#632 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #53. Political Signs

/0 Comments/in , /by

Earlier this week I was paying a tiny bit of citizen dues to the Democratic candidates I support, and walking along a street in Maplewood came across a hand-lettered piece of poster board with two words on it: Vote NO!
That was all it said.
The owner of the house, an older man of my vintage, was in the yard raking leaves, and I asked him if it was his sign, and he said yes.
“I like your sign. Does it refer to both proposed amendments?”
“Yes”, he said.
He wasn’t on my literature distribution list, which was a clue, but I told him what I was doing, and offered him campaign literature for my candidates, including JoAnn Ward and Susan Kent.
He declined, politely: “I’m Republican”.
We continued a nice chat about other things, like when we used to be able to burn leaves this time of year, even in the cities, and how their smell added to the ambience.
And then I moved on.
A few houses earlier I’d gone to the door and noticed another familiar sign in the front window within easy view of anyone approaching the door:
(click to enlarge)

Sign in a home window, October 2012


These owners weren’t home, but obviously had feelings about Senator Wellstone. It was 10 years ago, October 25, 2002, when the Wellstone plane went down near Eveleth, all killed.
I walked in Wellstone parades and supported him strongly.
Some would call him a crazy liberal, but he was vexing to the anti-Iraq war movement till he finally voted against the war in early October, 2002, and in one of the last parades I walked with him, it was VFW members who were front and center, riding with him on his bus. He was a class act, a people’s politician.
I still have the Paul Wellstone T-shirt with my favorite saying on the back. It was part of my uniform in the Woodbury Days Parade this summer. It says it all, really:

Paul Wellstone t-shirt, about voting, Woodbury, summer 2012


Here’s my own tribute to the Wellstones.
There are other signs, too.
Sometime around October 1 an immense billboard appeared facing eastbound traffic on I-94 between Century and I-494. It supports the candidacy of a local candidate for State Senate.
It has to be a very expensive piece of advertising, located as it is on a prime spot on one of the most heavily traveled roads in the state of Minnesota.
All such political signs require disclaimers, but this one’s disclaimer can’t be seen from the freeway, so some days ago I found my way over to it. Indeed there was a disclaimer for a group with a Minnesota PO Box address. (I decline to name the group: it is easy to find out by doing what I did…driving over to the Billboard and looking.)
I looked the group up. It has no website I’m aware of, but it was possible through FEC (Federal Election Commission) required disclosures, and assorted analyses and commentaries about it, to learn that it is likely a group of a very few members (55 on the report), almost all men, probably men of considerable means, an informal club whose membership is by invitation only. Other than political expense, their group has almost no expenditures. They seem to be equal shareholders and best I can tell from most recent FEC filing, perhaps only one actually lives in the Senate candidates legislative district of over 70,000 residents.
I also know that this group is also funding some of the mailers coming into our mailbox, as well as some TV spots on local cable television; and it is similarly involved in other races.
All of this is legal, but nonetheless covert and devious.
But it’s how the game is played these days.
November 6 comes soon.
Most of us over 18 years of age have the opportunity to go to the polls Nov. 6; many of us won’t bother.
That’s a shame.
In most respects that gentleman raking leaves on a Maplewood lawn and I will probably cancel each other out when we vote. But I don’t know that for sure. I think the local Republican candidate lives in his neighborhood.
He and I had never met, and probably will never meet again, but we had something in common: people who care about public policy in our state and nation.
Please do as the Wellstone t-shirt advises on Nov. 6: Vote, and vote well-informed.
Because this is my space on the internet, here are my local candidate choices: more here

October 16, 2012

#631 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #52. "Romneyesque"

