#337 – Dick Bernard: Part 7. Misinformation and sloppy citizenship: An invitation to commit national suicide

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An unplanned trip took me out of town most of the last three days. I had planned to write this post about how money ends up in collective bargaining agreements; specifically about supposedly “free” money for Pensions given for Public Workers (a false charge).
I don’t have to write that commentary. David Cay Johnson of Tax.com has “hit the home run” on the issue. You can read it here. I hope you do. Last night after returning home Pat Kessler of WCCO-TV in Minneapolis also did a pretty good job in a minute or two to summarize out this issue as well. But is anyone listening?
In our contemporary society, we seem to prefer opinions over facts. Facts can be troublesome, so if the “wrong” facts surface, the volume of background noise is simply turned up, or the hearing aid is turned off…. In the process we’re killing ourselves as a society. We don’t want to hear the bad news; and the bad news is NOT public unions and collective bargaining agreements or deficits. We are being taught to hate the very entities, unions, which made American prosperity possible. If the contemporary version of the Republican party succeeds in its quest (likely) we will rue the day. There will remain unions, but these unions will have no teeth – they’re called “company unions” – and they’ll be blamed for being weak and ineffective. As I say, “we will rue the day”.
On return home last night I chose to take down from my bookshelf “A Man’s Reach”, the autobiography of my deceased friend Elmer L. Andersen. Elmer was the wealthiest man I personally ever knew. He was life-long Republican, served in the Minnesota Legislature from 1949-58, was Minnesota Governor 1961-63, and afterwards was a philanthropist and outstanding public citizen for the rest of his life. Public buildings are named after him. We learned of each other in 1992, and were good friends until he died in 2004. I have written of Elmer Andersen several times in these pages.

“A Man’s Reach” is still available in libraries and I would not diminish it by attempting a long review. It can and should be read.
The book talks about how politics was back in the day of Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower (contemporaries of Elmer L. Andersen).
Then as now politics was a competitive business, but there was recognition by most in all parties that a winner take all philosophy was not in anyone’s short or long term best interest. Andersen had no problems with unions – he worked with rather than against organized workers, including in his own companies. They were more partners than enemies, and everyone prospered.
I specifically took down the book last evening to see if I could find one particular passage to quote. For now I’ve failed, but I know it is in there, since I read it there some years ago.
Andersen was talking about how lawmakers went about making important decisions back then, and in essence said this: lawmakers in both partisan and non-partisan settings would first determine what good public policy was – what was needed by the citizens of the state. Then, and only then, they would determine how to pay for that policy through taxes or other fees.
Today the philosophy seems completely opposite: decide what we’ll pay, and that and only that drives the policy.
Andersen’s position in government came coincident with the the greatest surge of prosperity ever in our state and nation.
I think there was a “chicken-egg” relationship between that prosperity and the governing philosophy of Republicans and Democrats like Elmer L. Andersen.
We desperately need a rebirth….

Elmer L. Andersen Oct. 12, 1995. Photo by Dick Bernard at Mr. Andersen's home


NOTE: What’s behind, and ahead. I began this series on February 17 with no idea that it would continue as it has. Quite by accident, it was preceded by another five-part series February 6-11 before I had any notion of troubles in Wisconsin. (Part 5 of that series remains incomplete. I’m still considering exactly what I want to say.) Part 7 of this series is doubtless not the last. This issue is far too important to forget about. Keep checking from time to time. Thank you.

#336 – Dick Bernard: Part 6. Our "fellow Americans", Corporate personhood and the Wealthy American

