Politics – Page 16 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#941 – Dick Bernard: Four Weeks, 28 days to Election Day

October 7, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

Personal suggestion: Know all of the candidates who are on your ballot for the November 4 election, and what they stand for, then vote your choices. For Minnesotans, the Minnesota election weblink is here. I would suspect that each state’s Secretary of State has a similar page.
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Yesterday afternoon I noted a man wearing one of those Minnesota “I Voted” decals. Two women at a neighboring table asked him about it, and he said he had, like many Minnesotans already, voted early. The process is easy and convenient and beats standing in line on Election Day.

Nov 4, 2010, Woodbury MN

An hour or two earlier I received an unanticipated phone call from a friend, lifelong Kansan, who we’d last seen eight years ago, travelling through her town just off I-35.
Yesterday, we had a lot of catching up to do, including the state of politics in Kansas. People who follow politics even a little know what’s going on in Kansas. Right wing Governor Sam Brownback and long-time very conservative Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts are apparently both in very serious trouble, electorally, and may lose their jobs. Time will tell. Whether they win or lose on Nov. 4, things are not happy in Kansas.
But my friend said that even if these two powerful politicians lost, it may not resolve the very serious in-state problems: right-wing conservatives control the state legislature to an extent that if the present configuration continues legislation they pass will be veto proof, even if the Governor changes. And there seems no ground swell in the electorate sufficient to change membership of the legislature enough to bring some balance to the political discourse, even though the status quo is not working well, even for many of the proponents of right wing dominance in government.
There are plenty of Democrats in Kansas. There apparently just aren’t enough of them to bring any balance to the political conversation, and even many normal conservatives are apparently upset with the status quo.
Welcome to American politics.
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Four weeks from now Americans will decide in every state and in every community who will represent them for the next two years.
Political decision making is a bit like the weather: unpredictable. Maybe there’ll be sunshine today, or your house will be destroyed in a tornado, or flood. The difference is, of course, in American politics, people can make the decision.
They will make their choices freely, and if recent past tradition continues, there will be gridlock and a government so ineffective that the vast majority of Americans say thumbs down to the Congress. President Obama’s rating, while poor, is atmospheric compared to the U.S. Congress. Still, we may choose more gridlock, than collectively demanding cooperation in making policy to the benefit of all.
In my own state, and many others, many people have already voted (in the restaurant scene described above, the man didn’t inkle, and the ladies didn’t ask, for whom he voted). He did encourage them to vote, however.
Everyone should help the candidate(s) of their choice, and let others they know their preferred choices.
Of course, we have a secret ballot, but we don’t have to keep our choices a secret.
And if you don’t know about “x” candidate, and can’t find out, ask someone you trust for their opinion.
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Personal opinion: The “American people” will make a big collective decision on November 4. There is a huge difference between the contemporary very radical Republican Party philosophy (obstruct everything the opposition wants, unite in opposition to anything proposed by President Obama, with an end to ultimately gain complete control of government); and the Democrat (which is really quite akin to the old school progressive Republican sense of government).
Lest we forget there was a time, recently, when one party controlled the House, Senate and White House. It was the Republican era of 2001-2007. It was the time including 9-11-01, approaching economic collapse due to utter failure of responsible economic policy, and the Iraq War and Afghanistan. Congress 1977-2011001.
We are still paying a heavy price for those years which featured heavy spending, particularly on war, and big tax cuts.
If we wake up on November 5, 2014, with a Republican Senate, and an even more Republican House of Representatives (President Obama is President for two more years), we condemn ourselves to moving towards what Kansas is putting itself through now, but the consequences will carry on, even if a Republican is elected as President in 2016.
In such an event – one party controlling the government – what is to stop the minority party from simply following the contemporary Republican example of deliberate obstruction?
At this space, five years ago, I deliberately labeled myself “a moderate pragmatic Democrat”. I spoke and speak as a person who liked Ike (Eisenhower was President in my high school and college years); a person whose most significant political mentor (and great personal friend) was Elmer L. Andersen, progressive Republican Governor of Minnesota; and so on. The contemporary Republican party has thrown out its moderates, opting for a hard-edged take-no-prisoners approach to control.
Kansas is, apparently, learning a harsh lesson in what it means to embrace radical government, where a single “wing” is in control. As a single winged bird cannot fly, neither can a single wing (in ideology) government function in a diverse society such as ours. We thrive in diversity; but we seem to roll the dice every election cycle as to what we’ll get.
We have the right to vote November 4, and it behooves all of us to not only exercise that right, but to exercise it thoughtfully and carefully.

