#8 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle, and "Cynical", "Tiger" and "I dreamed a dream"….

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Susan Boyle, Britains Got Talent, April 11, 09. A great gift… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY.
To be as clear as I can be: Susan Boyle’s performance on Britains Got Talent on April 11 was stunning and real. She was so good, but the lead-up made her sound so unlikely to be as outstanding as she was, that I struggled a bit. But it didn’t take long to accept that what I was hearing was true: Susan Boyle was very, very real real.
Here is how the feelings evolved for me, and how I see them as applying to all of us in our very cynical and untrusting society.
ABC Evening News with Charlie Gibson on Tuesday afternoon, April 14, was my first contact with Susan Boyle. The last item was the piece on her appearance on the popular British show. From the first note, hers was a stunning and moving performance by a common country girl, her skeptical audience “turned on a dime” and was cheering unceasingly. I’m “country” to the core, and I felt huge pride in her performance.
I sought out the clip and found it on YouTube. At the time I seem to recall there had been something over 2 million views (as I write this, it’s over 12 million). I had noticed, even on the ABC clip, a slight difference between Susan’s mouth movement and the music, but I noticed the same difference in the other speakers, so I simply interpreted it as a synchronization problem, which I know is common in early edits of video. Still, the performance was so wonderful as to be hard to believe.
Overnight Monday night came an e-mail from a friend urging me to look at the video, from a different source than the one I had found.
Within a few hours everything mitigated toward the reality of Susan, her background, her outstanding voice, her dream. I sent the link on in the morning. At that time there had been 5 million views. Later, on Wednesday, I found Susan to be on the cover of my MSN page on the internet.
I received a few e-mail comments, which follow this piece. I had no doubts.
I’m still awestruck. Some observations:
1) Susan Boyle is, in my view, a shero of the first order. She did what very few of us would ever consider doing. She knew that she was good, but she also knew that she would be subject to the withering and “cynical” view of the panel and audience on the program. She went out there anyway, and represented all of us “commoners” in a most remarkable and real way. I share the feelings of one of those who commented (below): I hope that in the process of marketing her talent, her handlers will not try to remake her from what she is, a Scottish village lady who loves to sing.
2) Susan also represents to me our society’s tendency to dismiss reality in favor of fantasy. The expression “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes to mind. But we are always looking for the cover, first: the resume, the reputation…. Ironically, had Susan come out on stage with a fancy “cover”, sophisticated-looking, made-up and all, in the latest fashions, then we would have seen an image, and, even if she sang exactly the same, the judges and the audience would have probably looked for flaws in her vocal performance.
3) My guess is that most of us are prone to fantasy. It’s how we’ve been “made-up” by our life experience, especially in the age of television and beyond. We’re taught “slick”. Or, even more, we’re taught to stay in our place, our “class”.
4) Susan Boyle and Britains Got Talent, and ABC and MSN and all the rest, demonstrate another truth: both the sophisticated media and we unwashed masses need each other, and provide benefits to each other. There needs to be some kind of a “truce”. Without the opportunity presented by Britains Got Talent, Susan would never have had the opportunity to be seen by what is already tens of millions of people. Without big media – ABC and MSN and many others – I never would have seen her performance. She would have been hidden in her Scottish village.
5) It is the Susan’s of the world who make life worth living. Her success is something we can and should celebrate. In our own ways, we can all be Susan in our own places!
Congratulations to a true diva cut from common cloth!
*
Some early comments received:
Apr 15 09 12:11 a.m. “Check out the above site to hear the American idol lady from England…a real treat and inspiration to late bloomers everywhere.”
*
Apr 15 8:14 a.m. “Wow. When did this happen? I just hope they don’t remake her. I like her as she is. Half the happiness is the surprise.
*
Apr 15 6:04 a.m. “ I’m not the ultimate cynic, I loved this video, but I frankly wonder if it isn’t lip-synched. In the first two lines, I saw disparity between the timing of sound and lips. And a couple other times going through.
*
Apr 16 7:37 a.m. “The Susan Boyle thing is quite a phenomenon. (I will admit that when I
first viewed it and I didn’t watch the whole thing, when I saw the guy off stage say something like “you didn’t expect that did you?”…. my internet skepticism was raised and I started surmising it was some type of scam with lip synching involved…. goes to show you how easily one can become skeptical in the modern world)….
This came just at the right moment…I watched “Tootsie” last night (25th anniversary edition) and there was a special feature afterwards on the making of the film in which Dustin Hoffman talks about how he felt to learn what it was like to be an unattractive woman in a society that doesn’t tolerate it. He cried while talking about it (maybe he was acting) but it was very moving to see; he said he had never realized how callous men are to homely women and how many doors shut in their faces without giving them a chance. He said for some reason the world forgives ugly men, but not women.
This singer must have never tried wholeheartedly, knowing that. Good for her, giving it one last go.”
We’ll see if anything comes out on this. I hope not, but if it does…
I’ve thought of another possibility, i.e. it may well be Boyle’s voice. But she would have sung this song many times to the same taped accompaniment, and they could have used a singing of it which was not the one in front of the crowd. I don’t know.”
My first take on this is that it is symptomatic of the recession, instead of high flying rich and famous types being idolized, people are seeing the quintessential “everywoman” who is something special. Is this hyper populism? On a psycho-social note the other thing is the interesting expose of human disposition toward expectations based on visual inspection. Can a middle aged, overweight, non hip person possibly be talented? Very interesting comment on human nature in my opinion.”
Update – May 24, 2009
The performance which led to this post on April 16, 2009, has now been viewed by 60,000,000.  Last night Susan Boyle won the highest number of votes in the next round.
Update June 1, 2009
Susan came in second in the final round, May 30, 2009.  As of this date, her video has been seen 65,000,000 times, the fifth largest viewership ever on YouTube. 
 
