#663 – Dick Bernard: Dr. William Beeman "The Consequences of the U.S. Election on our Relationship with Iran"

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Today at the annual meeting of the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers (MAP) about 60 of us heard a fascinating talk by Dr. William Beeman of the University of Minnesota on Iran. He is a man of diverse talents, including academic.
Dr. Beeman is recuperating from a recent surgery but that didn’t deter his presentation. He is an expert in his field, and it showed.
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Dr. William Beeman, December 11, 2012


Near the end of his 45 minute presentation, Dr. Beeman addressed the title of his talk.
In his mind there is no question that this presidential election was one with big consequences for foreign policy in the Middle East. Mitt Romney’s advisers were from the neocon group which gave us Iraq; whilst Mr. Obama has an opportunity to work for a more moderate approach to the region.
But Beeman said this wouldn’t be easy: U.S. policy develops over decades and is driven by powerful people within government who continue from administration to administration. Regardless of who is elected, the ship of state is really much like a large ship – easy to see, hard to turn.
Policies we in the public might not notice can become crucial in one persons hands or in those of someone else.
And whoever is elected is torn.
But elections do make a difference.
Most of Beeman’s talk centered on the dismal history of relations between Iran and the U.S., mostly going back to our CIA’s role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in 1952. Since the overthrow of the Shah and the Hostage Crisis of 1979, the U.S. has had no diplomatic relations with Iran. (But Beeman mentioned that tourists can get visas to go to Iran, and he has.)
I gather that much of this history is outlined in Beeman’s book “Great Satan versus the Mad Mullahs“.
The books catchy title matches the speakers engaging style.
When I left the room today, I knew more about Iran than I thought I knew, and I thought I knew a fair amount. Beeman filled in blanks for me on topics I’d never really given much thought, like women’s rights in Iran; our 1970s “Atoms for Peace” program and its very integral role in the Iranian nuclear program, now a fear-monger staple.
He mentioned that since 1990, Iran seems always to have been “two years away” from a nuclear bomb. There seems a pattern.
I’d recommend checking looking up Beeman’s book.

At the MAP meeting December 11, 2012

#662 – Dick Bernard: Pearl Harbor Day one day after.

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Yesterday, December 7, was Pearl Harbor Day. Much of the day I was out-and-about.
Dad’s brother, my uncle Frank, died on the USS Arizona that day, and especially since the 50th anniversary, 1991, it’s been a very significant date for me. I visited the Arizona Memorial in November, 1985, Frank’s burial place literally underneath my feet, in the remains of the battleship that was his home for the last six years of his life. Were he still alive, he’d now be 97. I’ve written about Frank and/or Pearl Harbor often. Most recent is here.
A year ago, December 7, I was at the Veteran’s Service Building in St. Paul to remember the 70th anniversary of the attack. There I met Edgar Wentzlaff, a crewman on the Arizona, who survived. He didn’t remember my Uncle, which wouldn’t be a surprise. What surprised me was that yesterday’s Star Tribune carried a long article about now-95 year old Edgar. Time is running out for the survivors of WWII; tell their stories while they are still alive.
Back home yesterday was an e-mail from my brother, Frank, born Nov 1945, first male child after Frank died, and named for my Uncle Frank. The e-mail included a photo of a man in California, Gary Hanson, who I’ve communicated with, who has made a scale model of the Arizona. Behind me as I type is my own model of the Arizona, made by my friend and colleague Bob Tonra back in the mid 1990s; beside it is a scale model of the USS Woodworth, also by Tonra. Woodworth is the Destroyer on which my mothers brother, Lt. George W. Busch, spent three years in the Pacific, 1943-45.
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USS Arizona and DD460, USS Woodworth, models in my home office December 8, 2012. Both models in wood, made by friend and colleague Bob Tonra ca 1996. The "water" with the Arizona is dried Hawaiian foliage from two Hawaiian friends.


Gary Hanson with his Arizona model.