#940 – Dick Bernard: The 125th Birthday of North Dakota

October 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Family History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: An earlier version of this post has been updated below,including more content, links and photographs. This post was picked up by Twin Cities on-line newspaper MinnPost on Oct. 1, and can be read here.
After publishing this blog, I received a note from the coordinator for North Dakota Studies at the State Historical Society of ND. Neil Howe noted “We provide print and online resources to teach North Dakota history, geography, and citizenship in the schools of ND. You may know that teaching North Dakota Studies in ND is required at grades 4, 8, and high school. We are one of only a few states with this requirement — and we take pride in that.
You may want to visit the North Dakota Studies website here. I think you may find lots of interesting information about ND.”
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November 2, 2014, is the 125th birthday of North Dakota – the 32nd state of the U.S. Today, October 1, 2014, is the 125th anniversary of the day North Dakotans ratified their new Constitution in 1889.
Happy Birthday!
(click to enlarge all photos)

North Dakota State Capitol as pictured in 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

North Dakota is my home state. Many North Dakota towns and cities have earlier celebrated their 125th. Sykeston, where I graduated from high school in 1958, celebrated its 125th in 2008.
Some serendipity happenings cause me to give focus, this day, to the original Constitution of the State of North Dakota. (History of the North Dakota State Capitol buildings can be read here. The original building was built in 1883-84, burned down in 1930, and was replaced by the present skyscraper of the prairie in 1934.)
Most of the text and illustrations which follow come from the 1911 Blue Book of North Dakota, which I found this summer amongst the belongings at the LaMoure County farm where my mother grew up. In the books illustrations (below) you see evidence of pencil scrigglings. Most likely, they were made by my then-two year old mother, Esther: she was born in 1909, and by the time this book was at the farm home, she was probably at the age where a pencil and paper had some relationship together. (The final picture, at the end of this post, is of the first page of the book. Likely an Esther Busch original!)
(click to enlarge)

The cover of the “red, white and blue” Blue Book of North Dakota, 1911

The official story of the history of North Dakota, as told in 77 pages of the text of the 1911 ND Blue Book is accessible as follows:
1. The 1889 Federal Enabling Act leading the Constitution is here: ND Enabling Act 1889001 (13 pages)
2. The text of the 1889 Constitution of North Dakota is here: ND Constitution 1889002. (57 pages) At page xxviii is the vote by county for and against the Constitution.
(North Dakota’s Constitution, when completed, was over 200 handwritten pages, a fact I didn’t know till I was trying to locate a copy of it.)
3. The summary history of the state and Dakota Territory, its predecessor: ND TerrHist writ 1911 002 (7 pages) [See note at end of this blog].
North Dakota’s history, like all places, then to now, is complex.
For anyone interested there are a great many sources and observations interpreting North Dakota’s early history and the torturous course of its Constitution pre and post 1911. Between statehood in 1889 and 1911, when this book was published, there had been great changes in ND, with extremely rapid growth. It was doubtless an exciting time on the prairie; a time of transition.
Elwyn Robinson, author of the definitive history of North Dakota, gives this description of the beginnings of the ND Constitution Convention in 1889: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Complex as it was, it seems that the ND process was very civilized compared with the earlier Constitution deliberations leading to Minnesota statehood in 1858. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, in the 2009 Minnesota Blue Book, has this account of the Minnesota Constitution Convention: MN Constitution Hist001
Of course Constitution history does not end with enactment. Re North Dakota, Dr. Jerome Tweton much later wrote an interesting commentary on a later effort to redo the oft amended original Constitution of North Dakota.
The rest of us.
Of course, such recountings as shared above, tend to overlook the ordinary human element – people like ourselves. The recounting is of power transactions, in the old days, virtually all made by educated white men, setting the ground rules for the society in which they lived.
In 1910, North Dakota had 577,000 or so population (today, approximately 700,000). That would mean 577,000 individual stories.
Here, very briefly, are snippets of four human stories, those of my grandparents.
The person who acquired and then saved the 1911 Blue Book was my grandfather Ferdinand W. Busch.
He and his wife, Grandma Rosa (Berning), came to the pioneer farm between Berlin and Grand Rapids from extreme southwest Wisconsin (a few miles from Dubuque IA). They married Feb. 28, 1905, and the next month came west to virgin prairie.
Grandpa Fred Busch seems always to have had an active interest in politics, and it is probably thanks to him that I now have this precious old book. (Rosa would have little of this political stuff: there were mouths to feed, after all. When Grandpa ran unsucessfully for County Auditor in 1924, my Aunt Mary once said, Grandma, now with the franchise, campaigned against him!)
Their farm was purchased from the father of Milton R. Young, long time ND U.S. Senator. Fred knew Milton well, personally. They are buried, literally, across the road from each other just outside of Berlin. My mother worked at one point for Milton and his wife at their farm on the edge of Berlin.
Fred became a Non-Partisan League advocate, and later in life especially liked Sen. Bill Langer.
Dad’s side of my family preceded ND statehood.
My grandmother Bernard, then Josephine Collette, was born eight years before statehood at St. Andrews, where the Park and Red Rivers come together in Walsh County ND. Her parents came to ND in 1878; several uncles and Aunts came west about the same time, just before the great land rush.
Her uncle, Samuel Collette, who migrated to the St. Paul MN area from Quebec in 1857, was the first family member to see North Dakota. He was part of the Minnesota Mounted Rangers in 1862-63, a soldier in the so-called Indian War, and likely was with that unit in 1863 when it reached what later became Bismarck. This was a few years before Interstate 94.
I don’t recall much talk of politics by Grandma or Grandpa, though I think Grandma had a Collette Cousin who was a ND State Senator for a long while.
In the reverential description of the ND flag in the book (see below), I found most interesting the many references to the Spanish-American War in the Philippines 1898-99.
Grandpa Busch, Mom’s Dad, would not, in 1911, have had any idea that his future brother-in-law, my Grandpa Bernard, Dad’s Dad, who came to Grafton from Quebec about 1894, was in at the beginning of that long war, spending an entire year in the Philippines, part of Co C, Grafton.
Where that ND flag was, there was Grandpa Bernard.
I have visited Manila, Pagsanjan and Paete, all mentioned in that description.
North Dakota was one of the earliest enrollees to support that war in the spring of 1898. Of course, the “Roughrider”, Teddy Roosevelt, had spent two important years in ND in the mid 1880s, living in the Badlands not far from todays Medora. In a way, by 1898, Theodore Roosevelt had become a North Dakotan.
Without knowing it, the two ND families were already “tied” together.
(Another book found at the Busch farm is one about the Spanish-American War written at the time of the war in the grandiose style of the time.)
Every family has their own stories. These are only five small snips.
And every state has its symbols.
Here are the 1911 descriptors of the Wild Prairie Rose, North Dakotas State Flower, and the North Dakota Flag: ND Flower Flag 1911 002. These are the only state symbols within the book.
There is no descriptor of the North Dakota Seal in the 1911 book. Here is a more current interpretation of that Seal.
(click to enlarge)