 

#7 – Dick Bernard: Thoughts on Taxation and Taxes

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Since this is about taxes, the bottom line is at the end of this writing.
Today is Tax Day, April 15, 2009, the annual celebration of the loathing of taxes. This day there will be a new spin on an old theme: “Tea Parties”, apparently well organized and heavily publicized by certain media (thus, not spontaneous “breaking news”), and supposedly grassroots protests against the tyranny of “taxation [with] representation”, in the model of the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773.
It will make no difference to the angry orators and sign carriers today that U.S. taxes have always been enacted by representatives we imperfectly select. Those who dislike certain of their taxes will be doing a bit of street theatre today, and some probably even believe that some king from some foreign land is confiscating their goods.
(I have watched demonstrations for years, and been in some, and I’ll see how those in our area today compare with others I can remember). Almost without doubt, they will garner far more publicity than they warrant.
“Taxes” is a complicated issue, certainly not to be covered in a short essay.
In the end analysis, taxes are necessary and most everyone knows it. The pushing and shoving politically is around whether or not we should be asked to pay a little more, or a little less, and what our taxes will be used for. In my thinking, taxes are the dues we pay for living in a reasonably civilized society.
Every year I file taxes. This year was no different. This year was particularly interesting.
Monday, March 30, was our appointment with our tax man. I went in anticipating that we might owe as much as $4000 on federal and state. When we left, we were told we’d get a net refund of $21.
Odd how it is: We owed as much taxes walking in the door, as we did walking out, but not owing the $4000 made it seem like a refund. No, we haven’t rushed out and spent it – yet!
Earlier that same day, March 30, 2009, a guy had his mug shot on the front page of the Minneapolis paper. The headline was “Path from non-conformist cop to anti-tax adviser led to prison”. The guy hated taxes and will go to prison “for filing false tax returns and showing others illegal ways to avoid paying their taxes.”
The headline and story reminded me of the video someone gave me purporting to prove that the Internal Revenue Service is illegal, and that there thus can be no consequences for not paying taxes – they are, after all, “voluntary”. There’s even a “gotcha” sequence where a “reporter” makes a prominent politician squirm by demanding that he show the law where it says we have to pay taxes. The politician – a Republican if that makes any difference – looks like the deer in the headlights. It’s one of those “can’t win for losing” moments. The paraphrase: “Yes, you can go to jail for not paying taxes, , but I won’t show you where it says that taxation is legal.”
As previously stated, in my view, taxes are the dues we pay for living in a reasonably orderly society. There are lots of taxes I don’t like – I could get along without paying a substantial part of that one-third of my total tax bill that goes to “Defense”, for instance. But a society where each person could pick and choose what to pay for, and how much, would be a society in anarchy and chaos, and I’m not sure we’d relish that day. So, we choose to complain about what is, in effect, one of the essentials that makes our lives and the lives of others manageable. We have the best of all worlds: we can complain about it, without the accompanying responsibility to fix it.
So, how much taxes does the Bernard household pay? I’ve been interested in this bottom line for a number of years.
We are reasonably ordinary members of that massive class called “Middle”. We live pretty moderately.
When all the “pushing and shoving” of numbers was finished on March 30, about 7 ½% of our income went to Uncle Sam; and about 3 ½ % to our state. Our Federal and State tax burden was 11% of our gross income.
All things considered, I don’t consider that a terribly big dues.
Of course, there are all sorts of assorted tariffs and fees and even taxes that aren’t reflected in the federal and state numbers, including some purported taxes that are not taxes at all, like withholding for social security insurance and medicare premiums (that I paid for years, and now benefit from). On this tax day they’ll all be lumped in to one big crate, and by some magic by the end of the day it will seem that most of our money goes to taxes. That’s just how the game is played.
Bottom line: A whole lot of perfectly good tea bags will be wasted today. Some would want to decrease our tax burden from, say, 11% to 10%; others think our society (and ourselves) would benefit more if the tax bite was 12%. Great amounts of pious rhetoric will continue to be expended on all sides. Me? I wouldn’t miss the extra 1% – it could do a lot of good. My life wouldn’t be better with 1% extra in my pocket.