Pearl Harbor and the effects of War (Frank was a peacetime victim, technically) is never far away, a constant reminder of the elusiveness of peace, and the brutality and stupidity of war. It also reminds about how complex and difficult an issue this business of war and peace can be, even among passionate people of seemingly like-interests. War…and Peace…is a family matter.
Pearl Harbor is also a reminder of the need for, and fragility of, enforceable World Law, and the need for a system in which such law has a place at the table.
Working on the issue is no simple task, far beyond absolute 100% right positioning, “standing for something”.
Back home yesterday afternoon I watched again the History Channel program, “The First 24 Hours”, about the first hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I had seen the program before, but events immediately preceding the program made me more mindful of the difficulties we face to prevent the next and likely much worse cataclysm if nations cannot figure out how to get along.
Back then, until the day war was declared, December 8, 1941, the U.S. was a nation divided about whether or not to enter WWII, which had already been raging for several years.
An extremely strong interest group at the time was “America First”, whose motivation was basically as its name suggests. Our isolationism ended only with a disaster that we felt we could only remedy by an extremely long and deadly World War II.
Then, and today, our dilemma is not so much external (like terrorists); rather it is within each and everyone of us, dedicated to our own top and non-negotiable priorities. Thinking, somehow, that we can prevail over our opposition, or win by sneak attacks of small and major scale (that’s why I used my December 7 blog space for the Minnesota Orchestra lockout: in my mind, it was a simple power play now gone awry, with no face-saving way yet found to settle on terms of a contract. Most people don’t care about an Orchestra being locked out, but the effects are felt by those who do.)
Even within the so-called “peace” community, of which I am a part, there is often disagreement, to the detriment of those same advocates for peace.
Yesterday, on Pearl Harbor Day, I saw a copy of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, supposedly an everlasting and legally binding pact to end all war, following up on the 1914-1918 “war to end all wars” and the resulting Armistice Day commemoration, which later was changed, in the United States, to be called Veterans Day, losing the essence of the day (in my opinion.) In the United Kingdom it is called Remembrance Day.
Of course, the WWI Treaty of Versailles, intended to end War, only helped to spawn Hitler and WWII. And the ink was hardly dry on Kellogg-Briand when ways to bypass its supposedly iron clad language were found, including by the signatories.
I support people with the passion for Kellogg-Briand, etc. But my friends whose passion is making Kellogg-Briand binding once again, seem not quite as passionate about simple things like promoting Peace Sites, places of peace in our midst; or remarkable movements with results like the 1968 and 1971 Declarations of World Citizenship in Minneapolis and Hennepin County, and then Minnesota.
It can be most frustrating.
And on we go.
Where do you stand?
We live in an increasingly fragile world, and the actions we take, or do not take, and the work we do together, or not, will contribute to the problem…or the solution…one person at a time.

Ruhel Islam, owner of Gandhi Mahal Restaurant in Minneapolis, accepts plaque recognizing his restaurant as an International Peace Site from World Citizen founder Lynn Elling (seated at left) Dec. 7, 2012


NOTE to Twin Citians: Gandhi Mahal is a great restaurant. Check it out.

#659 – Dick Bernard: "Black Friday" and "the Fiscal Cliff"

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A week ago today, Black Friday was raging. Actually, it began on Thanksgiving Day, and if one carries it even further, I first heard Christmas (shopping) music at my coffee stop right after November 1.
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Pre-Black Friday advertising, Nov. 17, 2012


Christmas in America is not so much a celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace; it is, rather, the major profit season for the entire commercial year. And it is likely primarily on credit card: “credit or cash?” is the mantra. Credit is preferred by merchants – more money to be made.
The main difference this year is the endless yammering over the supposed and dreaded “fiscal cliff” coming on December 31, when the 2002 tax cuts which have been a major part of the cause of our huge debt sunset.
So, while we members of the middle class are urged to spend money we don’t have on things we (or recipients) don’t need, of even want, we are to live in fear of the approaching fiscal cliff over which we apparently will tumble at midnight on December 31.
Happy New Year.
The best (and most entertaining) rendition of the fiscal cliff “conversation” came from Alan in Los Angeles early Friday morning. It is here, quite long as usual, but in my opinion, enlightening and very real.
Take some time to read it.

#658 -Bob Barkley: Teaching as a Team Sport: Thoughts after the Chicago Teachers Strike (Sep 10-19, 2012); and What I've learned so far (as of Nov. 19, 2012)