/1 Comment/in , /by

Less than 24 hours from now Debate #2 will be concluded.
Earlier today a good friend sent her contribution to the political vocabulary:
“Sharing with you that I just coined a new word: “Romneyesque,” adjective meaning a desperate turn (flight) toward the center.”
Madeline Simon
Thanks, Madeline, who is, like me, someone who watches what passes for political conversation in this country of ours.
In the early months of this 2012 campaign season, I was really very neutral about Willard “Mitt” Romney.
He was mostly an also-ran in the Republican Primaries, but he seemed like a decent sort of moderate guy, particularly compared with the succession of Republican competitors who won one state, then lost, until Romney was the last potentially viable candidate left standing, (much to the chagrin of leaders of the evangelical religious right who couldn’t come to grips with his religious beliefs).
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.
There may be some principle or other that he stands on. The sole one I can see is “getting elected”. To vote for him is to take a big gamble.
He has come to be characterized as the most dishonest candidate in most any race, and this characterization comes from people who are media and from people who are not liberal.
He seems willing to say anything for public consumption, depending on his audience at the time, and this will likely be very true Tuesday night. It is likely he will reinvent himself again in these final few weeks before the election on November 6 to pick up a vote here, or there, to get the margin he needs to win.
If he wins, even his core supporters won’t know what they’re getting. They’ll get what they deserve. The rest of us will be stuck, in the worst case with Tea Party domination continuing.
No doubt Romney has skills: rhetorical; and making money for himself and close colleagues come immediately to mind. He is a wealthy financial speculator, more so than businessman.
These are not skills amenable to leading a large and diverse country.
Here’s how David Stockman describes him in October 15 Daily Beast on-line publication of Newsweek. “Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.”
Romney does not impress in his performance on the foreign stage, and in this global world, global relationships are very important, not from a position of dominance, but from a position of being a colleague nation among 192.
Exceptionalists among us tend to dismiss our global neighbors as lesser beings – dummies to be dominated. We adopt this attitude at great peril.
Romney is Romneyesque.
Let the buyer beware.
Directly related posts: here, here, and here.
There will be others, as yet unwritten, between now and election day.
Check back. Put Election 2012 in the search box.

#630 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #51. "Taxes" and other words.

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

The best blogger on politics I know is a retired guy in Los Angeles. Alan, aka Just Above Sunset, offers very long commentaries six days a week, summarizing what other well informed people are saying about political issues of the day. His posts typically arrive in my e-box about 2 a.m. I always scan their contents, but don’t always read them in detail.
Today’s Just Above Sunset, “Just Words Alone”, fits like a glove the topic I have been forming in my mind for a long time, ” “Taxes” and other words”. If you dislike long pieces of writing, at least read his first five paragraphs, then perhaps half way down read the three paragraphs which start with “Maybe words alone don’t create reality after all….”
We have been captured by wordsmiths who have created a “reality” that isn’t at all “real”, and in a few weeks (if we haven’t already voted) we will make extremely important decisions based on what we have been told to believe. Fantasy replacing reality is a very dangerous way to make decisions.
For years I have known that people like Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, Newt Gingrich and others had decided to create certain words and phrases as representative of evil, and to then attach those words to despicable people like myself, who they have labeled as “liberal”, “Democrat”, “union”…. Such lists are easily available on the internet and have a long history.
So when a nice lady in my town, Kelly DeBrine, said she wanted an “open, honest chat on taxes” in the July 18, 2012, Woodbury Bulletin, and the editor of the Bulletin supported this chat, I decided to go to her meeting on July 31.
The room was packed, and Ms DeBrine and colleagues had a very orderly conversation involving what appeared to be about 50 of we citizens, divided into table groups of six or so, almost no one I’d ever met before.
We never really talked about Taxes on July 31, a frustration to many attendees. Rather we talked about our Priorities – what was it that we wanted from our community (which, by extension, would require expenditure of tax dollars.) (see postnote)
We met, mostly civilly, and departed.
There hasn’t been another such conversation.
But in preparing for that meeting, I decided to make a list of what I would call “synonyms” for “taxes”, since I have observed that Republicans hate the word “taxes”, and try to make only the Democrats responsible for such an outrageous term.
I created an interesting and doubtless only partial list of these synonyms for payment of services we expect from our government which somehow are or must be paid at least in part by government:
Penalty
License
Fine
Fee
Dues
Assessment
Surcharge
Premium
Tuition
Interest (on borrowed money; bonding)
“Borrowing” from other entities, as from school districts, as an alternative to state taxes
Accounting Shifts (from state to local; from one tax year to another, etc.)
Gambling revenue
Naming Rights for buildings
Mandating things but not funding them, while expecting results
Tax cuts and rebates
PROFITS….
Yes PROFITS.
I emphasize PROFIT as a form of tax, largely thanks to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who upheld the Affordable Care Act this summer, saying that the proposed Penalties to people who refused to buy Health Insurance premiums were in fact legal Taxes. It was Roberts who decided to use the word “taxes”, which was immediately attached to Democrats.
But, the beneficiaries of this legal TAX are not only the persons who buy the insurance, but the insurance companies who hold the policies.
Thanks to a friend who’s a retired vice-president of a major state-wide health insurance provider, PROFIT is a big part of these Penalties. “Medicare operates on 1-2% administrative costs. Blue Cross plans operate on 10% and other insurance companies are upwards of that, sometimes approaching 30% and 40%. The Affordable Care Act reins in some of those outrageous insurance company profits.”
We won’t rein in WORDS as PROPAGANDA any time soon, and we have weeks to go till the bombardment of television advertising ceases, but we do have control of our own ability to discern fact from fiction.
We are well advised to do so.
For other related articles, put Election 2012 in the search box.
POSTNOTE October 15, 2012: Today on my daily walk I saw a new sign that reminded me of a real-world example of the issue of taxation and service. Here is a photo of the sign:
(click to enlarge)