#6 – Anne M. Dunn: SUGAR BUSH VOICES 2009

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UPDATE SEP 5, 2013: Other posts by Anne Dunn: May 3, 2009; Dec 13, 2012, July 18, 2013. Anne is also featured in this post about a concert at La Farm Aug. 31, 2013
Those who gather maple sap can name the signs that tell them when it’s time to tap the trees. Many will say the sap begins to rise when warm days are followed by freezing nights. This is true and this we know.
But I prefer the sign my mother waited for. She used to tell me, “When the box elders begin to weep, it’s time to tap the maples.”
So I spent some time looking up into the branches of the tall box elders that surrounded our old house (on tract 33, Cass Lake, MN). Sometimes I would listen for their weeping in the night but Mom said they wept in the warmth of the afternoon. Then one day it happened that a box elder tear fell upon my upturned face and I knew that what she said was true. The box elders were weeping.
So this year when we drove out to the sugar bush camp and parked the car at the end of the tar I was keenly aware of the privilege I had of entering this small but rich domain. Once again I was greeted by sugar bush voices.
The great white pines reach high into the April sky, poised and waiting for the wind. One after another they join their voices as the song moves from tree to tree. I raise my hands and touch the sighing breath around me before stepping off toward the camp. As my boots crush the snow beneath each step, new and unique voices rise around my feet. It’s many steps to the camp and the icy songs enrich my journey.
Everyone is out emptying catch cans so I am alone at the fire. I put a sprig of cedar on the coals for symbolic cleansing and wash my hands in the smoke. The excited voices of the flaming tongues offer their fiery poems.
Later I take a bucket and go out among the trees. I put down a bit of tobacco and than Creator for the generous gift of nourishing sap. Then I empty a can into the bucket, re-hang the can and listen as the sap drops sing against the metal. After emptying and re-hanging several cans I listen to this sweet song of life. When all the cans are emptied we return to camp and our varied voices join the chorus.
The crackling fire must be fed. So someone begins splitting wood. The boiling sap sizzles, bubbles and hisses. Of course, these lyrical voices are also blended into the sugar bush symphony.
The shouts and laughter of playful children punctuate the great song. Then a weary child is lifted into the blanket swing and the rope squeaks against the bark of the supporting trees. A grandmother sings a soft lullaby and leans into the swing to kiss the little one. The child smiles once, the eyelids flutter and close.
When the sap is boiled down to syrup it’s poured into a clean bucket, covered with a dishtowel and carried back to the road. It’s been a warm day and the snow has melted. Now the boots make sucking sounds as we follow one another through the mud. A nation of small birds flyover us and their thin raspy songs trail behind them.
I listen carefully for the voices of the ancestors whispering around us as we leave with our precious gift. They are saying that even in the midst of great and widespread change the sugar bush voices remain the same.
Postscript April 12, 2009: We pulled the taps today and called an end to the gathering of sap. We usually do that when the buds are as big as squirrel ears. But it has been an abundant flow and we have all we need. Tomorrow we return for a final boil and I will use the last bucket to make sugar.
Anne
Anne M. Dunn is an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom

#5 – Dick Bernard: What will be left for our Grandchildren and their descendants? Do we think long or short-term, or not at all?