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Pre-Note: This post has been held for some time, with precedence given to Election 2012. The topic of Public Education is timeless and crucial.
Bob Barkley has very strong “street creds” in public education, from beginning public school teaching in 1958, through years of Quality Ed work within the National Education Association, through Executive Director of Ohio Education Association and post-retirement consulting.
Teaching as a Team Sport:
Bob Barkley: Yes, you read that title right. Traditional schools are structured and managed as if teachers were individual performers. Evidence and common sense say that’s far from being the case.
Given the recent furor over the Chicago teacher strike and the accompanying union bashing that dominates the mainstream media, we’d do well to give thought to what can be learned from successful schools around the globe.
We talk much about American exceptionalism. A key element of that exceptionalism is our deep-seated belief in the merits of competition. So thoroughly have we adopted the notion that market forces inevitably lead to superior performance, we have great difficulty accepting the fact that schools that emphasize collegial relationships, encourage shared faculty planning, and make use of cooperative approaches to designing and implementing teaching and learning strategies, routinely outpace those that stress competition.
Most teachers know this intuitively, although too few articulate it well. Professional organizations, unions, school administrators, and schools of education are also familiar with the research and conclusions based on experience, but are no more successful than individual teachers at getting the message across. The narrow preoccupation with raising test scores at the expense of all else seems to have so rattled educators they can’t get their sensible messages out.
The need to work together is a major reason why private sector pressure to rate and pay teachers on the basis of test scores and other individual performance measures is a huge mistake. Predictably—given political reliance on corporate funding for campaigns—neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to listen to educators. Vouchers, choice, charters, merit pay, school closings and “turnarounds,” and other silver bullets being fired by politicians and rich entrepreneurs block dialogue that could be productive if they came to the issues open to the possibility that the hundreds of thousands who actually do the work might just possibly know something about how to do it best.
Corporate fascination with competitiveness notwithstanding, in teaching and learning, competitiveness is almost always counterproductive. It blocks a host of useful strategies for evaluating performance, gets in the way of freely sharing good ideas, and wastes the benefits of knowing one is part of a team, the work of which will inevitably be smarter than that of individual members.
It’s ironic that teamwork—an idea the merit of which is taken for granted on factory floors and playing fields, in neighborhoods and families, and just about everywhere else that humans try to be productive—is seen as counterproductive in classrooms. Within companies managers want employees to collaborate with colleagues. An accountant sitting next to a fellow accountant is required to work with that person. No one wants the two of them to compete, withhold trade secrets, and crush the other by the end of the day.
Finding scapegoats, fixing blame for poor performance on a percentage of teachers or on a few individuals, has an appealing simplicity about it, but it’s a lazy, simplistic, misguided approach to improving system performance. As management experts have been pointing out for decades, if a system isn’t performing, it almost always means there’s a system problem. Since teachers have almost no control over the systems of which they are a part, it’s necessary to make the most of a bad situation, and the easiest way to do that is to capitalize on their collective wisdom. If they’re being forced to compete against each other, there’s no such thing as collective wisdom.
For a generation, under the banner of standards and accountability, teachers have been criticized, scorned, denigrated, maligned, blamed. Accountability in education as indicated by standardized test scores is no more about individual teacher performance than accountability in health care as indicated by patient temperatures is about individual nurse performance.
I’m not making excuses for poor educator performance. Teachers should be held accountable for identifying, understanding, and applying practices that produce the highest level of student achievement. Administrators should be held accountable for creating an environment that encourages the identification, understanding and sharing of effective practices. Schools of education should be held accountable for whatever improves the institution.
But the new reformers aren’t interested in improvement, just replacement. Management experts say, “Don’t fix blame; fix the system.” Just about everyone in the system would love to help do that if given the opportunity, but the opportunity hasn’t been offered, so nothing of consequence changes.
Case in point: The Chicago teachers’ strike. Rahm Emanuel, like the rest of the current “reformers,” came to the table having bought the conventional wisdom in Washington and state capitols that educators either don’t know what to do or aren’t willing to do it. He obviously went to Chicago with the same tired suspicion of teachers, the same belief that they’re the problem rather than the key to a real solution, the same confrontational, competitive stance.
Will we ever learn? Don’t hold your breath.
What I’ve Learned So Far (as of Nov. 19, 2012):
In February of 1958 I began student teaching in a small rural Pennsylvania town. Approximately one month into that experience my master teacher was drafted into the military. And since there were no other teachers in my field in that small district, I was simply asked to complete the school year as the regular teacher.
From that day on I have been immersed in public education at many levels, in several states – even in Canada and with some international contacts, as well as from many vantage points. So some 54 and a half years later, here’s what I have learned so far.
1. There will be no significant change in education until and unless our society truly and deeply adopts a sense of community attitude. And a sense of community is first and foremost based upon an acceptance that we all belong together – regardless of wealth, race, gender, etc.
2. The views of amateurs, otherwise known as politicians and private sector moneyed interests, while they may be genuine and well intentioned, are, at best, less than helpful if unrestrained by the views of the professionals working at ground level. Put another way, the view from 30,000 feet may give a broad sense of how the system looks, but the view from street level gives a sense of how the system actually works. Neither is wrong, but both are inadequate by themselves.
3. Moneyed interests such as test and textbook manufactures and charter school enthusiasts will destroy general education for they have little commitment to the general welfare and common good
4. No institution or organization will excel until and unless it adopts at all levels a shared sense of purpose – a central aim if you will, and agrees upon how progress toward that purpose will be measured over time. Education is no different.
5. At the basic levels all education must begin with the recognition and nurturing of the natural curiosity and the current reality of each student.
6. Teaching is a team sport. In other words, the structure and general practice in schools of teachers operating as independent sources of instruction is flawed. Anything that exacerbates this flawed structure, such as test score ratings of individual teachers and/or individual performance pay schemes, will be harmful and counterproductive.
7. The separation of knowledge into separate disciplines may be convenient to organizing instruction but it is counter to the construction of learning. Therefore, integrated curriculum strategies are essential if neuroscience is to be appreciated and taken into account.
8. School employee unions can be useful or problematic to educational progress. Which they become is dependent upon their full inclusion in determining the structure and purpose of education. The more they are pushed to the sidelines, the more their focus will be narrow and self-serving.
Robert Barkley, Jr., is retired Executive Director of the Ohio Education Association, a thirty-five year veteran of NEA and NEA affiliate staff work. He is the author of Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents, and Lessons for a New Reality: Guidance for Superintendent/Teacher Organization Collaboration. He may be reached at rbarkle@columbus.rr.com.
Ed. Note: Bob Barkley did a great deal of significant work within NEA on quality initiatives in a number of states, including Minnesota. Here’s a recent article, “Guerrilla Baldrige in the Classroom” outlining a long term impact of his and NEAs work towards quality systems in public education.