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Feb. 22, as the debate continued to rage about Wisconsin public employees and the right to bargain, I got an e-mail from a 41 year old man, a good friend who is one of those loyal employees who make corporations succeed. He was responding to my blog post of February 21.
I know this young man well: he is hard-working and loyal to the corporation he works for. In many ways he can legitimately claim he’s self-made, overcoming some personal obstacles to achieve moderate success. He despises unions largely because his Dad’s union – his Dad was a public school service employee – was headed by someone even I knew to be somewhat notorious and disreputable back in those days. I’ve gathered that my friend had some struggles in school, and didn’t get the help and encouragement he needed then. During the time I’ve known him he attacked and essentially conquered a serious learning disability, on his own, I think. He’s not high on public schools. All of these things seem to be his armor against what he seems to feel are lesser beings who need unions. His apparent attitude: real people, like he is, attack their problems and succeed on their own. (He knows my job for many years was representing people in these very unions.)
In his e-mail to me, Tuesday morning, he said this: “Just saw the news about John Deere and Cat[erpillar] moving the small equipment production to China by 2012. The unions will lose about 20,000 jobs in the Midwest (Iowa and Minnesota). No word from the unions and how they are partnering with business to keep the jobs in the States. This is an issue that’s getting some heat, finally…is the union involved with bus driver/busing issues? I know the cost of diesel fuel is forecast to be $4.25 to $5/10 during the 2011-2012 school year. Any cost containment proposal from the union leaders?”
I responded at considerable length to the questions, knowing that the response would fall into something of a ‘black hole’ of non-acknowledgment that I might know something as someone who’s ‘been there, done that’ and is 30 years his senior. In very brief part, I noted “sometimes I wonder what the companies think their responsibilities are (other than to the very rich people who are the major shareholders.)” They have fought hard, after all, to be considered persons just like my friend and I, and they’ve succeeded. Against me, they’re far bigger than Goliath, but “persons”, every one of them. Unions are pesky inconveniences.
Tuesday afternoon I went to the union rally at the Minnesota State Capitol. Compared with other assorted rallies I’ve been to, this one was huge and extraordinarily high energy. I wrote about my experience there, yesterday.
Wednesday morning I read, as I always do, my copy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the state’s major newspaper. I expected there would be something significant about the rally in the paper. There was almost nothing – a paragraph buried in another article. This had nothing to do with newspaper deadlines, or interest in conflict. The same paper was full of stuff about Wisconsin, and Libya and other uprisings. Minimizing the news about what was happening at the Capitol was a deliberate editorial choice.
I always read, first, the editorial and opinion pages of the “STrib”. This day was a long column by the papers editorial page editor D. J. Tice. It speaks for itself. It is about another 40-or-so year old, a member of Minnesota’s mobile elite: some apparently successful guy who can hold governments hostage by not-so-idle threats to move to more favorable places, as he decides*.
I thought of my comment to the other 41 year old I know (see above). I’m going to send Tice $5 as a contribution to his friends plane fare to help that guy get out of Minnesota if he wants to leave. After all, it’s suggested that I can’t count on this greedy person for support of a strong state. He’s self-made and maybe self-obsessed.
I believe the big-shots, like the Koch brothers, Scott Walker et al (linked is the YouTube of the now famous conversation between a Koch impersonator and Gov. Walker, Part I of 2), know that there are short and long-term consequences to their actions to bludgeon workers into submission. But lust for power and greed are powerful drivers.
It will be beleaguered and underpaid and under-appreciated workers who will have to stand up and be counted in the coming days.
I’m there in solidarity with them.
Previous posts on this topic on February 17, 18, 21, 22, 23.
I am sure there will be a Part 7 to this series. And maybe more.
* – Doug Tice’s commentary reminded me of another Star Tribune column I read over 17 years ago. It was headed “How will future reckon with Cousin Kenneth” and is Cousin Kenneth ’93 STrib001. I don’t know how Cousin Kenneth has fared, overall, these past 17 years. It would be interesting….

#335 – Dick Bernard: Part 5. "Solidarity forever"

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Tuesday afternoon I went over to the Minnesota State Capitol to join the demonstration in support of public workers.
I’ve been to lots of demonstrations and gatherings in that rotunda. Never have I felt as much pride as I did yesterday. There was energy in that space as I have rarely felt. I didn’t hear a single word of a single speech. I don’t know who talked or what they talked about…there were too many people and the sound system was not up to the challenge.
What I could hear was roar of those within hearing distance; and what I could see was the sea of people of all ages, all exemplifying firmness and civility and solidarity.

Close as I could get to the rotunda


On the stairs I struck up a conversation with an AFSCME member, and a member of the AFSCME union field staff who was along with her. I asked if I could take a photo for this blog. The staff member thought it most appropriate to take a photo of a member of the Union, and so Natalie, who works in Superior WI, did the honors.