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Today our Congresswoman is holding a town hall meeting quite certainly aimed at stopping something called “Cap and Trade” which, she says in a recent op ed, is a “tax [that] would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases.”
I plan to attend the meeting. [See postscript, which follows below, written April 10.]
The Congresswomans focus seems completely on the present: taxes, jobs, cost of gasoline, government regulation. There is nothing apparent in her remarks that exhibit concern for the future generations, those who will pay big time for our countries short-sightedness now and, indeed, in the past. We continue to live as if there is no tomorrow, and we seem to have forgotten that our kids, grandkids, their cohort worldwide, and their descendants after them, will have to live (and die) with what we have left them.
Below is my small contribution to the “cap and trade” conversation that I will, at minimum, leave with the Congresswoman.
My feelings of concern are elevated by the fact that earlier today I spent a couple of hours with a third grade grandson at his school. (Today they were having an international day, and my class hour was spent learning about China from a young woman who grew up in Beijing. It was very interesting.)
Here is my very brief summary of the history of energy in our country (and by extension the world.)
“Peaks”
? – Peak use of trees as source of fuel and light.
1847 – Peak Whale Oil* (for lamps and such).
1859 – Oil business begins in western Pennsylvania
U.S. population then was 10% of today
Early 1900s – Commercial production of horseless carriages
U.S. population was about one-fourth of today
Five present states were not yet in the Union
1927 – U.S. wells pump 75% of world’s oil supply**
No activity in Arabian peninsula.
2000s – Peak Oil passes – now its all “down hill”***
U.S. population exceeds 300,000,000
with about 250,000,000 motorized vehicles
Do we pay now, or do we pay later? In my mind, there is no doubt which should be chosen, unless we truly don’t care about those descendants springing from our generation.
Notes:
* – Penn State Professor Richard Alley of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change www.ipcc.ch  (from his talk to school kids at Augsburg Nobel Peace Prize Festival Minneapolis March 5, 2009. His informative talk is on YouTube.  See http://www.peacesites.org/educators/nobelfestival for a link to the talk.)
** – recollection after looking at a 1927 Encyclopedia Britannica in London late October, 2001.
*** – Major editorial in Minneapolis Star Tribune August 27, 2005.
Postscript after the Congresswoman’s session:
I attended the entire session which appeared to attract about 300 people. The main presenter was a representative of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an oil-company backed think tank. It was hard to ascertain the makeup of the crowd since proceedings were tightly controlled, including police presence. No signs were permitted, and only written questions were accepted – and only a few of those made the cut. The presentation was predictable, almost impossible to take notes, full of sarcasm and a good sized enemies list. It was devoid of proposed solutions. It was against, not for.
I left the session with some dominant thoughts:
1) I wouldn’t (and didn’t) change any of what I wrote prior to the meeting (see above).
2) “Global warming” and its impact may be impossible to tie down with precision, but the accumulation of evidence through science is not wise to ignore or dismiss or ridicule. Humankind may well be courting disaster through its own actions (and inactions) and, worse, these errors in judgment are not reversible by man. We had one chance to do it right. I think the advocates sounding the alarm about global climate change have a stronger argument, and the public is listening. People are not at all sure we are in routine times. Industry knows this. Big business is far more culpable than ordinary people for the problem since it has and had greater research capacity, but simple culpability (blaming) will not solve the problem. That’s for all of us.
3) Scarcity of elements essential to contemporary society like fossil fuels are easier to quantify and, thus, to use as warnings to the public.
4) As I was leaving the parking lot I got to thinking about desperately poor Haiti (which got a couple of sarcastic mentions from the speaker – and chuckles from some in the audience). Haiti was one of Christopher Columbus’ early stops about 1492. After its discovery, it was a treasure trove of natural resource, ripe for the picking. It was a source of great wealth for France. The Spanish first, then the French and finally we Americans, “raped, looted and pillaged” the Caribbean island into a corpse of its former self. A too-cold-to-live-in Haiti is where our developed countries are ultimately heading, in my opinion. Once our resources are gone, or too expensive to recover or purchase, we end. And this could happen sooner than later.
5) We are well advised to listen to, take seriously, and prepare for the worst case scenarios, especially as they relate to resource scarcity, especially fossil fuels.
6) We are also well advised to work hard and sacrifice now for a better than expected future. This is no time to give up.
A recommendation:
I would also urge readers to check http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/  and take the time to watch the entire “crash course” which requires 2-3 hours, in very manageable time segments of from a couple of minutes, to 15 or so. It comes highly recommended by a friend who is analytical, not partisan and not prone to overreaction. Check out the about page for the credentials of the author of the seminar then make your own decision.
Chris Martenson ultimately talks about 20 years out from now; the grandson I visited in school yesterday (one of many in my constellation) will be 29 then. It makes one think.