#657 – Dick Bernard: Watching the Spielberg film, Lincoln.

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We went to Lincoln this afternoon. It was our second try. Last night was sold out at the local theatre. Today, the theatre was full.
The film, of the last three months of Lincoln’s life, and the passage of the 13th Amendment, is well worth the abundant kudos. It is worth seeing. Here’s one of many reviews, a commentary by Bonnie Blodget in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Of all the American Presidents, I feel I know the most about Lincoln, having visited many of his haunts and memorials over the years, and read a lot about the era.
He is no stranger to me.
At the time of the film, early 1865, he had just turned 56 years of age, really in his youth. A line in the film from one of his cabinet members was that he had aged 10 years in the previous year. The emotional wear of America’s most disastrous Civil War could do that.
Most presidents age pretty quickly, in front of our eyes. They have a difficult job.
We tend to try to simplify major characters of history like Lincoln, and in the process lose track of some of the other realities of their lives. There was plenty of political chicanery involved in Lincoln’s reaching a destination – emanicipation of the slaves. The struggle was hard for a right which most of us now take for granted, and admire.
Politics can be a very nasty business – a contact sport. Lincoln had to play with the best.
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In the museum at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC, 2006


He served in politics at a time when it was as rough and tumble as any we experience today, and in his day, when the United States had roughly 10% of the our current population, the electorate was exclusively white men. One of the arguments against freeing the slaves was the very real and scary possibility that if Negroes were freed, and given rights as citizens, then women would want the right to vote – one gathers this was a rather horrifying thing to contemplate.
As it happens, the slaves were freed, and for a few short years were actually allowed their freedom, including the right to vote and own property. But in less than 20 years ways around that right were found, and it wasn’t until the 1960s when it became relatively certain that those rights would be relatively permanent, even in the most reluctant southern states.
Women, on the other hand, had a much longer wait for their right to vote. It wasn’t until 1920 that Women’s Suffrage became the law of the land. For probably obvious reason, that right, once granted, was not tampered with.

1910 Postcare to Grandma Busch on the farm in ND. Grandma was 26 at the time. Womens Suffrage was still ten years in the future.


We now live in a new world, now, and for some it is not a very comfortable world.
But winning justice is a slow and torturous process and people like Abe Lincoln and legions of others have brought us far.
Take some time to see Lincoln.
It gives much food for thought, along with a lot of history you may not have learned in school.

#651 – Dick Bernard: An American Hymn on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 2012

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Today I ushered at 9:30 Mass at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. We had run out of the bulletins which contain hymns for the day and thus, as Communion was being completed, I was surprised when the magnificent Basilica Choir began to sing “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain….”
Usually, a choir member leads the congregation in the singing, but in stanza one this did not happen, nor in stanza two. This was surprising, since at this Mass the congregation are robust participants in singing. This is not a quiet group.
I found a program booklet as the choir began stanza three, and noted why we weren’t singing (see photo below, click to enlarge).

By the time it was my turn to sing, I was too emotional. I didn’t regain composure until “America! America!”
It was a magnificent moment.
This year Armistice Day (others call it Veterans Day) happened to be on a Sunday.
Every year since Nov. 11, 2002, I’ve joined the MN Veterans for Peace (VFP) for their annual bell ringing: 11 bells at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11. A long time ritual commemorating the first such event, on November 11, 1918, when WWI officially ceased at 11 a.m.
I left Church a little early and made my way over to St. Paul and the USS Ward Memorial where, for a number of years, the VFP has had the bell-ringing ceremony. Some years I’ve been pensive about this event, this year I was enthusiastic. It was a dismal dreary day, and there was no place to park, so I found a space, put on my blinker lights, and walked over to the site to take a couple of photos. There seemed to be a pretty good crowd given the wet chilly day. When I was there, VFP President Larry Johnson was speaking.

Veterans for Peace at USS Ward First Shot Memorial, State Capitol Grounds St. Paul MN November 11, 2012


A block away, at the Vietnam Memorial, another group of people was commemorating Veterans Day.
We’ve just finished another grueling divisive election.
There is, once again, a call for doing things a bit differently.
This time it seems more serious: let’s find ways to talk civilly and tamp down the “win-lose” mentality.
Pastor John Bauer’s column in today’s Basilica Newsletter helps kick start the process. It is one of many. Bauer Civil Conversation001. Father Bauer and I don’t agree on everything, but that’s okay. Let’s talk civilly, and together help make America a little more Beautiful.