ND Flag, as presented in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book. Scribbles likely compliments of then 2-year old Esther Busch.

ND State Flower, the prairie Wild Rose, as presented in 1911 ND Blue Book

Great Seal of North Dakota in 1911 ND Blue Book. Scribbles likely contributed by then 2-year old Esther Busch of Henrietta Township, rural Berlin ND.

Likely artiste, Esther Busch, in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

Happy Birthday, North Dakota!
POSTNOTE: Esther Busch went on to Henrietta Township School #1 near Berlin ND, thence to St. John’s Academy in Jamestown, thence Valley City State Normal School. She became a North Dakota Public School elementary school teacher in the late 1920s, met her future husband Henry Bernard at Valley City State Normal School, and together they taught a total of 71 years in North Dakota Public Schools.
re ND TerrHist link (#3 above): At page four of the link you’ll find the population of ND by decades until 1910. Succinctly, the population grew by 75% from 1890 to 1900, thence 80% from 1900 to 1910 to a 1910 population of 577,000.
That more or less remained the population of North Dakota until the recent oil boom.
They say ND is now about 700,000; In the 1960 census, when I was a junior at Valley City State Teachers College, ND population was about 630,000. When I did the Busch family history some years ago I looked up the population of Berlin, which was platted in 1903 and incorporated in 1906. Berlins highest population ever was in 1910, 137 people. It was all downhill from there. The current population of Berlin, ND is about 35. Here’s how it looked about 1910: Berlin ND early pre-1910001
A small photo album.
click on all photos to enlarge them

Busch farm harvest time 1907,. Rosa Busch holds her daughter Lucina, Others in photo include Ferd, behind the grain shock; Rosa’s sister, Lena, and Ferds father Wilhelm, and young brother William Busch. It is unknown who was unloading the grain in background. Possibly, it was Ferds brother, Leonard, who also farmed for a time in ND.

Ferd and Rosa Busch with first child, Lucina, in yard of their farm home likely Fall 1907

Josephine, Henry, Henry Jr and Josephine Bernard, Grafton ND 1908

Esther and Lucina Busch, rural Berlin/Grand Rapids ND 1910

Henry Bernard (top left) and Josephine’s cousin Alfred Collette (lower right) ready to embark for Philippines from Presidio San Francisco summer 1898.

(If you enlarge Alfred Collette’s head (lower right) you can see that his hat is emblazoned with 1st North Dakota text.)

North Dakota State Capitol June 1958 photos by Henry Bernard.

#939 – Dick Bernard: Election Day, Nov. 4, is one month (five weeks) from today

September 30, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

There is a great deal to be said about Election 2014, now only five weeks away.
The succinct message:
The vast majority of Americans over 18 years of age are qualified to vote. Regardless of roadblocks thrown up to keep some away from the polls, few Americans are excluded from the right to vote.
Unfortunately, if past is prelude, a minority of American will even bother to vote November 4 for the entire litany of reasons we all know, personal excuses and otherwise….
Many of those who actually cast a ballot will have little notion about the implication of their vote for the candidates they end up voting for. (Those who don’t vote at all are a separate category…in effect, they give up their right to complain about the ultimate results.)
In large part, we are disconnected, politically, and it shows in our almost complete disdain for the institutions we elect, especially the U.S. Congress.
Personal advice.
Wherever you live, by now you should be able to find out, on-line, at your Secretary of State’s office, all of the information about next months election, including candidates.
Minnesotans, here’s the link.
At minimum, find out who the candidates are for every office up for election on your local ballot. This will include, at minimum, your Congressperson, and likely many other local and state candidates.
Find out what you can about these candidates (worst source of information in my opinion: media ads, which are aired for or against candidates). At minimum, you likely have friends who are interested in politics, who can give reasonable advice.
In the end, it is the people who show up at the polls on November 4 who will decide the direction (or lack of direction) of this country and your state for the next two years.
It will be either the Republican or the Democrat “side” which will make policy (or make no policy at all, if gridlock continues).
If we resent our government, we really are resenting ourselves, since we chose these folks.
Be well informed, help others be well informed, and vote Tuesday November 4.
NOTE: Eric Black, a columnist and long-time well known and highly respected journalist on the business of Politics, wrote about Americans and voting (and lack of same) in the September 29, 2014, MinnPost. His column is well worth the time to read.