#4 – Dick Bernard: The 2009 Red River Flood as Messenger

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Just 250 miles northwest of where I type, a local crisis, a threatened flood in the Red River Valley, is occurring which pleads for a dialogue dealing with long term and global implications. The news focus will be on the immediate and the local (saving someone’s home, etc.). Once the crisis passes, and the damage assessed, most will return to business as usual…until the next local crisis, wherever that happens to occur.
As I write, Fargo-Moorhead and the Red River Valley are between crests of threatened devastating floods. It would appear, because of two separate crests, that the Valley may dodge a disastrous flood in 2009, only a dozen years after the huge floods of late April 1997 which came a month later in the spring. Heavy snow, plus an early thaw this year, and a very close call with high waters in late March, may have helped avert a greater disaster in coming days. Time will tell.
Some would say that this flood and other catastrophes are random acts of nature; others would say there is evidence of the consequence of global warming. Other culprits can be claimed to be urban development, farmers draining their fields, people living in places they shouldn’t live, dikes interfering with the normal course of high water, just plain bad weather – the previous record flood, after all, was in 1897…. Of course, someone wrote a letter to the editor of the Fargo paper that God was punishing a certain clinic in Fargo….
As instant events go, any individuals speculation is as good as anyone else’s. Most of us simply don’t have the needed “data”, or we simply pick and choose what it is we wish to believe. Fantasy works, for a while, anyway.
*
The 2009 flooding, which began about March 25, caused me to think back to three past events which are – in my mind at least – related to the news about Fargo-Moorhead and the Red River Valley.
1. In mid-August 2005, I completed a major revision of a family history of my mother’s side of the family. Included in the text was a new chapter on a treasure-trove of letters from 1905-06 found in the attic of the old North Dakota farm house where my mother grew up. The letters had come from my Grandparents kin and others in rural Wisconsin, mostly from Grandma’s six sisters. There were over 100 of them.
The letters were very interesting. One of the letters dated July 13, 1905, said “Sunday, Maggie and Ida had a horse for themselves to church and they met an automobile and she tied the horse to a rail fence but the horse dident move and Ann Miller was in with them and she was hollering let me out.” (p. 20)
The automobile they met was a curiosity, including to the horse. The comment reminds that even in our short history, cars are a new-fangled thing.
By 2005, the automobile had long been ubiquitous in our society; the weather has seemed to be changing markedly. Significant changes? Your choice.
I was printing the book, literally, when the August 27, 2005, Minneapolis Star Tribune had a long editorial entitled “Oil’s peak: The end may be nearer, it seems.” I decided to include the editorial as an insert with the book. I put a hand-written note on the margin of the editorial: “…and we can’t ignore Hurricane Katrina & possibilities that hurricanes and such might connect to Global warming.”
The day after I mailed the book, Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Louisiana coast.
“As we speak”, in 2009, stuff is still whirring around the internet about how dumb and shiftless those people in New Orleans were for living there in the first place, for not saving themselves when the hurricane was bearing down on them, and for not relying on their own resources for their recovery.
A similar narrative is unlikely about Fargo and the flood-prone Red River Valley. Indeed, the North Dakota and Minnesota officials have already asked for massive federal aid to repair and prepare for the next flood…. There is no serious thought about relocating Fargo-Moorhead to the east or to the west to mitigate against future flood problems.
*
2. On March 5, 2009, I attended the annual Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Speaking to over 500 school kids that morning, Professor Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University packed a huge amount of content into eight entertaining and enlightening minutes. (His complete talk to the youngsters and a summary video of the Festival will be on YouTube soon.).
Professor Alley is one of a team of thousands of scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/, and who co-won, with Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
Professor Alley’s message to the kids on the issue was succinct: he came, he said, from Pennsylvania, whose name means “Penn’s Woods”. He gave a little history lesson starting with a chart of the Mesa Verde settlement in southwest Colorado: human activity and population there were controlled entirely by available water. If there was water, there were people; no water, no people.
In early Pennsylvania, wood was the first reliable fuel; then it became Whale Oil for lamps. “Peak Whale Oil” came in 1847, he said.
The oil age really began when the first oil well was drilled in western Pennsylvania in 1859, only 150 years ago this year. Someone 75 years old has lived a “half-life” of this Fossil Fuel era. And we’ve passed the Peak, and the demand for energy guarantees a more rapid and uncertain downhill slope.
*
3. In October, 2001, we were staying at a bed and breakfast in London. In the hallway was a 1927 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. One day I looked at the section on petroleum. My recollection is that the Britannica said, that in that era the U.S. produced 75% of the worlds petroleum, and even though oil had been discovered and recovered in many places by then, the only major producer elsewhere was an oil field in Persia (now Iran). The Middle East countries? None of them appeared on the chart.
*
Times have changed, and circumstances as well. In 1859, the U.S. population was roughly one-tenth of today’s, and motor vehicles not even a dream. In 1905, there were only 45 states and roughly one-fourth of today’s population. Cars were a curiosity. Today we have over 300,000,000 people in our country alone, and there are over 800 motorized vehicles per 1000 population (2004 data).
We don’t have 150 years to get our act together. We may not even have ten. Our addiction is killing us.
Is climate change a myth, or an ominous trend? Are we running out of affordable fossil fuel? What do we do about our insatiable appetite for “fossil algae” (Oil)? What cause in the matter of climate change are we as humans? What are the consequences for those who follow us? It should matter to us.
How we answer those questions is our choice. Our descendants will experience the consequences.
To dismiss the Fargo-Moorhead floods, and other facts as being simply local events is to be short-sighted. We have to pay attention and act.