Out the front door of the Capitol, and heading towards my car and home, a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers caught my eye, giving witness to her union and its work for the citizens of this country.

Back home Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was given some air time on the 6:00 news for part of his “fireside chat” with Wisconsin residents – we live ten miles from Wisconsin so what is happening there is local news. Of course, he said he loved Wisconsin public workers, but the taxpayers can’t afford them, and on and on with the standard talking points. It struck me that he never once looked at the camera, rather at whatever served as his teleprompter to his left. His effort to make “public workers” as an alien class, something different than real “taxpayers”, was very obvious. Wisconsin will judge his performance. The local news analyst suggested that Walker had lost the momentum he began with. That is how these things can work. Take nothing for granted.
It’s been years since I’ve been in harness, working with public sector union issues as best I could.
Were I to give advice, I’d urge the leaders to let the followers take the lead, and to take the message back to their local communities. There is scarce a family that does not have one or more public workers within its constellation. They are the real people, not the union spokespeople. There is an immense amount of deliberate misinformation out there, about the reality of public employees compensation, the supposed burden of taxes, etc.
The intense focus has been on making the public employee the villain, with no talk about other solutions. There needs to be some truth telling. If there are disequities – too much or too little – these need to be pointed out and acknowledged. Basically untold is the story of the huge inequity in wealth in this country, and that the wealthy are doing very, very well – thank you – in these difficult times. They are to be insulated from this sacrifice.
Maybe there were 2,000 in that rotunda area yesterday. If each of those concentrated on ten people who supported their cause; and those ten found ten, and so on, there would be serious momentum very fast. But it takes effort to keep up momentum. Power has the means to wait out the Powerless. It will be work.
Minnesota legislators and others are waiting to play copycat if Walker succeeds in his gambit. They will be tempted otherwise if the momentum shifts.
Each of them, behind the bluff and bluster, is wondering about votes in the next election.
They need to be very worried.
They need to know that they can not step on a truly exceptional group of employees on which citizens of every state depends.
Solidarity forever!

#334 – Dick Bernard: Part 4. Why are we doing this to ourself?

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Yesterday the combination of a snow-blocked driveway and Presidents Day led to an unusual amount of television viewing by myself. Being President’s Day, the History Channel had some interesting programs about the U.S. Presidents. I watched some of the programs, and they were fascinating. Being President of the United States is a complicated job.
It led me to think back to my senior year in high school, 1957-58, when my teacher father, Henry, took on the task of reading the biographies of all the Presidents till that time. He would borrow the books from the ND State Library in Bismarck, and to my knowledge he completed his project of reading about all of them. Probably the last biography was of Harry Truman, as Dwight Eisenhower was President during and after his home reading project.
I also was led to think about a famous quotation of H. L. Mencken in the Baltimore Evening Sun on July 26, 1920. In a column entitled “Bayard vs. Lionheart”, Mencken commented on the office of President of the United States and how its elected representative “represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folk of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Well…I have heard no one say that President Obama is a moron in the White House. He is a brilliant and extraordinary man. But I have heard it said that he is too intellectual (among other assorted complaints), none related to his capabilities.
Fortunately, while Mencken was wrong in his assessment of the deteriorating quality of the occupants of the office of President, he seems to have hit a home run when looking at the quality of the people we are choosing to represent us closer to home, too many in state legislatures and Governerships and Congress. They may not be “downright morons” elected to represent us, but their attitude certainly does not reflect any lofty aims for our country. More and more, they seem simply to be a collection of individualists elected to dismantle to the extent possible the great institution which is the United States of America.
We don’t seem to elect people with the people’s interests at heart these days. We go for the guy or the woman who looks and sounds good,and speaks to our own very parochial and individualistic wants, often fear or anger based. It does not serve us well in the short or long term.
Very stupid decisions are made when driven by fear or anger. Such decisions, once made, are not easily reversed. The very word, “decide”, is a sibling of other words of very clear meaning: suicide, homicide, insecticide. Decisions are not reversible. You can’t undo a killing….
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
There is a long list of reasons, tailored to each one of us as individuals. Even those who might mostly agree with me will say, “yah, but….” We want what we want.
Politicians pander to people’s fears, to people’s anger, to people’s prejudices.
We look at the short term and not the long. We have people newly elected who presume to change long established programs in an instant just cuz they have a majority at this moment and feel no need to respect a minority opinion.
Our vision is limited to the individual or the smallest unit of group activity…to what we understand.
We are, we seem to say, all in this, alone, when we need to be in this together.
My town is not an island; nor is my metropolitan area; nor is my state; nor is my nation. Even in my town, or in my homeowner’s association within that town, there are differences to be respected and appreciated and not steam-rollered because they’re minority.
We need wisdom in our governance, and understanding of other points of view.
Twice today, in various portraits of Presidents, I saw past Presidents of the United States together in formal and informal settings: at the White House, in Indonesia, in Haiti…These were politicians united only by the common experience of attempting to govern a very complex and powerful country. They understood and appreciated each other. They all aged more quickly in office, than before their election.
They all learned how complicated this world is.
So should we.
Related: here, here and here.