#938 – Dick Bernard: "Do one thing every day that scares you"

September 18, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

In May, at the annual dinner of the Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota, teacher Suzanne Quinn-McDonald received an award for outstanding service. During her brief remarks she quoted something Eleanor Roosevelt had once said, something I’d not heard: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
I went home and looked up the quote, and indeed it existed. I found a powerful and extremely simple 46 second YouTube visual about it (turn up the sound!)
A month or two later, the Caribou Coffee I frequent was being refurbished, and about mid-July I was looking at the new wall covering:

Caribou Coffee, Woodbury MN August 2, 2014

I’ve been thinking a lot about that quote as we’ve been watching the Ken Burns multi-hour, multi-day program, “The Roosevelts”, on the local PBS station. (Missed it? For likely a very limited time you can catch it on-line here. There have been four episodes thus far, a fifth this evening, I believe.)
Like most, I imagine, I know fragments about this extraordinary family, particularly Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor.
In a way, they were born with the proverbial “silver spoon” in their mouths, but there the comparison with the idle rich, or with most of us for that matter, ends.
Personally, all of them endured tragedy, some unspeakable. Each had ample opportunities to quit and fall into the category of “average and ordinary”. But for whatever reason (explored in the film) they seem to have done lots of scarey things, rising above their circumstance: polio, family death, betrayal, etc.
Each of them possessed abundant personal gifts, but each pushed their personal envelope, at least once, if not more than once, every day. They appeared to be uncomfortable just staying within their comfort zone!
Whatever your feelings about the Roosevelts, take the time to watch the entire series if at all possible (the DVD is also available).
You won’t regret it.

#937 – Dick Bernard: A Look Back at the History of the State of North Dakota as it approaches its 125th birthday.

September 17, 2014/0 Comments/in Family History, History, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

Today, September 17, is Constitution Day in the United States. This year the U.S. is 227 years young.
Happy Birthday!
Some serendipity happenings cause me to give focus, this day, to the original Constitution of the State of North Dakota.
North Dakota is my home state.
This year, November 2, is the 125th birthday of North Dakota – the 32nd state of the U.S. (South Dakota is 33rd). Elwyn Robinson, author of the definitive history of North Dakota, gives this description of the beginnings of the ND Constitution Convention in 1889: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Most of the text and illustrations which follow come from the 1911 Blue Book of North Dakota, which I found this summer amongst the belongings at the LaMoure County farm where my mother grew up. Her parents came to that farm from extreme southwest Wisconsin (near Dubuque IA) in March of 1905. Her Dad, my Grandpa Fred Busch, seems always to have been interested in politics, and it is probably thanks to him that I now have this old book. In the books illustrations (below) you see evidence of pencil scrigglings. Most likely, they were made by my then-two year old mother, Esther: she was born in 1909, and by the time this book was at the farm home, she was probably at the age where a pencil and paper had some relationship together. (The final picture, at the end of this post, is of the first page of the book. Likely an Esther Busch original!)
(click to enlarge)

The cover of the “red, white and blue” Blue Book of North Dakota, 1911

North Dakota’s history, like all places, then to now,is a very complicated one. For anyone interested there are a great many sources and observations interpreting North Dakota’s early history and the torturous course of its Constitution pre and post 1911. Between statehood in 1889 and 1911, when this book was published, there had been great changes in ND, with extremely rapid growth. It was doubtless an exciting time on the prairie; a time of transition. The history as recorded in the book is as known and accepted as fact in 1911.
Here is the 1889 Constitution of North Dakota as reprinted in the 1911 Blue Book: ND Constitution 1889001
Dr. Jerome Tweton much later wrote an interesting commentary on a later effort to redo the oft amended original Constitution.
Here is the summary history of the state and Dakota Territory, its predecessor, as written in the same book: ND TerrHist writ 1911 002 [See note at end of this blog].
Dad’s side of my family preceded ND statehood.
My grandmother Bernard, then Josephine Collette, was born eight years before statehood at St. Andrews, where the Park and Red Rivers come together in Walsh County ND. Her parents came to ND in 1878; several uncles and Aunts came west about the same time.
Her uncle, Samuel Collette, who migrated to the St. Paul MN area from Quebec in 1857, was the first family member to see North Dakota. He was part of the Minnesota Mounted Rangers in 1862-63, a soldier in the so-called Indian War, and likely was with that unit in 1863 when it reached what later became Bismarck. This was a bit before Interstate 94.
Every state has its symbols.
Here are the 1911 descriptors of the Wild Prairie Rose, the State Flower, and the North Dakota Flag: ND Flower Flag 1911 002. These are the only state symbols within the book.
There is no descriptor of the North Dakota Seal in the 1911 book. Here is a more current interpretation of that Seal.
I found most interesting, in the reverential description of the ND flag, the many references to the Spanish-American War in the Philippines 1898-99. My Grandpa Busch, Mom’s Dad, would not, in 1911, have had any idea that his future brother-in-law, my Grandpa Bernard, Dad’s Dad, who came to Grafton from Quebec about 1894, was in that war, spending that entire year in the Philippines, part of Co C, Grafton. Where that ND flag was, there was Grandpa Bernard. I have visited Manila, Pagsanjan and Paete, all mentioned in that description.
Without knowing it, the two ND families were already “tied” together. (Another book found at the Busch farm is one about the Spanish-American War written at the time of the war in the grandiose style of the time.)
North Dakota was one of the earliest enrollees in Theodore Roosevelt’s Spanish-American War, spring of 1898. Of course, the “Roughrider”, Teddy Roosevelt, had spent two important years in ND in the mid 1880s, living in the Badlands not far from todays Medora. In a way, by 1898, Theodore Roosevelt had become a North Dakotan.
(click to enlarge)