Sign at Carver Park, Woodbury MN Octoer 15, 2012


I’ve walked the same route for all 12 of my years in Woodbury so I have awareness of all that happens there; all the changes.
At one point a couple of years ago a woman had approached me, asking that I petition the city to not construct a mountain bike path in the park area. She was sincere and serious in her concern. I saw no problem with the path, though I don’t bike, so I didn’t act on her request.
At the Tax meeting, I brought up this issue, as described above, and a younger man at the table said he was a mountain biker, and he initially had liked the idea of the bike trail, but he was more of a individual responsibility type and didn’t like the idea of taxes going for such a trail.
But he seemed conflicted on the issue.
I set it aside until I saw the above sign today. Here is a closeup of an important part of the sign:

At Carver Park, October 15, 2012


I’m guessing the local anti-tax mountain biker uses the trail in question, even though it is supported by tax dollars.
I wonder what he thinks.
Bottom line: even tax haters think taxes is okay so long as it isn’t called by that name, and it directly and personally benefits them.

#629 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #50. The Senate District 53 Candidate Forum in Woodbury October 9.

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Last evening we attended the candidate forum for Senate District 53 at City Council Chambers in Woodbury. The event was expertly moderated by the League of Women Voters, and was televised by South Washington County Telecommunications Commission, and will likely be rebroadcast there between now and general election November 6. Check with SWCTC for details.
I don’t go to such events to become well-grounded in the candidates understanding and position on the issues. Only so much can be done with six candidates in one hour and many substantive questions, each limited to one minute answers.
Nonetheless I am glad we went.
Arriving home, there was an e-mail from a friend lamenting that she had forgotten about the Forum until it was too late. I responded “I thought everyone did pretty well (on both sides).”
In this case, “everyone” were candidates for Senate in SD 53 Susan Kent (DFL) and Ted Lillie (IR); candidates for HD 53A Pam Cunningham (IR) and JoAnn Ward (DFL); and candidates for HD 53B Andrea Kieffer (IR) and Ann Marie Metzger (DFL).
Five of the six candidates are female; two candidates are first term incumbents running for reelection, albeit in newly configured districts.
I didn’t expect any big surprises in this Forum, and there were none. I follow politics more closely than most and thus I’m more aware than most of the often huge gap between rhetoric and reality, especially when incumbents are defending their record without risking rebuttal by an equally well-informed colleague.
The battle-scarred veterans of the 2011-12 biennium at the legislature could, of course, defend their honor, and criticize the Governor and Democrats who were not there to give the other very substantial side of the story. It is to be expected. There is no priority for giving the two sides to the story, which there is, in abundance, in these “win-lose’ political hothouse days.
Mostly, I watched for sound bites and talking points and emphasis.
It should surprise no one that the DFL candidates (my partisan preference ‘side’) emphasized the needs of the middle class and support for labor; while the Republican candidates are tied to Business and Wealthy interests.
The Republican incumbents, Lillie and Kieffer, seemed to try to delicately dance away from their very real ownership of the two proposed Constitutional Amendments, even though they were architects of these proposals. Kieffer, in fact, was one of those who signed one of those ‘pledges’ to go for Voter ID. The DFL candidates were clear that they were in opposition. I don’t recall the Republican candidates saying how they, themselves, would vote.
(To me, these proposed Constitutional Amendments are the two defining issues of the difference between IR and DFL in this election. They are evidence of a breakdown in bipartisan problem solving.)
I was surprised by only one talking point that Rep. Kieffer actually decided to use in the gathering. It is the old Tea Party mantra: “we don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem”. It is an old and very tired saw. Tuesday night was only the second time I have actually heard it in person. The first time was in the Woodbury Post Office line two years ago. I wrote about it then, here.
Oh, if it were all so simple as to reduce government of our city, state and nation to simple words and catchy phrases….
I think about what passes for political discourse these days.
Personally, I hope we’re getting to the end of the days of politics of slogans without substance.
Before driving to City Hall for the Forum last night, I picked up our mail, which included two attack ads, one against JoAnn Ward and the other against Susan Kent. One was from the Republican Party and the other from one of those ubiquitous “independent expenditure” groups. We are still a month from election, and I have kept all of the campaign mail that has come to our mailbox. All but 2 of the 17 ‘lit pieces’ have been from the Republican side; all but 2 of those have been attack pieces against the Democrat. All relate to this single local legislative district.
While completing this post, I was interrupted by a independent expenditure phone message in favor of one of the Republican candidates.
There is apparently a lot of money floating around for such campaigning this year.
There must be reason for Republicans to worry.
Yes, I’m DFL, and proud of our three candidates in SD 53. You can read about them here.
Directly related: here.