#3 – Dick Bernard: Binghamton NY April 3, 2009

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It wasn’t until late afternoon on Friday that I learned any details of the latest gun-related tragedy, this time in Binghamton NY. Thirteen dead, plus the shooter; four critically injured; possibly some cause and effect of the shooter having recently lost his job for some unknown reason; an apparent pre-meditated intention to kill as many as possible by blocking the door through which people might escape. It was all horrific.
As I write, Saturday morning, April 4, the facts are beginning to emerge: the shooter had two pistols on him, both registered firearms; he’s Vietnamese, apparently a U.S. citizen for decades; apparently knew well the place where he killed the thirteen people, most of them studying for citizenship…. The stories and analysis are just beginning.
Full disclosure: small arms were around me when I was growing up. Shooting gophers when they were pests on the North Dakota prairies was something I was accustomed to: their tails were worth a nickel, a lot of money to a kid, then. A bunch of us kids were playing with my Dad’s 22 calibre rifle when I was perhaps nine. It was hanging in the garage, and it was off-limits…. There was a bullet in the chamber; it went off; luckily nobody was killed (we were lucky). Dad and Mom never knew of that close call.
In the Army, I qualified as Expert with the M-1 Rifle. Thankfully I never had to use my skills. I have never owned a gun, or had an interest in purchasing one, and to the best of my recollection haven’t shot one since the Army days. There’s never been a gun in a home of mine. I have no issue against hunters and hunting in the traditional sense of that word: shotguns, regular rifles, licenses….
The national debate for years has gone far beyond the lines I describe above. We are an armed and very dangerous nation of far too many people armed to the teeth, wallowing in fear and resentment of this, that or the other.
Binghamton, April 3, 2009, could well be the tip of a very large iceberg.
I decided, last night, to check in on the two “poles” of our nation’s fascination/obsession with guns and other weapons to see how they were spinning Binghamton: the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign. www.nra.org and www.bradycampaign.org. As of 8 a.m. this morning, NRA does not have a word on what happened in Binghamton; as of last night, the Brady Campaign had commented. You can visit their website, and they can speak for themselves.
Even before the reports on Binghamton, I’ve seen scraps of information. One of the news reports I heard mentioned that in this country of 300,000,000, there are 250,000,000 firearms. The ban on assault weapons has apparently sun-setted; till yesterday afternoon there was no real interest in gun legislation…there are other bigger problems to deal with. Gun and ammunition sales are sky-rocketing in this country. We are awash in dangerous arms. The “Gun Lobby” is feared by politicians.
April 2, 2009 – a day before Binghamton – a New York Times editorial commented on a last minute federal regulation issued in December 2008 making concealed loaded guns legal in our national parks and wildlife refuges. “In December, ignoring proper procedure and the risk to public safety, the Bush administration rushed through regulations allowing people to carry concealed, loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.” (The NRA website posted a commentary on that issue from a Joshua Tree, California, newspaper.) A Judge just threw out the rule, calling it “astoundingly flawed”. It remains to be seen if the court ruling will be appealed by the new administration.
And the top headline in yesterday’s Minneapolis paper, hours before Binghamton, was simple and stark: “Was this gun in the hand of Fong Lee when he was fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer? Or was the weapon planted at the scene? One shooting. Two stories.”
Guns do make excellent partners for crime: A week or so ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in Mexico, made news north of Mexico’s border when she observed that most of the weaponry in the current drug wars in Mexico came from U.S. sources; as did most of the demand for the illegal drugs which has precipitated the violence over drug territories in Mexico.
Those who revere gun rights will begin again reciting the mantra: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people”, and the like. Of course, concealed hand guns make killing easier.
We love our guns, and other unhealthy things.