At the Fr. Hennepin Statue on Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, November 11, 2012

#649 Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #66. Your Thoughts about What November 6 means; and a memory of a long-ago and very significant political event in Minnesota.

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Here is data about the November 6 elections, MN local and state and National.
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At a Minnesota polling place November 6, 2012


If you wish, send me your brief comment about the meaning of yesterdays vote and I’ll post it here. Keep it very brief, perhaps a paragraph. Send to dick_bernardATmeDOTcom. Unless you specifically say otherwise, I’ll assume that I have permission to use your comment. I will include your full name and your state.
Working on another project on election day, yesterday, I had reason to look at a historic Minnesota document which likely very few have ever seen, from March 5, 1968 (See photo, click to enlarge). My thanks and credit to long-retired businessman Lynn Elling of Minneapolis for the major part he played in this long forgotten Declaration of World Citizenship that came to be only 44 years ago.

Minneapolis MN Declaration of World Citizenship March 5, 1968


Note especially the signatories on the Declaration*. They are of all the major Minneapolis and Minnesota political luminaries of the time, Republican and Democrat, religious leaders, etc. (The out of place signature you’ll see in the lower right hand corner is that of Marshall Tito of then-Yugoslavia, who the Ellings visited in person in then-Yugoslavia and who signed the document for them.)
Within the signature block was this statement: “This is the first American community that we know of to take such action. We hope that many other cities and counties will follow this example whch is a valuable step in building a world community and world peace.”
The story of this document can be found here. Scroll to the very end of the faqs and read the comment from former Minnesota Republican Governor Elmer L. Andersen in his book, I Trust to be Believed.
Look here for the Minnesota version of this Declaration, issued three years later. Again, note the signatories. And watch the made-in-Minnesota movie from 1972 that is archived there..
Yes, both documents came to be controversial in their time. But for a time in our own recent Minnesota history, there was true bipartisan political will by our leaders to work for a better world, one in which all of us were citizens.
We tend to forget that the term “politician” applies to each and every one of us. It is not “them”. Yes, political leaders try to move agendas, but over and over again I read comments from even the highest of the high and mighty that they do pay lots of attention to the will of the people.
The people simply have to work cooperatively for a goal.
Lynn Elling, retired WWII and Korea Naval officer, is still very much alive and willing to talk about the history of these declarations. Let me know, and I’ll see if a talk can be arranged.
The day after: outside Caribou Coffee, Woodbury, November 7, 2012
* – The Signers of the Minneapolis and Hennepin County Declaration of World Citizenship March 5, 1968:
Chair, Henn. Co Board of Commissioners Robert Janes; Mayor of Minneapolis Arthur Naftalin; President Minneapolis City Council Daniel Cohen; Gov. Harold Levander; Oscar Knutson, Chief Justice Minnesota Supreme Court; Eli Kahn, President Minnesota Rabbinical Association; Congressman Don Fraser; Chairs of Minnesota Republican and DFL parties, George Thiss and Warren Spannaus; Aux. Bishop of Catholic Archdiocese James Shannon; Irene Janski, President of MN League of Women Voters; President MN United World Federalists, Sidney Feinberg, Minnesota State Bar Assoc; Harold Greenwood Jr, United Nations Association of Minnesota.