#628 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #49. Four Weeks to Election 2012

/1 Comment/in , /by

Four weeks from today, Tuesday, November 6, we Americans will vote as we always do: by secret ballot. Many of us have already voted. Some will vote informed, some uninformed. Huge numbers will not bother to vote at all.
Nov. 6, I will proudly vote to reelect President Obama, as well as for the Democrats in the race.
It’s an impossible task, but I’ll try to explain why I take this position in relatively few words.
This is an election pitting an increasingly extreme right wing faction of the Republican party against a far more moderate and reasonable Democratic party which, in most ways that matter, resembles how I saw old-line moderate Republicans.
For every one of us the 2012 election is one with big long-term consequences.
A few thoughts:
Point 1: I remember how it was four years ago this fall, 2008, as well as the seven preceding years beginning 2001. We in the U.S. were near panic and Depression four years ago this month, harvesting the consequences of many things. War was paid for off budget and thus on a credit card; we carelessly reduced taxes; dangerous deregulation had the predictable consequences; we enjoyed false prosperity on our own credit cards, etc.
It was the GOP leadership that orchestrated, enabled and facilitated this near disaster, for which we are now paying.
Like most any party, it was fun for us while it lasted, but the bill came due four years ago.
It is cynical for the Republicans to now try to forget what happened 2001-2008, their very dominant role in what happened, and the national crisis President Obama and the Democrats faced coming into office in 2009.
It is even more cynical for the Republicans to have made their entire program an attempt to make it impossible for Obama to succeed (they failed at this attempt; at the same time, the recovery is slower than it might have been with cooperation, rather than conflict.)
Point 2. It seems almost consensus that, on October 3, Mitt Romney “won” the first debate, and Obama “lost” (at least in terms that are understood in debate, where somebody wins and somebody loses). [UPDATE Oct 10: If interested, here is the transcript of the actual debate; and a long but interesting analysis of the liberal response to the debate.]
It’s not as simple as it seems: after the event, people who’ve known Obama very well, for many years, said that Obama’s personal style is instinctively to work for resolution of problems (I’d call that “win-win”), rather than to defeat an adversary (“win-lose”). You can read more on this here.
Our country seems waged in a battle between the Win-Lose folks (those who value winning at all costs, and disdain and dismiss “losers”); and those whose frame is “Win-Win” (who see our complex society as one which requires compromise and negotiations to thrive). (I am an instinctive “Win-Win” person. It comes from an entire career trying to resolve things.)
In my opinion, that distinction between Win-Lose and Win-Win is perhaps the major issue in the upcoming election. “Win-Win” or “Win-Lose”. Do we work for resolution, or for dominance? This is the major issue at all electoral levels. Do we choose Civil War or Civil Peace as our local, state and national and international leadership style?
Obama will doubtless be coached to be more aggressive in the next debate. Personally, I hope he stays true to himself; though I understand political realities in this country which seem to admire what I would call sanctioned bullying behavior.
Point 3. Win-at-all-costs is the radical Republican narrative in this election. In my own state, Minnesota, the two proposed constitutional amendments are ample evidence. Both were ram-rodded through without having to bother with the nuisance of other opinions or ideas. They are both dangerous amendments, taking away rather than adding to the rights of citizens in our Democracy. They are exclusively radical Republican, and they are repeated in assorted and coordinated ways nationwide. (Here’s my opinion on them.)
Point 4. Moderate Republicans have essentially been dumped by the radicals who presently run the Republican party, national and state. My friend, former Republican Governor Elmer L. Andersen most likely would have been purged from todays Republican leadership were he still alive.
Moderate Republicans need to take their party back.
Vote and vote well-informed November 6.
For other blog postings on Election 2012, simply enter those two words in the search box.
A directly related post is here.
*
In case you wonder, about me, personally:
My philosophy is open and declared on the right hand side of this blog: “Dick Bernard is a moderate, pragmatic Democrat who speaks from his heart in matters of family, justice and peace.” I know many so-called “conservatives”, and I have come to believe that myself, and the progressives and liberals I know are, if anything, more truly “conservative” than those self-proclaimed conservatives on the right.
My general attitude towards public policy was formed from 1963-65, when my bright and beautiful and young wife was struck down by kidney disease at age 22, and we learned first hand many lessons. A good life was ahead of us when we married in June, 1963. Four months later, that life was irreversibly changed ending with Barbara’s death two years after our marriage. As a result, I take nothing for granted. Here’s the story.
My political hero and, indeed, mentor, was my best political friend, former MN Republican Governor Elmer L. Andersen. Here’s the tribute I wrote, published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune on November 27, 2004, shortly after his death: Elmer Andersen Tribute 001. Elmer was successful in all ways. I suspect he died Republican, though he was troubled by the direction his party was taking. He came from an age where adversaries respected and listened to each other, and came to negotiated agreements about things that mattered. This has been lost in this day of political rivals as enemies, rather than as colleagues and even friends.
(click on photos to enlarge)