#2: Bob Barkley on Social Democracy

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By Bob Barkley, March 2009
rbarkleATcolumbusDOTrrDOTcom
Last week I was participating in a discussion group called Socrates Café. It is normally an older set of folks. This time there was a young man present, the youngest and quietest of all in attendance. Toward the end of our time together someone thought to ask him what he thought. He simply asked, “What is social democracy? And what will it take to get there?” We were all taken with the question and discussed it briefly before parting ways until our next get-together.
But the question dogged me enough that I sought a more satisfactory answer than the ones we offered up that night. Following is what I have come up with.
Simply defined, as I understand it, social democracy is a democratic state that incorporates both capitalist and socialist practice and recognizes individual requirements and aspirations.
Or, in more detail, Wikipedia describes it as “a political ideology of the left or center-left that emerged in the late 19th century from the socialist movement and continues to exert influence worldwide. The concept of social democracy has changed throughout the decades since its inception. Historically, social democratic parties advocated socialism in the strict sense, achieved by class struggle. In the early 20th century, however, a number of socialist and labor parties rejected revolution and other traditional teachings of Marxism and went on to take more moderate positions, which came to characterize modern social democracy. These positions often include support for a democratic welfare state which incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, sometimes termed the mixed economy. This differs from traditional socialism, which aims to end the predominance of capitalism altogether. Social democrats aim to reform capitalism democratically through state regulation and the creation of programs that work to counteract or remove the social injustice and inefficiencies they see as inherent in capitalism.”
By its very nature, social democracy would be viewed by most people as “left” of where we find ourselves in the US at this early date in 2009. But it is neither socialism as traditionally thought of, nor is it communism which critics find to be a convenient label for it.
It is interesting that in Black’s Law Dictionary there is no definition of either social democracy or socialism. However, in its definition of “social contract or compact,” it mentions Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the Greek Sophists as all agreeing “for mutual protection, to surrender individual freedom of action,” and that “Government must therefore rest on the consent of the governed.” And Black’s further defines “democracy” as, “That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy.”
All this sounds an awful lot like Lincoln’s, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish….”
And, as one reads the list below, it is important to stress that balance is most always crucial to developing a political/economic system. In the end, social democracy is driven by a sense of community, which simply translates to “accepting that we all belong together.”
With that basis to guide me, and my own instincts, I was led to conclude that to be successful, social democracy anticipates at least the following:
1. Freedom in the broadest sense, though short of unconstrained individual license
2. Reasonable equity between owners of production and the workers as to who benefits from any enterprise’s success
3. Government transparency to the greatest extent practical with any questions leaning far toward full disclosure
4. Public education that is open, highly supported, theoretically well-conceived, which emphasizes teaching about the dynamics of forces operating beneath the political surface, teaching a broad range of fundamental values, and that recognizes that the primary purpose of education is the preservation and nurturing of a love of learning – out of which all other aims will be best served
5. Higher education that emphasizes deep thinking and liberal arts and away from being little more than a factory for the production of compliant, unquestioning, unthinking, corporate robots
6. Social justice
7. Reasonable but significant corporate regulation – including reversal of the Supreme Court decision that establishes rights to the corporation parallel to those of the individual citizen
8. The absence of special interests inordinate control and influence of government
9. Assuring all citizens of basic human needs such as reasonable housing, sustenance, and health care
10. Widely shared public service – such as all young people providing 2 years of such service (including both military and non-military community and national service)
11. Absolute separation of church and state – particularly the restraining of public policy influence of religious zealotry and extreme fundamentalism
12. Public financing of political campaigns and a system of responsible turnover in public office that assures both full access and limited opportunity for exploitation
13. Regulated and balanced media ownership and programming to avoid consolidated domination of the media
14. Our economy is now global, and our society must adjust to fit this changed and still changing world
15. State control of usury practices
16. Adoption of sensible standards regarding the compensation packages of corporate executives such as limiting them, through taxation policies, to 50 times that of a minimum-wage full-time worker
17. Protecting local commerce through reasonable tariffs and trade policies
18. Progressive taxation policies that allow for the sharing of wealth between the fortunate (the worth-more) and the less fortunate (the worth-less) while still allowing responsible accumulation of wealth (Both the “worth-more” and the “worth-less” are suffering from inordinate sense of entitlement.)
All that said, I was asked by one reviewer to describe what was the role of government in all of this. Right after receiving that question I read a short piece by economist Dr. Robert Costanza of the University of Vermont that quite serendipitously provided me the answer. http://www.commondreams.org./print/40015
Consequently, I would conclude this paper by adding that while much is implied throughout the preceding list, the bottom line role of government is to protect against excesses. This would mean protection from excess accumulation of wealth and power on one extreme and protection against excess poverty and hopelessness on the other. Government must facilitate a shared vision of society – of quality of life – and move responsibly to assure its development.
Robert Barkley, Jr., is the retired Executive Director of the Ohio Education Association and served as the Interim Executive Director, Maine Education Association. He is a former teacher and coach, and a thirty-five year veteran of NEA and NEA affiliate staff work. Currently he bills himself as a Counselor in Systemic Education Reform and has served most recently as a long-term Consultant to the KnowledgeWorks Foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the first teacher organization staff member to become an examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the premier business award in the US, which is administered by the US Department of Commerce. He is the author of two books: Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, and Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents. He lives Worthington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb, and may be reached at RBarkle@columbus.rr.com.