ND Flag, as presented in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book. Scribbles likely compliments of then 2-year old Esther Busch.

ND State Flower, the prairie Wild Rose, as presented in 1911 ND Blue Book

Great Seal of North Dakota in 1911 ND Blue Book. Scribbles likely contributed by then 2-year old Esther Busch of Henrietta Township, rural Berlin ND.

Likely artiste, Esther Busch, in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

Esther Busch went on to Henrietta Township School #1 near Berlin ND, thence to St. John’s Academy in Jamestown, thence Valley City State Normal School. She became a North Dakota Public School elementary school teacher in the late 1920s, met her future husband Henry Bernard at Valley City State Normal School, and together they taught a total of 71 years in North Dakota Public Schools.
Happy Birthday, North Dakota!
re ND TerrHist link above: At page four of the link you’ll find the population of ND by decades until 1910. Succinctly, the population grew by 75% from 1890 to 1900, thence 80% from 1900 to 1910 to a 1910 population of 577,000.
That more or less remained the population of North Dakota until the recent oil boom.
They say ND is now about 700,000; In the 1960 census, when I was a junior in college, ND population was about 630,000. When I did the Busch family history some years ago I looked up the population of Berlin, which was platted in 1903 and incorporated in 1906. Berlins highest population ever was in 1910, 137 people. It was all downhill from there. The current population of Berlin, ND is about 35. Here’s how it looked about 1910: Berlin ND early pre-1910001
The present ND population boomlet is in the Bakken oil west (Williston, Minot, Bismarck, Dickinson areas) and in the cities, particularly Fargo and Grand Forks.

#935 – Dick Bernard: War. Its variations.

September 13, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics, War /by dickbernard

It’s been a rough week for the National Football League (NFL).
First comes the indefinite suspension of Baltimore Ravens Ray Rice after the violent incident with his “then-fiancee” in a hotel elevator. Then, this mornings banner headline in my local paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, about Minnesota Vikings star “Adrian Peterson Indicted” for disciplining “his 4-year old son by beating him with a “switch.””
There is the news that dominates the airwaves and the internet; then there is the down on the ground news, talk among friends, about such things.
There is a disconnect.
One good friend remembers that when he was a kid his Mom pretty regularly used the “switch” on him, or something else if the switch wasn’t handy.
Another friend wonders what happened earlier in the elevator that wasn’t caught on film.
Such musings are only for safe company. There is no “other side of the story”.
These are two great guys, sincerely wondering….
Then there’s the National Football League, may as well be called America’s Corporation, probably one of the most financially successful and well known businesses.
Its ultimate objective, let’s be honest, is to cover its financial assets.
The NFLs product is sanctioned team violence. Football is a violent game – a war on a field.
(Thursdays Star Tribune had an editorial about head injuries in prep sports. Of 13 sports, Football had 42% of the injuries (second was girls soccer with 9%).
Pro football without Goliaths colliding would be boring for fans.)
There’s a devil’s dance going on.
Then there’s the main national event: the center ring: the American War against whomever, and who is to be held responsible for that war, however defined.
Currently, the contest is about what to do about ISIL, et al. It is the almost perfect storm, given that it comes less than two months before the 2014 election and the issues and complexities great..
By the Constitution of the United States, it is the Congress who has the sole power to authorize war. Constitution of U.S.001 (see page 9). The trick is how to make President responsible for what the Congresspersons would like to have happen, but do not want to own.
It is a real quandary.
We Americans elect our leaders by voting (or not showing up on election day).
We like our wars, so long as win them, at no cost to ourselves.
Today is the 200th anniversary of the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem, “bombs bursting in air”. Look at the entertainment that sells best. A strong focus on violence is popular.
But we’re eternally ambivalent. Our entry into WWII was delayed because Congress wouldn’t commit to war.
No war was ever declared in Korea, which was a police action.
An assortment of War Powers Acts especially since Vietnam have in effect amended the Constitution so that the Congress can pass off its responsibility for war-making to whomever is the sitting President. If its our guy, one thing; if its not, its another.
With respect to the abundant mess in Syria-Iraq and environs with ISIL, there is no right answer, though all pundits on whichever ideological side represent their analysis as the correct one.
The President of the United States, who is not running for anything in November, is, I believe, correctly assessing the situation, and has been for some years now.
He is interested in protecting the institution of the Presidency, but he is also interested in the Congress doing its job of making the crucial decisions about war and peace.
Our local congressperson is the point person who we need to elect carefully on Nov. 4. They should not be able to weasel-waffle out of declaring themselves.