Elmer L. Andersen Oct 12, 1995, by Dick Bernard


Elmer Andersen receiving the Willard Munger Environmental Award from the Minnesota Resources Foundation April 22, 1998


Democrat Willard Munger and Republican Elmer L. Andersen April 22, 1998

#627 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #48. A short seminar on Minnesota Public Schools and Public Policy

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Recently, there seems a sudden reverence for public schools in Minnesota.
After years of using the schools and the local communities as a piggy bank to avoid political decision making requiring use of the word “tax” in the state political conversation, the architects of damaging schools are suddenly proclaiming that they are about the business of supposedly saving those very same schools by proclaiming that they are heroically restoring cuts they have been diligently making all these years…and the political opposition is standing in their way.
What is one to believe?
School finance, and indeed public schools themselves, is an exceedingly complex topic, and it is very easy to make mischief with data which hardly anyone, including parents, understands. Such is how it is when the schools are charged with daily care of one of every seven Minnesota residents of kindergarten through high school age.
School opens this morning, and not many pay much attention whether there are 20 in a class or 40, etc. School policy is low hanging fruit for critics. There are endless opportunities to criticize….
But it’s not as easy as “reforming” schools as political rhetoric. Not only is every student different, bringing different baggage from home, but there is great diversity in community needs and makeup.
It is unfair to compare, for example, isolated Angle Inlet, not directly accessible by road in extreme northern Minnesota, with the large urban school in the most troubled neighborhood. One can theoretically create an ‘average’ out of two extremes, but it would be an unfair comparison.
A year ago, in November, 2011, a senior group in Burnsville asked me if I would be willing to talk about the business of schools and school finance.
Though I worked in public schools for a full career, I had already been retired for eleven years.
I agreed to do the workshop, and with the help of a wonderful non-partisan parent organization, Parents United for Public Schools, MN State Department of Education and the MN House of Representatives Fiscal Analysis Department, I prepared a presentation which was well received. Recently a man, over 90, who had been at the workshop, said that he learned more about school finance in that hour and a half than he’d ever learned before.
Here is the summary handout, with definition of the basic information presented a year ago: Minnesota Public Schools001 It is, of course, a year old and thus outdated, but my understanding would be that overall there have only been relatively slight changes over the past twelve months. Anyone is welcome to update the information and interpret as they wish.
My efforts still make sense, and the link may help you the reader better understand some of the basics about Minnesota Public Education.
Those 800,000 kids in Minnesota Public Schools today are OUR future. We best pay attention to their needs.

