale parade June 24.

Practicing the chant pre-Oakdale parade June 24.


Before the Oakdale Parade June 23, with supporting cast: 1923 Ford.

Before the Oakdale Parade June 23, with supporting cast: 1923 Ford.


*
Former MN Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, discussing Expo 2023, a possible World's Fair-like event for Minnesota in 2023.

Former MN Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, discussing Expo 2023, a possible World’s Fair-like event for Minnesota in 2023.


Rep. Keith Ellison, Minneapolis, with constituents Jun 9, 2016

Rep. Keith Ellison, Minneapolis, with constituents Jun 9, 2016


Russ Feingold, former U.S. Senator, WI, in Minneapolis, exploring a bid to run for U.S. Senate again in 2016.

Russ Feingold, former U.S. Senator, WI, in Minneapolis, exploring a bid to run for U.S. Senate again in 2016.