#333 – Dick Bernard: Part 3. What Wisconsin Means

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For 27 years between 1972 and 2000 my full-time job was to advise and represent public school teachers in matters relating to collective bargaining and grievance processing ending in arbitration. My work was completely in the public sector.
You learn a great deal in 27 years.
For instance, I pay very little attention to how the media or the folks at the microphones or in front of the cameras define the “issues” at Madison, Wisconsin. I know from very long experience that while one or more interpretation might be right; they might as easily be wrong; they might be truthful; they might be intending to mislead. At the micro level there are, in fact, multiple definitions of “issues” particularly in very large conflicts like the one taking place in Wisconsin, with lawmakers in other states waiting in the wings to see what ultimately happens there.
If one can get past their particular bias, and look behind the curtain, there are things which can be very clearly seen.
What Wisconsin means, in my opinion, is very, very simple, and should be very, very troubling to the vast majority of Americans, including those who self-describe themselves as “Tea Party” fanciers.
What Wisconsin is about is the destruction of the Middle Classes ability to represent its own interests, and not only government workers rights. Wisconsin is the ultimate power-play of certain extremely wealthy and powerful business interests to drive the final nail in the coffin of collective bargaining for workers, using the wild horses of supposedly populist rage and resentment (“If I can’t have it, neither can you”; “I hate unions”* (or “government”)….) to provide the negative energy to actually pull off the coup d’etat. The Koch Brothers (big oil) and the United States Chamber of Commerce loom largest among many of these wealthy constituencies out to take control. These ties are very easy to find if one has any interest in looking (these wealthy folks know that most aren’t interested.)
What Wisconsin is not about is recovery from out of control government spending. Government is, in fact, very efficient, even cheap, if looked at over all. At the same time, Government “waste and corruption”, in fact, is very, very good for business. Government money is low-hanging fruit: witness the rampant AMERICAN corruption during the Iraq War (Halliburton, et al); excess or phantom billings for Medicare, etc. Business getting more tax relief as the Wisconsin Governor rammed through for business in his first days in office in 2011, and you have another indirect Government benefit to big business, paid for by unaware taxpayers.
The Middle Class will rue the day if this cabal, and their representative Scott Walker and a temporary majority in the Wisconsin state legislature carry the day.
So will Scott Walker and his backers and financial supporters.
Wisconsin represents the death struggle of the American dream.
How do I define “the Middle Class”?
The Middle Class is the people who, primarily in the last half of the 20th century, worked for a living, bought the new refrigerators, sent kids to college, made the difference in so many ways.
There are endless definitions of “Middle Class”. The Middle Class is huge. Usually the top 2-3% of Americans are considered “wealthy”; with a pretty common floor for “wealthy” being an annual income of $250,000 a year. This leaves 97-98% of Americans as “Poor” and “Middle Class”, and by far the greatest number of these are “Middle Class”.
The average teacher in Wisconsin makes roughly $50,000 a year, with a starting salary of about $25-$30,000. This is the compensation for approximately 180 work days, the typical work year for a public school teacher. Unlike many seasonal occupations, there is no “unemployment insurance” for the summer layoff from teaching. “Summer pay” is simply earnings deferred to summer. I don’t know the specifics about the rest of the average teacher compensation package in Wisconsin – non-teacher contributions to things like health insurance premiums, teacher retirement and the like. A very liberal rule of thumb addition would add perhaps 25% to that $50,000 average, making a truer average a bit over $60,000 a year….
School administrators make a bit more than teachers; other school workers like bus drivers, custodians, secretaries, cooks, aids, etc., make less. The average school employee wage is considerably less than the average teacher salary.
I don’t know about you, but I worked hard for a living over a long career and I never got close to a six figure income ($100,000), much less $250,000 a year. I had a lot of college education, and I think I was respected in my trade.
I’m retired now, with a private pension, social security and not as much savings as I think I need. Ditto for my wife.
Personally, I’ll do whatever I can to prevent Wisconsin from becoming what I truly believe represents the coming American tragedy: the destruction of the Middle Class for the craven ambitions of the super-wealthy in this society.