#626 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #47. The Proposed Amendments to the Minnesota Constitution

/0 Comments/in /by

UPDATE Oct. 17: see article from Oct. 17 St. Paul Pioneer Press here.
A month from now – 5 weeks – is the 2012 Election.
Our society has many layers of government.
In my town – and yours – on November 6 we are going to elect, among many other positions, our Representatives to the State Legislature.
The Republicans, in charge at the State Legislature the last two years, have a record, and it’s a record not easy to honestly defend.
In my opinion, the defining issue in the Minnesota state race this year are the two proposed Amendments to the Minnesota Constitution which will appear on everyone’s Minnesota ballot November 6.
Both amendments deserve a NO vote (people who go to vote and don’t mark their ballot on these questions count as a NO.)
Both questions, on marriage and on eligibility to vote, are essentially ideology issues with an intent for the winner to gain long term control. They are “us” vs “them” questions; “winner-loser”, rather than legitimate fixes to problems.
They are anti-liberty.
Ironically, their core support will come from those who claim to own “liberty” and “freedom”.
The amendments were ram-rodded through the 2012 State Legislature by the Republicans; by-passing negotiations with the Governor (who could not veto the proposals). I recall that the voter eligibility amendment was passed by a party line vote (with one Republican defector and zero Democrat support). The marriage amendment was moved forward by every Republican and a few Democrats. No compromise was offered. Both radical initiatives have twins in many states around the country. They are WAR issues – citizen against citizen. They have dangerous long-term implications.
I’ve thought about these two issues a great deal, and here’s where I come down, and why:
1. The so-called Marriage Amendment is an attempt to enact a BELIEF into Law. It has nothing to do with “God”, however defined.. It is simply a human attempt to enshrine prejudice into permanent law. (Personally, we have nine grandkids. And we’re Catholic. But this is a human rights issue long term. Period. I will vote no.)
The Marriage Amendment is the Prohibition Amendment of 2012. As Prohibition was enactment of a strongly held belief, so is this initiative an attempt to enshrine belief. As Prohibition failed, so will this amendment, even if enacted, but it will do a lot of damage, first.
2. The Voter Suppression Amendment – that’s what it is – is very simply an attempt to disenfranchise certain people and permanently change electoral control in this divided country. This Amendment discriminates against everyone in a perverse way.
It is confusing, and I think that was intentional by its promoters. The prudent rule is: if one doesn’t fully understand all of the short and long term implications of this Amendment, the vote should be NO. This Amendment has lots of negative implications, except for the minority that is pushing it.
To date it seems that many people think “Voter ID” is common sense. But this is short term thinking, and only about themselves. For me, for example, I could say something like this: “I’ve lived in this house for twelve years, and I have a drivers license, and this ID thing is no problem….”
But this isn’t so simple.
This is the 25th election cycle during which I’ve been eligible to vote.
A while back I wrote down where I was in each of those cycles, (which began in November, 1962 – voting age then was 21. I was already out of college).
Long and short, in 6 of those 25 cycles, for assorted reasons, my eligibility to vote would have been subject to challenge under the proposed amendment. And I have always been just a normal ordinary citizen.
Think these Amendments won’t adversely affect you or someone in your family?
Think again.
Vote NO November 6.
General information on the 2012 election can be found here.
* – My preference on the west side of Woodbury MN, SD 53A: for Minnesota House of Representatives JoAnn Ward; for State Senate, Susan Kent. You can read more about them, and colleague candidate Ann Marie Metzger, at Senate District 53’s website.