Thursday, September 17th is Constitution Day in the U.S. Linked here is one of many sources of information. Take time to read our founding document: Constitution of U.S.001

#934 – Dick Bernard: Eight weeks (56 days) to November 4, Election Day 2014.

September 9, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, History, Politics /by dickbernard

Yesterdays post, here, relates to this one.

August, 2013. Who every election is about….

Recently, in an e-mail, came a very interesting short test on current events* from the highly respected Pew Research Center. It asks 13 questions: “What do you know about the news?”.
You can take the test privately. Here it is. Elsewhere in this post I will tell you how I did, compared with the national sample who were surveyed August 7-14, 2014.
Re the next eight weeks, there is really nothing to add to what will incessantly be irritatingly obvious: there is a major election in a few weeks.
As usual, in a non-presidential year, most people won’t vote at all (it’s mid-term, after all); a distressing percentage of those who’ll vote really don’t know the issues, much less where the candidates stand on the issues, much less even knowing who the candidates are.
The bottom line for me remains: We like to complain about “government”; but we’re actually complaining about ourselves.
If we were a dictatorship, or if there wasn’t a reasonably solid statutory base for “one person, one vote”, we might have more of a right to complain. But the vast majority of us CAN vote.
We each have as much power, through an informed vote, as the richest person in the country: one vote. True, big money can influence votes through these incessant and vacuous media ads and mailers we will see, without end. But ads don’t vote, either, except through us.
A good place to start, today, is to find out who your candidates will be on November 4. For Minnesotans (my state), here’s the entry point. All you need to know is your where you live. All the other rules are to be found at the same website. Other states doubtless have similar resources.
Once you know your candidates, find out what they stand for, really (not just the ads), and let the people who you know, know where you stand, and why.
And if you’re not sure about someone who’s a candidate ask someone you trust about them.
In the end, I hope we elect more folks who truly care about the entire country, than simply about their own particular ideology. We used to have a tradition, Republican and Democrat, which was more like that, than it is today.
Again, if we want change, we’ll be the ones to demand it through our vote on November 4, and in future elections.
* – Did you take the test referred to at the beginning?
The person who passed the test along to me said this: “Try this test! It is very interesting. It will test your knowledge of current events. It is interesting that 11 people of the original survey conducted by Pew Research did not get a single question correct.
This is an excellent test and it shows results in a number of ways. National results indicate that the majority of Americans don’t know what is going on in their country. Are these the “low information voters” we have been hearing about?
It is astonishing that so many people got less than half of the questions right. The results say that 80% of the voting public are basically clueless about current events. That’s pretty scary but not at all surprising.
There are no trick questions in this test — Either you know the answer or you don’t. It will give you an idea whether or not you are current on your information data base.”
My score? I got 12 of 13.

#933 – Dick Bernard: Working for Change

September 8, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Environment, History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

A couple of weeks ago a waitress at a local restaurant I frequent asked me a question.
She knows I’m interested in politics, and her son-in-law, now in law school, had developed a strong interest in the Constitution. Could I give her some ideas?
There’s loads of materials on the U.S. Constitution, of course. I knew this young man was from my home state of North Dakota and I suggested that I’d try to find out something about the ND Constitution. Maybe he’d be interested. She thought that was a great idea and I embarked on my quest. It was more difficult than I had thought but as of today the young man has (I’m pretty sure) information he hasn’t seen before, and this is the 125th year of North Dakota becoming a state (1889).
As often happens with such quests, one question leads to another, and yesterday found me looking at the 2013-14 Minnesota Legislative Handbook (they used to be called the “Blue Book”) to see what information it might have about the Minnesota Constitution (Statehood, 1858, right before the Civil War.)
I found a fascinating page and a half description of what it was like to enact the Minnesota Constitution back then. You can read it here: MN Constitution Hist001.
It doesn’t take long to discover that it was not an easy process to enact a new Minnesota Constitution. In fact…well, you can read the short article. Of course, back in that day, all the players were men, didn’t make a difference which party they were, and they were accustomed to being in power, and (I suppose) the primacy of their own ideas. Compromise was not their strong suit, shall I say.
By the time of the North Dakota Convention in 1889 the process was considerably more cut and dried, but still it wasn’t without discord. The final document is, I’m told, 220 handwritten sheets, and here are the first two pages of what Prof. Elwyn Robinson in his 1966 History of North Dakota had to say in introduction to the proceedings: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Of course, again, all of the delegates were men of prominence in their communities.
Long after each convention, in 1920, Women’s Suffrage helped to begin level the playing field. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 began to deal with the residue of slavery, which was supposed to have been taken care of as a result of the Civil War 1861-65.
Nothing is easy.
Yesterday evening, winding down, I happened across a PBS program entitled Secrets of Westminster, about power in English history. You can watch it here.
There were many fascinating tidbits, but the one that will stick with me longest will be the segments about the long struggle for women’s suffrage in England, finally won in 1918, two years before the rights were granted in the U.S. There is an interesting timeline of the quest by British women to receive the right to vote here. Note especially the three entries about 1909, and 4 June 1913. Both were featured in the PBS program.
Change is a continuing struggle. Where there are people, there are differences, and there is power. Change cannot be made by pretending someone else will do it; or that it is impossible to do anything about “it” (whatever “it” is). But it is possible.
At a recent meeting, I was noting a sign I had recently seen on a Holiday Inn Express motel in Bemidji Minnesota. It is pictured here:
(click to enlarge)