Related posts: here and here.
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* UPDATE: Friend Jeff, an international businessman and son of a small town bakery owner, provided an interesting discussion of the word “union”:
From the American Heritage dictionary:
Union
1. The act of uniting or the state of being united.
2. A combination so formed, especially an alliance or confederation of people, parties, or political entities for mutual interest or benefit.
# Agreement or harmony resulting from the uniting of individuals; concord.
“labor union” is the 6th definition given.
The Republican party: a union
The Tea Party: a union
The Burnsville Soccer Club: a union
A neighborhood association: a union
Why is it that in Egypt and parts of the middle east people are demonstrating and in some cases losing their lives , for certain rights which includes the right to form “unions”
But in the USA some political interests are interested in destroying the right of people to form unions?

#332 – Dick Bernard: Part 2. On the treatment of "public servants"

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A reader took umbrage at something I said in yesterday’s post on the Wisconsin stand-off at the State Capitol.
The comment was succinct: “Enough of the…bashing [of the power group to which the writer belongs]. Please remove me from your email listing and future emails.” The writer is a prominent actor in the political arena with a lot of influence in the legislature.
I decline to remove the writer from the distribution list. He can delete the messages or mark me as spam.
Initially I was puzzled by what the writer could be reacting to. But as I thought about it today, there were a couple of comments in the previous post which could be interpreted as “bashing” of his constituency.
But I left out of that post most of the rest of the story.
My parents were career public school teachers in the good old days before there was any such thing as “teachers rights”. They were phenomenal people, both of them. No taint of scandal or performance deficiency followed them in their career (excepting my mothers first year as a teacher, in 1929-30, when she was scarcely 19, and several of her country school students were almost her age. She resigned at Christmas time and went home.) Both took their work very seriously. But they were always – always – outsiders.
They, especially my Dad, kept records. As I write, in plain sight in front of me, is a brown folder which contains 67 of their teaching contracts. Four of my mothers contracts in the early 1930s escaped the folder, but all the rest are there. For a total of 71 years they taught public school in numerous places.

Every single one of these contracts was ‘at will’ of the local school board which could decide whether or not to rehire for the following year, whenever it wished. There were even circumstances, in the 1930s, when the tacit agreement was that the contract, even if signed, may not mean anything. They’d be paid if the district had the money. Long and short: every year when they signed their contract, they knew it was for a single year. The next spring they could be let go for any or for no reason whatsoever. Cause didn’t matter. There was no due process. They were well educated migrant workers.
In return for that contract, they did everything that was asked, and more. Dad didn’t like to coach, but sometimes he had to coach because there wasn’t a coach available. Often there were implicit rules that married couples wouldn’t be hired because, together, they made too much money, by community standards. Those community standards required them to do certain things, and not do other things. Sometimes those were in the contract; sometimes not.
By 1948 they had five kids, but could never plan anything for sure past the end of the school year. Perhaps they’d be back; perhaps not.
Those stories don’t appear in the folder in those pieces of paper called Teacher Contracts. The rest of the stories took life through the stories my Dad told me in later years.
They retired with dignity, living in tiny houses and a frugal lifestyle. It took two retirements to survive.
They didn’t complain.
So when I watch the fat cat politicians and others posture in Madison and elsewhere, and watch those union members in the street challenging what lawyers would describe as ‘arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable’ attempts to remove hard fought rights, I side with those folks on the street. They’re fighting for survival.
I don’t really care about the details of the items at issue. That is for the parties themselves to sort out in two-sided collective bargaining.
My parents are long dead. I do wonder how they’d see the situation in Madison these days.
They didn’t bash their school boards. They just moved on, and uprooted we kids each time that happened.
But, unfortunately, plenty of those boards well deserved some bashing….