Lawn Sign Woodbury MN November 7, 2012


For previous Election 2012 entries, simply type the words Election 2012 in Search Box and click enter. See especially post for November 6.
My personal comment: I was an election judge in my community in 2010; and a voter in 2012. In 2010 I noticed the relatively small turnout and the palpable anger coming in the door of the polling place; yesterday, I noticed a very heavy turnout and a very serious demeanor of the voters when we voted at about 10:30 a.m.
Now, your turn. NOTE: there will also be responses included at the end of this post. Don’t miss them.
Will Shapira, Minnesota: You read it here first months ago: Romney himself was the guarantor of Obama’s re-election. In 2008, we voted for Obama and got Bush III. Now, with no re-election hanging over his head, Obama can rule with impunity and you can expect drones hanging over many heads, at home and abroad, and an entire new litany of oligarchical, plutocratic war crimes as well, executed in the name of hegemonic capitalism.
Those of you who campaigned for him, donated to him and voted for him are now responsible for him for the next four years. When you stop celebrating, you can begin calling him to account.
Sunday, Nov. 11, Veterans Day/Armistice Day would be the perfect time to begin by speaking out for PFC Bradley Manning who has embarrassed the Obama regime with his and Julian Assange’s historic, heroic Wikileaks revelations.
Since AG Holder serves at the pleasure of the President, do not expect anything from him, DOJ and war criminal Secretary Leon Panetta when it comes to advocating for fair treatment of Bradley Manning humanely when he soon will have has his day in what could well be an Obama-curated kangaroo court.
May I remind you to read the Nov. 11 Star Tribune’s special ad section for Veterans Day and when you see my ad on behalf of PFC Manning and perhaps others, do not hesitate to write letters to the editor in support of Bradley Manning opinion@startribune.com and demand fair treatment for him in prison now and soon in court.
And when my friends and colleagues in Twin Cities Chapter of 27 of Veterans for Peace orchestrate the ringing of the bells of peace next Sunday, also remember this from John Donne’s Meditation XVII:”…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Jeff Pricco, Minnesota:
Congratulations to Minnesotans on once again showing common sense in voting No and No twice!
Also on proving that 2010’s Republican state legislature “victory” was as I said then, a mile wide and an inch deep.
I enjoyed Lori Sturdevant’s comment that she looked forward to covering an undivided state govt for the next 2 years, and having to report on the usual squabbles of the DFL… the herding of cats!
Nationally I am not surprised , it went pretty much as I expected for Obama, although I was surprised in wins in VA and FL.
I expect to see (and hope they are not brain dead) the Dems pursue immigration reform and other legislative and regulatory reforms that speak to the Hispanic and general immigrant community, and as I said before I expect to see the GOP face a soul search on this issue… do they continue with the Tea Party and the Knuckledraggers and Limbaugh/Savage? Or do they also see the future in gaining a larger share of the Hispanic Vote? I believe the GOP has a good case to make , as many Hispanic voters often are sympathetic to the social stands of the GOP. It should be very interesting.
SAK, London England:
Congratulations of course.
And let us take a moment to remember an aspect of the presidency & times of LBJ – race was then a seriously divisive issue, hence his declaration:
“There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans–not as Democrats or Republicans-we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.”
Let us hope that Obama in his second term will be as effective as LBJ undeniably was because what we have now is not a liberal problem; it is not a conservative problem; it is not a rich problem or a poor problem. It is a global problem.
Cheers,
Dick Bernard Nov. 9, 2012: I’ve been watching and reading quite a lot about the meaning of what happened on Tuesday night. A good summary is provided by my favorite blogger here. His ‘cut and paste’ from other commentators left and right reminds me of Nate Silver, who accurately predicts election, largely, it seems, by aggregating all of the polls to get a larger and thus far more accurate sample.
At some point, Silver will blow it, like Karl Rove did on Tuesday, but so far Silver manages to catch a wave of reality, where others dwell in wishful thinking.
When I put together the above piece the day after the election, I focused on two things:
1) as powerfully demonstrated by those 1968 and 1971 declarations – in times when we were intensely divided as a people over Vietnam – powerful people of very different points of view came together to suggest a different direction; a different path.
(I know a fair amount of the back-story of how those Declarations came to be. The key leaders were Republicans who were not at the time elected leaders, and thus were not signers, but were very much part of building the narrative that led to the Declarations.)
I think I see coming together in common cause happening again, most dramatically with former Republican Governor Arne Carlson and present Democrat Governor Mark Dayton appearing together in a brilliantly produced and timed ad urging that the Voter ID amendment be sent back to the legislature for a redo. The Governors didn’t defeat the amendment unilaterally, but their ad sure helped at a crucial moment.
(Though I’m liberal, I’ve long admired Arne Carlson. He is no stranger to courage. We first saw him maybe six years ago in the yard of Rebecca and Shawn Otto, standing with former Vice-President Walter Mondale, endorsing DFLer Otto for State Auditor – an office she still holds. He knew something about her, and he gave public witness. It was a ‘goosebump’ moment to see he and Walter Mondale standing together on that suburban lawn.)
The movers and shakers who worked together back in 1968 and 1971 are mostly dead now, but there is a new generation working quietly and effectively for a new course in how we are as a people. These quiet leaders – Democrat and Republican – are not publicly seen or heard very often, but they’re talking with each other about how to change our polarized and destructive course.
2) The other observation I made above, on November 7, was this: “I was an election judge in my community in 2010; and a voter in 2012. In 2010 I noticed the relatively small turnout and the palpable anger coming in the door of the polling place; yesterday, I noticed a very heavy turnout and a very serious demeanor of the voters when we voted at about 10:30 a.m.”
When we election judges huddled after the tallies were made in the precinct we knew – all of us, Republican and Democrat and Independent – what that small turnout and angry feeling meant.
The Republicans won that precinct easily, in every election of any consequence.
Too many Democrats had stayed home.
I have frequently observed, since that Tea Party near-sweep in 2010 (which will still be very much with us in the 2012 House of Representatives and many state Governorships and legislatures and even the Senate), that the angry conservative switch happened not because the Tea Party et al had such good ideas, but more so that the more liberal left first helped elect President Obama, thought voting him in was all they needed to do, thus making him responsible for outcomes that were impossible for him to achieve, and refusing to do much other than make demands and complain about how he wasn’t even liberal. Many were so terminally angry they did not vote at all in 2010.
Voting three days ago on Tuesday (if you did), was not a destination, it was a beginning of your – and our –day-to-day work for a better future for us all.
We are a changing country, and I’m still getting that stuff from the Angry Old White Men contingent that suggests they just don’t/won’t get it. But their influence is dwindling, and that terrifies them, and we can help find a better way.
There is a better future, but only if we are ALL engaged in building it.
Let’s not only get to work, but stay at work.