At hotel entrance Bemidji MN August 8, 2014

I commented on how inconceivable a sign like this would have been not too many years ago.
Jim remembered how it all began. He was a college student 50 years ago, and it was the time when the first warnings were publicized on cigarettes, which “may” be hazardous to ones health.
Change happened, there, because some people, individually and then united, worked for it, and worked, and worked, and worked….
We must do the same.

#929 – Dick Bernard: Aiming at the Moon (and hitting ourselves); a thought on redefining how we see relationships with our world, and about the matter of changing attitudes..

August 24, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, North Dakota, Politics, War /by dickbernard

Early Wednesday morning, August 21, I was heading out for coffee from my motel in LaMoure ND, and a sight begging to be photographed appeared a few steps to my left, and I couldn’t pass on it. Here’s the snapshot. The waning moon appeared to be in the “bullseye”.
(click to enlarge)

August 21, 2014, 6:15 a.m., LaMoure ND

I’m very familiar with the sight: I stay often at this motel. August 10, on a previous trip, I’d taken a photo of the permanently on display Minuteman Missile you see in the photo. But this one, with the moon as the bullseye, was unique. I just looked up the Phase of the Moon I photographed that day: here.
More about this missile at the end of this post.
My trips to LaMoure, these past months especially, have always been work, both physical and emotional. I go into a “news blackout”, basically, too busy to read a newspaper; too tired to even watch TV news. So it wasn’t until I arrived home late on the 21st that I learned of the decapitation of the American journalist in Syria by an ISIS person with a distinctly British accent; and I saw the image of some ISIS hotshots showing off with some American tank, either purchased or captured in Iraq and now part of the ISIS arsenal.
Suddenly our omnipotence does not seem so potent. The radicals in ISIS seem far more dangerous and ominous than al Qaeda a few years ago, essentially thumbing their collective noses at us, using our own weapons and tactics, and we can’t do a thing about it. So we debate around the edges of the true reality, which is we can no longer control the world, and our past actions have consequences. We now debate on whether or not we should pay ransom to rescue captured journalists or others, and we face the prospect of dealing with shadowy enemies who look and talk just exactly like us. (“American” are very diverse, should anyone not have noticed. The traditional order has irreversibly changed.)
This is a very complex situation in which we find ourselves, even worse than our no-win Iraq adventure which began in 2003 with bragging that we had won that war less than two months into that awful and deadly and endless conflict (which still continues).
We now have to live within the world which we have made.
When I got home this week, I decided to review the history of the Minuteman Missile, which was a creature of my time in North Dakota.