#331 – Dick Bernard: Part 1. "On, [the public employees of], Wisconsin!"

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Thursday afternoon, February 17, we went across the Mississippi River to see a music program at a local suburban St. Paul elementary school. The performers were about a hundred fifth graders, one of whom was our grandson. The audience was classmates from other grades, and the usual assortment of parents, grandparents and others. It was standing room only in the gymnasium.
It was a great program – they always are. Classroom teachers, and all public school employees, on average are genius level when it comes to working with kids. The average civilian would hardly last a day with one-fourth of the students a normal teacher is assigned each and every day. Ditto for those cooks, custodians, secretaries, Principals, etc., etc., etc. Occasional problems? Sure. There are, after all, nearly 50,000,000 kids in those places called “school”.
Thursday we watched one of this large elementary schools music teachers work his magic during the impressively choreographed and timed program with his young charges. Thursday evening the program was repeated.
Teachers – indeed, all school staff – are to be celebrated.
But those same employees are certainly not to be tolerated if they get uppity, and wish to share a tiny bit in the riches of this country.
Across the river, down the road perhaps 300 miles in Madison Wisconsin, at the same time I was listening to my grandson and his classmates, teachers and other public employees were engaging in rarely seen huge protests over an arbitrary attempt to strip them of rights and benefits under the guise of balancing the state’s budget. At this writing, it appears that the employees, with the help of Democrat legislators who literally left the state to prevent the dominant Republicans from achieving a quorum, will manage to at least minimize their losses in the short term, and bring powerful public attention to the problem of attempts to break unions, particularly unionized public workers.
I taught public school (Junior High) for nine years, followed by 27 years of representing unionized public school teachers. Union dues paid my salary and helped fund my private pension. I grew up in a teachers family, and on and on and on. So I am not unbiased when I cheer on those valiant souls who challenged the Wisconsin Governor and hopefully cause he and his slash and burn allies to regret their move (such unanticipated results do occur from time to time.) It’s past time to take a stand.
Public workers are essential to the public good, and not ‘essential’ as defined by those who would wish them to work as, truly, “public servants”.
Many years ago I heard the issue defined well by a colleague: “public employees are the last to reap the benefits of prosperity, and the first to be burdened by the costs of recession.” He was speaking an abiding truth. The public employer gets the leftovers, if there are any, and were anti-union forces to get their way, the good old days of “come to the table and beg” would again become policy.
Probably half of my nine years of teaching were in those “at will” days where the teachers got what the school board wished to give, which usually wasn’t very much.
By happenstance, my career as union staff coincided exactly with the beginning of collective bargaining in my state, and while both sides made mistakes that first year nearly 40 years ago, and later, we did learn, and collective bargaining has worked reasonably well ever since.
Actually, it would work even better for ALL parties, including the public, were the bargaining playing field opened to include all of the abundant issues which face public education, but managers are afraid of bogey-men that exist in their “minds eyes” about allowing practitioners to – horrors – have a say in education policy.
Get rid of bargaining? Honest managers would agree that unions bring stability to employer-employee relations generally. I know. I did the work, and I know people who worked on the other side of the table back then.
I applaud those courageous workers who when faced with an arrogant challenge by a wet-behind-the-ears new Governor took to the streets and made the national news.
May they be an example to their colleagues everywhere.
The writer taught junior high school geography from 1963-72; and from 1972 to the end of his career in 2000 was field representative for the Minnesota Education Association/Education Minnesota. A career long primary interest has been positive relationships between public schools and the public at large. In addition to this blog site, he retains a site with ideas for better public school engagement with the non-school community. You can access it here.