#648 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #65. Where we citizens fit in this political mess.

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This is written to you, and to everyone, including myself, who considers themselves an eligible voter in the United States of America.
Thank you for opening this post.
Perhaps most of us who can have already voted, or will vote today. Perhaps most who vote will have taken at least a little bit of time to think about why they are voting for the candidates they support, and the long term implications of their vote.
Wednesday November 7 it will all be over, and we’ll know what we decided for the next two years. Two years from now will be another election….
Our democracy is, however, at grave risk, far worse than most of us would like to imagine. This takes many forms.
Here’s an at-home example.
Yesterday, in preparing #64, I had occasion to refer back to a letter I had written to family, colleagues and friends on October 24, 2000 about the upcoming presidential election then. The entire text of the letter, which I either hand-delivered or sent U.S. mail, is here: Election 2000001
Near the end of that letter I said this: “A while ago, a piece of information came across public radio that in 1996 $150 million was contributed for political campaigns; this went up to $300 million in 1998; and is expected to top $750 million this year. Most of this came from organized “special interests”, and most of these are the rich or those who have access to a great deal of money for political influence.”
Last night, on CBS evening news, it was estimated that $2 billion has been spent on the 2012 campaign for President. I have heard an estimate of $6 billion being spent for all races in all places in 2012. It is a financial bonanza for businesses like TV stations, etc.
Candidates cannot unilaterally disarm. They must raise and spend money.
We all know how this looks. It differs from town to town. But in many ways it’s the same everywhere.
In my own state legislative district, population approximately 70,000 or so, an incumbent candidate for state Senate did not send out a single piece of political advertising (the kind of information that we receive in our mailbox) through his own committee .
OK, you say?
For that same candidate, from the State Republican Party, came five pieces of literature either promoting his candidacy, or slamming his opponent. Another 17 mailers, all similar in content to those mailed by the Republicans, came from six assorted independent expenditure outfits, all with positive sounding names, all very difficult to trace as to source of funding.
There was also a very expensive billboard paid for by independent expenditures, and some television advertising, all paid for by these independent expenditures.
If you’re counting, that’s 22 “independent” pieces mailed to thousands of mail boxes in my town.
It was obvious that the independent expenditures were in some way coordinated.
The Democrat opponent sent out her own mailing through her own committees funds. There were two outside mailers from the state Democratic party, promoting her, and slamming the opponent.
Is this how democracy is supposed to look? And if it looks like this today, what will it look like in two years, or four?
Will there be an end to elections period? Why not just take opinion polls in the 121 crucial swing counties (or is it 106 or some other number) of the 3077 counties in the United States, and winner take all. Don’t bother even having elections.
That leads to the entire question of voter suppression, happening in many ways in many places this year, including our own MN constitutional amendment proposal.
The democracy we take for granted is in peril, and no one but ourselves can fix it.
We individuals ARE the politicians we like to blame for the mess that we are in. Here’s something to help generate some thought:
Last week a friend sent along a recent sixteen minute video from a TEDx talk given in Florida by professor Peter T. Coleman of Columbia University. The video doesn’t mention one time the name of any political party or candidate. It summarizes the problem, and doesn’t give the solution.
The solution is up to us.
Take the time to watch it, think about it, and take action yourself, where you are, to halt our slide down the slippery slope to totalitarianism.
For all other related posts, enter/click on Election 2012 in the search box above. The entire list with topic heading will come up.

#647 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #64. Why I worry about a "President Mitt Romney"