August 10, 2014, LaMoure ND

We Americans love our weaponry: the Biblical “Ploughshares” doesn’t seem to have a chance against “Swords”. We’re so strong, armed so well, peace runs a far distant second to the advantage of overwhelming military superiority – or so goes the conversation. Look for Monuments to Peace in your circuits. And to War. And see who wins. (One organization I support whose sole mission is a Peace Memorial is here. Check it out.)
Googling “Minuteman North Dakota” just now brought forth a North Dakota Historical Society site which for some odd reason is dedicated to President Ronald Reagan.
The Minutemen were children of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson during the Cold War, and were planted between 1961-67 in the heat of the Cold War (Reagan was in office much later, 1981-89).
When you’re talking man-up, whose name is attached to manning-up matters, I guess.
I see lowly ploughshares memorialized from time to time, but they’re seldom named for a person, compared with war memorials, they are minuscule in number.
FDR was President when the Nuclear Age was born; and Truman was President when the Atomic Bombs were first used, and Eisenhower was at the helm when other weapons of mutually assured destruction were developed and tested.
Actually, all the military toys ought to be dedicated to “we, the people” who fund, and indeed have insisted on their development through our Congress, which by action (or inaction) authorizes endless war and military investment.
(Changing this reality is not simple: for instance, my Grandmother on the ND farm* 10 miles from that Missile in the photos, was joyful when the A-Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945(Atomic Bomb 1945001). Her bias was her son, an officer on a Destroyer in the Pacific. She wanted him home safe. The U.S. War Department, then, rhapsodized in public relations releases that this deadly bomb might be the key to ending war forever.
And Saturday night I was at a Minnesota Twins baseball game with a family group which included my granddaughters father-in-law. He’s a great guy. Much of his career as an Air Force enlisted man was making sure those ND Minuteman sites were secure….)
As a country we have supported these symbols of our supposed omnipotence, without regard to partisan designation. It is dangerous for a politician to speak against War.
Now a few countries, especially the U.S. and Russia, are awash in nuclear weapons which, if ever used, even one, by some lawless renegade leader or thief, will take a long step towards mutually assured destruction of everyone downwind.
The conventional wisdom back then, that our strength was in military superiority, was not only wrong, but stupid.
We’re in a hole of our own making, and best that we figure out it’s worth our while to not only stop digging, but try other means of co-existing.
We’re part of, not apart from, a much bigger world than just within our borders.
Change can happen, but it always happens slowly. Be the one person who is, as Gandhi said, “the change you wish to see.”
* POSTNOTE: On that same farm, in the yard in November, 1957, I and others watched Sputnik as it blinked on and off in the black night ski. In those days, newspapers carried maps of where you could see Sputnik. In my memory (I was 17 then, and a senior in high school), the trajectory was from SSE to NNW, but I could be wrong. Sputnik was a big, big deal. Earlier, in early teen years, Grandpa would rail on about the Communists, who were sort of abstract to me, then, but it fits, now, with my knowledge of the great Red Scare, Sen. Joe McCarthy, HUAC, etc. And earlier still, would be the Flash Gordon novel which somebody had bought sometime, and was pretty ragged, but featured the Ray Gun (early Laser fantasy?), and Flash Gordon’s conflict with the evil ones. I have recently been going through all of the belongings of that old house, and I keep looking for that ragged old Flash Gordon book, but my guess is I won’t find it….
UPDATE AND COMMENT:
long-time good friend Bruce F responded to my post as follows:
I wonder,Dick, how these rag-tag radical groups in SW Asia can out gun and defeat government armies that we train and supply.
My guess is that in one form or another we supply and train them. In order to be the world’s largest arms dealer, the military industrial machine needs to work both sides to continue to expand profits.
Comment:
The key word in Bruce’s comment (to me, at least) is the word “we”. Who is “we”? And when?
Otherwise I’d agree with what seems to be the general thrust of Bruce’s comment: the unwieldy entity called the “United States” (primarily we citizens, collectively), have allowed this to evolve.
I doubt ISIS (or ISIL) or the “Caliphate” will have a long life. It will not become a new North Korea.
The regional situation is extraordinarily messy. It is difficult to identify who is “friend” or “enemy” at any particular time. The latest ISIS casualty publicized in this area was a graduate of a local Minneapolis suburban high school in 1990 who embraced a radical philosophy about 10 years ago.
The President of the United States is stuck in a quandary, which delights his enemies. There is nothing he can do which will not be legitimately criticized by someone. The U.S. Congress, which should be making the key decisions per its Constitutional obligation to make policy on War, generally, will continue to escape and evade its responsibility.
But it remains we Americans who through our own lack of engagement have helped create the monster which we now can scarcely understand, and hardly know how to turn around.

#921 – Dick Bernard: The Primary Election

August 5, 2014/0 Comments/in Politics /by dickbernard

One week from today, in Minnesota, is the 2014 Primary Election. There are important state races, not to mention local. You can learn all you need to know here; you can find out information about the specific ballot in your area here; you will be asked your zip code, and street name, and you can view a sample ballot.
All elections are important, this one no less so.
But this is a non-presidential year, and there is normally a lower voter turnout for the general election, and lower still for the primary.
This is true in all places (other states have their primaries at different times, and rules are also different.)
It is as if far too many of we Americans think that the only time we need for vote is for President; once we do that, it seems, we say to the President, “your problem” (or “your fault”). We wash our hands of responsibility for four more years.
We richly deserve what we get.
Political organizers know that the American voter in general is careless and sloppy and lazy, and this is an exploitable weakness. People who don’t know the issues or the candidates or don’t even bother to vote at all assure the worst outcome.
Here is an example of this dynamic:
In 2010 there was an off-year election in my town, as in all towns. I looked up the voter turnout in 2010 just for my community (which is affluent and well educated) and found that 30% – three of ten – of the registered voters did not even vote for a candidate for local legislator.
2010, of course, was the year of the Tea Party triumph most everywhere.
In 2012, again for my town, this time the district slightly reconfigured due to the redistricting required after every census, roughly 10% – one of ten – of the registered voters stayed home.
30% no-shows versus 10% no-shows makes an immense amount of difference, especially if one ‘side’ is energized, the other side not.
It is no accident, in my opinion, that this Congress, the 113th, is almost a shoo-in to be the least productive Congress in recorded history, and why it is, as a body, generally reviled by the citizenry generally. It was the 2010 landslide for the Tea Party that gave the power to set legislative district boundaries, sealing its advantage far beyond that one election.
Basically, we get exactly what we deserve in any election. This one in 2014 will be no different.
Show up and not only make an informed vote, but urge others that you know to act similarly.
It is the people who show up that matter.