#624 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #46 – 4000 days at War in Afghanistan

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

Someone has calculated that today, September 19, 2012, is the 4000th day of the beginning of the War in Afghanistan: the day the bombing began, October 7, 2001.
Except for isolated demonstrations, including one this afternoon from 5-6 p.m. at the Lake Street bridge in Minneapolis, there will be little attention paid to this anniversary.
One of the few newspaper articles I have kept for posterity is one from October 8, 2001: Afghanistan Oct 7 2001001
This is a short article, simply describing the results of a poll of Americans at the time about going to War. It is worth reading. If you don’t care to open it: succinctly, 94% of Americans approved of the bombing of Afghanistan for whatever reasons they might have had for the action.
For a politician to be against the war in 2001 would have been almost certain political suicide.
I was one of the 6% who, had I been asked, would have disapproved of the bombing in 2001.
My opinion wasn’t based on being anti-war, then, though it was that singular event that launched my subsequent activist life.
As a military veteran myself, in the Army at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, in a unit that was mobilized for possible action, I was not altruistic.
Very simply, on that dark day in 2001, I could see absolutely no long term good coming out of attacking a country, Afghanistan, whose only ‘sin’ was harboring an isolated bunch of terrorists who were soon to become enshrined in our political conversation as “al Qaeda” (which, to my knowledge, is simply an Arabic term, al-qa’ida: “the base”).
October 8, 2001, was a very lonely time to be against War, I can attest.
Only about one of twenty Americans agreed with me, and most thought there was going to be a long war, and were okay with the idea and (I suppose) thought that we’d “win” something or other.
Not long after, of course, our sights shifted to Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with 9-11-01.
Of course, our futile exercise in supposedly attempting to eliminate evil in the world is succeeding only in slowly destroying ourselves.
“The Base” has to be pleased.
I probably won’t change anybodies mind, but take a bit of time today to consider a few numbers related to that number 4000 (my apologies for any math errors):
2977 – the number of deaths on 9-11-01 (including citizens of over 90 countries, but excluding the 19 hijackers, none of whom were Afghan)
2686 – the number of days of War on President George W. Bush’s watch
1314 – the number of days of War on President Barack Obama’s watch
Nov. 9, 2009 – the approximate date where we’d been at war for 2977 days: one day of war per 9-11-01 casualty.
There is no prospect of ever “winning” the war against terrorism, or Afghanistan, yet we persist in our fantasy for all the assorted reasons we might have. There is no still sane politician who will argue that we must end war now, or ever.
The fault is not the politicians (unless we extend the definition of “politician” to include ourselves, each and every one of us.)
There is no truer example of the truth of Gandhi’s words “we must be the change we wish to see in the world”.
Start where you’re at, as an individual, today, now.
A good place to begin to focus is this Friday, September 21, the International Day of Peace. There are numerous links. Here is the one that is at the top of the google search list.
Personally, I’ll be over in New Richmond WI, witnessing 14 year old Eric Lusardi’s becoming an Eagle Scout (the public ceremony is at 4:00 p.m., New Richmond Community Commons). Part of the ceremony will be dedication of a Peace Site.
Eric exemplifies Gandhi, and I think he’s an exemplary example of youth for our future as a people and a planet.
For some personal inspiration for Peace, visit A Million Copies, here.

#622 – Dick Bernard: 9-11-12

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

9-11-2001 seems to have become a permanent fixture in the American psyche. I offer a reflection a little different from what appears to be typical this day.
On this anniversary of 9-11-2001 the front page of the Minneapolis paper had a photo of a beam of one of the collapsed NYC towers as it is exhibited in a park in rural city in southwest Minnesota.
I wondered how this would have played post-December 7, 1941. Who would have suggested dismantling my uncle Franks tomb, the USS Arizona, with parts taken here and there as monuments in various places?
I cannot imagine even a serious thought, then, of desecrating the relic that was the USS Arizona and shipping pieces here and there as relics of war.
To this day, to my knowledge, the Arizona rests where it was destroyed, undisturbed. I’ve been there.
I also wondered how this debris will be looked on by some successor to our civilization coming across this rusted beam in a remote town 150 or 1000 years from now.
It will be puzzling to the visitor to what remains of the United States.
Like everyone, I would guess, I remember exactly what I was doing at the time I heard of the Towers being hit on 9-11-01. I didn’t see it on TV until late in the afternoon of that Tuesday.
The event had a strong personal impact: when I established my first web presence in April 2002, I chose for my Peace and Justice page two photos I’d taken of the twin towers in June, 1972, right before they were completed. A year later I wrote a reflection that remains at that same place on the web.
I remember.
(click to enlarge)

The Twin Towers NYC late June 1972.