#1 – Dick Bernard: P&J#1940: Reflecting on "fear itself"

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This is the first posting on this blog.  The title “P&J#1940” holds meaning for me.  P&J#1 entered the internet world in late September, 2001; P&J#1940 was published March 25, 2009, and is a significant one for me. 

 

1940 is a significant number in my life. It is the year I was born in rural North Dakota, between the ending of the Great Depression and the U.S. entrance into WWII.  A friend says I’m part of the “Silent Generation” – too young for the Greatest Generation; too old for the Baby Boom Generation (1946-47 forward).

 

As I write this, March 24, 2009, the political and policy environment is flooded with conflicting messages.  Some see disaster ahead; some see hope; “experts” are in vocal disagreement with each other.  Many of the people I see every day seem oblivious to the dangers, deep in denial: As MAD magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman always said (and so far as I know, still says), there seems to remain a dominant attitude: “What, me worry?” 

 

It is not at all certain that anyone really knows for sure about where we’re headed.  We’re stuck with a likely harsh reality, disguised only by the fog of finely honed media spin from all sides.  Humans being humans, we tend to pick the piece of spin that fit our own bias.  Today that is very easy (and dangerous) to do.

 

I am not tempted to become like that hermit I met while on Army maneuvers in the Tarryall section of the Colorado Rockies in the spring of 1962.  He had lived in relative isolation, apparently for years, no car, no road, no electricity, trudging to the nearest town once a month to bring back provisions, among which was the previous months Denver Post, which he read one issue per day.  He was “current”, but always a month behind on the news, but living in the past was just fine with him.  I see him and his one-room mountain shack as I write.  It is tempting.  After all, there is that old saying, that old myth, that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”.

 

That hermit lived in a different time.

 

In the din of today, it is very hard to be hopeful, much less to know what to do to keep hope alive in ourselves, much less others.

 

But it is self-defeating to give up, to succumb to fear itself; or, even worse, to think that this is going to be easy.  So I’ll take in what I can, and impact however I can, however useless my effort sometimes seems to be.

*

In recent months especially I have often thought of what my birth in rural ND in 1940 meant to me, then, and how it applies to me now.

 

From the moment I was born I was immersed in the background experiences of two families set back but not defeated by the reality of the Dirty Thirties.  Somehow they hung on and survived to raise me, the oldest son, and the oldest grandson – the first to be born into the families of my grandparents after the bad years.

 

One and one half years after I was born, six months after I had “met” my Dad’s brother, my Uncle Frank, in person for the first time, he went down with his ship, the USS Arizona, at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.  From then till September, 1945, WWII dominated everyone’s existence, including youngsters like myself, not old enough to comprehend all that was going on, but experiencing directly the effects.

 

In short, I may have been in a “silent” generation, but I was thoroughly marinated in others experiences in the years both preceding and following my birth.

 

Each of us have our own stories…and some of those stories match the reality of today – including times and events seemingly without hope, including conflicting opinions (including in our own minds) about how to cope. 

 

Several times in my own life I’ve had to muddle through things without a “map”.  It is part of life.

 

“Life” is what our country, including the so-called “experts”, is going through right now, and will be for, likely, a very long time. 

 

So, I choose to carry on trying to impact in whatever small way I can, wherever I can.

 

*

 

In the early months of 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke the immortal phrase “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugural.html.

 

In his own way, President Obama is doing what he can, in whatever ways he can, in the spirit of FDR, to keep our spirits up, in an environment that could turn out to be even worse than the Great Depression; and in the process he is having to make decisions for the country with no certainty that the decisions will be correct.  Somehow we need to walk beside him, with him, in his shoes.  Be critical, sure, but keep it in its proper perspective. 

 

We need to remember, though, that the President is only one among over 300,000,000 of us.  We owe our continuing efforts to ourselves, and to everyone else with whom we share this country and this planet, and to those who come after us.

 

We all can do something positive.

 

We must be realistic.  We must not give up.