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I’ve tried to be clear in my support for President Obama for reelection. Here and here are two independent and supportive views about President Obama.
October 15, 2012, my post about Mitt Romney included the following: “In the early months of this 2012 campaign season, I was really very neutral about Willard “Mitt” Romney…he seemed like a decent sort of moderate guy…To me, he seemed pretty reasonable compared with the others…As time has gone on, it has become impossible to divine where Mitt Romney stands on anything.”
He has been essentially totally opaque on what he really plans to do as President (he “has a plan”, he says); and has stone-walled reasonable requests for financial disclosure that all other candidates have granted. He has many things to hide, and he is brazenly announcing that he is hiding them. We’ll learn too late what they are.
Romney has been immensely successful in making money for himself, so plausibly his entire governing mindset will be that of an ultra wealthy businessman.
There is plenty of information around that should make the 98% (income under $250,000 a year) very concerned about Mitt Romney as President.
One of the best, very recent, came from President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on November 3. It is short, and you can read it here.
There are many in the 98% (under $250,000 a year) who think they are the exception to the rule, and they merit the wealth they will surely attain in a Romney-America.
It just won’t happen.
Romney-land is for the very few elect.
There is another reason to be deeply concerned about a Romney Presidency.
As President Obama’s experience has demonstrated, while the President has some independent power, the real driving force in American policy is that single Congressperson you’ll elect tomorrow, and the two Senators you also elect from your state. They can work together with the President and with each other and keep the ship of state sailing relatively smoothly.
Or they can obstruct everything – working for the Presidents failure as they did the last four years.
Perhaps, tomorrow, Romney will be elected, and, let’s say, that the Republicans hold their majority in the House, and become a majority in the Senate.
Add Republican Governors and state legislatures controlled by Republicans, and the problem compounds.
Ah, Republican control will make for good times again, you say?
Not so fast.
Two sides can play by the same rules. There is no reason for the defeated Democrats to cooperate with the victorious Republicans. I am quite certain that this is a main reason why the Democrats, when they could have done so, did not change the cloture (filibuster) rule of 60 votes to end debate in the U.S. Senate. They were wisely thinking ahead to the possibility that they might be in the minority in 2013.
Even if Romney turns out to be moderate (I’ve seen no evidence that he will be other than a wealthy businessman who additionally learned the rules/roles as a bishop in a male-dominated authoritarian church), and even if he has comfortable majorities in House and Senate, Romney will be on a very, very short leash.
The win will have been achieved by Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and the others for whom Power has always been the only objective.
Of course, the win will only be temporary – nothing like this is ever permanent – and we’ll be miserable as it proceeds, but we’ll be stuck with what we chose, Tuesday, November 6.
Be wary. Choose wisely.
(For other related posts, enter/click Election 2012 in search box, and the list/topics will come up. There will be a followup post on ourselves and political reform election day.)
END NOTE: If you’re partisan, you can challenge my claim to be “moderate, pragmatic Democrat”. Fair enough. If you are interested in my personal mindset, pretty long term, here’s the letter I wrote October 24, 2000, to family and colleagues and friends about the soon-to-happen 2000 election. It speaks for itself. Election 2000001

#646 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #63. Your future is completely in your hands, now.

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The American people – of which you are one – decide their future on Tuesday, November 6.
The choice has never been more stark, at all levels, in all states.
If you are an ordinary person, as I am, and 98% or more of the American people are ordinary like me, you are well advised to vote your personal interest and vote straight ticket Democrat on Tuesday, November 6.
In my entire life, I have never been as partisan as I am right now.
I believe in a multi-party democracy; in the value of differences of opinion. I am as I’ve said publicly since I began this blog in 2009: a “moderate pragmatic Democrat….”
But today’s Republican party – indeed since at least 1995 – has become ever more radical, extreme, “take no prisoners”, win-at-any-cost. The objective is permanent control of government at all levels by a tiny fringe of amoral partisans. Their fantasy is no more permanently attainable than was Hitler’s Thousand-year Reich.
If you are looking for old-line moderate Republicans, you will be hard-pressed to find them in todays Republican party. They’ve been purged, or resigned, or relegated to minority status.
The Democrats are the party of moderation now, the reasonable party.
You’ll vote (or not vote at all). Maybe you’ve voted already.
Be careful. Your vote has consequences.
*
Tomorrow: What led to my decision to recommend a one-party vote this year?
Tuesday: We’re all responsible for this mess. What now?
(If you wonder what that #63 in the subject line means, simply put Election 2012 in the search box, click, and you’ll find a list of all the posts I’ve done on Election 2012, beginning 6 months ago. #1, March 18, 2012, is here.)
Check back Monday and Tuesday for #64 and #65.
Twice before, in 2011, I did extended series on political issues: 18 posts from Feb 17-March 20, 2011 on the Wisconsin Government shutdown; many posts from June 29 – August 8, 2011 on the Government shutdown crises both in Minnesota and the United States Government.
COMMENTS (note possible additional comments at the end of the blogpost itself):
From Bob in Ohio, Nov 4: What worries me most in this election is the level of general ignorance that pervades the electorate.
And I have little confidence in the voting system as we have learned all too well here in Ohio. The pressure on elected officials in the controlling party of the state to behave unethically to influence the elections is disgraceful.
I will be absolutely amazed if this election does not turn on some quirk in the system that most of us will not believe.
From Will, Minnesota, Nov. 4: The Republicans probably have the voting machines fixed in key states, Karl Rove is smarter than any Dems, any organization such as ACLU, CCR and we will enter the Second Dark Ages, for how long, who knows?