NYC skyline June 1972. Photos by Dick Bernard


I wonder what we have learned since 9-11-01.
Sadly, it seems we have learned very little.
On 9-11-01 we seem to have had two forks in the road to recovery from the attack of 19 terrorists.
We could have done the normal thing: after the shock wore off, normally a short period of time, we would have begun to regroup, to learn from what happened, to not react. We could have even found ways to reconcile and for certain not indict an entire religion and race for the vicious attack perpetrated by a few.
Of course, we didn’t do that.
Almost unanimously, our country took the other fork, by far the most popular route: a combination of negative emotions such as revenge, or exploiting an opportunity…. We ended up injuring ourselves almost fatally in many ways. We damaged ourselves far more than the terrorists damaged us on September 11, 2001. Afghanistan Oct 7 2001001
Fast forward to the current day.
The photo of the tower beam on display in Marshall jarred me a bit, but did not surprise because three years ago, at the Peace Garden near Dunseith ND, bordering Canada and the U.S. since 1934 as a Garden of Peace between our two nations, I saw one of those monuments of World Trade Center rubble on the grounds.
I wrote my feelings about it in 2009, and it is archived here.
At the same post, as an Update, much more recent, is a column written this summer by James Skakoon of St. Paul. After his own visit to the Peace Garden, with the same reaction as mine, he happened to find my column on-line, and his comments speaks for itself.
But the bottom line is that it appears likely that we will be solemnizing the tragedy of New York City in 2001 for the immediate future as a monument to War, not Peace. We are compounding our loss from the tragedy.
I hope that there is thought given to changing the emphasis from continued emphasis on war, to more emphasis on the need for peace.

#620 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #45. In 2012, it's NOT "the economy, stupid"

/0 Comments/in /by

Thursday night when we watched President Obama’s acceptance speech, a drop-in guest was a member of our family who is one of those 8% of Americans who are unemployed.
In fact, he would qualify as one of those who are regularly interviewed on the evening news, or in the political ads, about how terribly hard it is to find a job.
He wants to work, he’s been, and he’d be, a very productive and loyal worker.
It is, frankly, very, very depressing to be in his spot. He fell asleep during the Presidents address…I’m guessing that was a survival strategy; a way to escape his depression; or perhaps a response to yet another failed interview earlier in another long day.
Back in the first Bill Clinton campaign in 1992, it is said that the campaign energized when James Carville re-focused the staff by framing the issues, including the famous quote: it’s “the economy, stupid!”
In 2012, I have heard it said, often, left, right, center, that there is a magic number which will determine the outcome of the Presidential election. The number is 8% unemployment. The mantra goes: no President has been reelected if the unemployment rate is above 8%. Last time I heard the number, it’s 8.3%. “The economy, stupid”!
So, if you’re running against the incumbent President, you hammer, hammer, hammer on the fact that there are more than 8% unemployed, and that it’s the Presidents fault, pure and simple.
Good (and cruel) strategy.
But there is a crucial difference this year.
The 8% is a completely artificial construct. The number could easily be less than 8% – I’ve heard it estimated as low as 6% by now – if the Republican party had chosen a course of action to help the country recover from the awful times of 2001-2009 – a time of their making.
Of course, they didn’t, and haven’t, and won’t.
This would require acknowledging that they were somehow responsible for the mess President Obama inherited (the mess was on their watch), and, even worse (from their standpoint), helping the U.S. recover now would take away their only viable issue in this campaign.
Our chronically unemployed relative has become their hostage, pure and simple.
Success for the Republicans this year is failure of the country to break the 8% barrier.
Some months ago, I heard a popular commentator from the Left report that in his opinion President Obama would lose if the unemployment was above 8%, that magic number.
This was from the Left.
It was about that time that it occurred to me that if 8% were unemployed, that must mean that 92% of us who did need a job actually did have a livelihood. Of course, there are folks in the supposedly discouraged worker class who have stopped looking for work (but this includes people who don’t especially need a job).
By and large those who want a job are working and doing well, relatively well satisfied with their state in life. I see them every day.
The morning after I heard the 8% comment, I noticed two guys sitting in the corner at my coffee shop having an earnest conversation about a book which I think was titled “The Bible of Barbecue” or some such. They were interested in the perfect barbecue.
They, along with people like my wife and I, who are not struggling, represent America the Bountiful.
We can help those 8% who are – we can attest – really, really struggling.
Will we?