#328 – Dick Bernard: Part 4. A Message to the Proles*

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Shortly after the Super Bowl, even with the events continuing in Egypt, the nightly news paid a lot of attention to the rollout of Donald Rumsfeld’s new book, “Known and Unknown“.
There is no need to waste words or even internet links about Donald Rumsfeld – anything one wants to know, positive or negative, about the man, can be easily found…except his own personal secrets.
Personally, I believe that his career – most of his work life – as a “public servant” exemplified manipulation by use and misuse of all of the means of Power** at his disposal, as that word is defined by people who are Powerful. This includes the right to do wrong and never, never, ever admit that you make mistakes, and blame someone else for whatever mistakes were made.
I didn’t see all of the interviews, but the ones I saw were of the Rumsfeld of old: completely on message, not about to be tricked into going off script even the tiniest amount. No accountability.
Examples of shady kinds of behaviors by powerful people are endless. Rumsfeld is way up near the top of the list of those who feel righteous in what they were trying to do, including supposedly to bring, euphemistically, “democracy and freedom” to places far away, all for the greater honor and glory of themselves.
I am particularly interested in the title of Rumsfeld’s book: “Known and Unknown“. I’ve been intrigued by that phraseology since I first heard him use it in the early days of Iraq War.
It brought me back to a lesson learned in one outstanding program of an international company called Landmark Education in the summer of 1998.
In the programs of Landmark, we learned many obvious things that most of us never really connect with.
One of the lessons that stuck was this (paraphrased): “There are things that we know that we know. There are things we know we don’t know. Finally, there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know.”
I could have sworn, from his use of this phrase, that at some point in his development Rumsfeld had taken the same Landmark program that I did. He simply parroted these words, much to the delight of the media, since they were so quotable.
In my assessment, he had the vocabulary down, but he misused the entire concept in denying any culpability for catastrophic calculations made by himself and others at the highest levels in the U.S. Government during the entire post 9-11 time of Iraq.
Not part of that Landmark Lesson was a fourth phrase that I’ll coin that perhaps should well be paid attention to: “There are things that we don’t know because we don’t want to know them.” Think a gangster leader who sends word, “take care of that problem”, and somebody downline ends up dead….
You can never tell what to believe from an executive with Rumsfeld’s experience. Rumsfeld will likely die not revealing any unspoken truth. No apologies at least to his earthly counterparts.
Perhaps the best strategy for us is to believe nothing on first hearing or reading. To be endlessly skeptical. But to retain hope that you can impact on the system.
That’s my message to the Proles (of which I am one).

* – In George Orwell’s book, 1984, the masses were called the Proles. “Prole” was probably a shortened version of the word “proletariat” and 1984 was apparently modeled on then-Soviet Union. Orwell’s book was published in 1949.
In Orwell’s book, the Proles were caricatured through images like the meek housewife, happily singing a tune while hanging out her wash on a clothesline; and the boys hanging out at a pub, getting drunk on cheap gin. In Orwell’s world, Big Brother and his minions were in control in a gigantic pyramidal headquarters in London, and Newspeak (i.e. “war is peace”, etc.) was the alternate official language of power. Telescreens and the Two Minute Hate against a distant enemy kept the rabble afraid and compliant.
The Proles vastly outnumbered the power, but (it seems) never got organized.
The first decade of the 21st century we’ve been living in “1984”, in my opinion.
** – Power defined. I once heard an excellent talk about some of the many kinds of “Power” in plays in all of our lives. As I remember them: there is the power that comes with authority (“I can fire you”, or variations usually involving money); there is the power that comes with the capability of defining the rules of society (“I can make laws”). Power comes with family connections – a family marries into a family with power. The list goes on.
But there was one power I paid most attention to, and the speaker called it “referent power” or “the likeability factor”. For people immersed in the other kinds of power, this is the scary one: this is the problem of relationships, and builds outside, and independent of, the others.
Related Posts: Feb. 6, Feb. 7, and Feb. 8

#326 – Dick Bernard: Part 2. Thoughts about the Power and Peril of Bottlenecks and Pyramids

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One of the recent Presidents of the U.S., who was born 100 years ago on February 6, is having his memory celebrated…by people who were his mentors and advisors. In their words, they are elevating the man to far larger than life status. Perhaps they can enshrine the idea that he was more awesome than he really was?
A short time before, news was that the most recently deceased Catholic Pope is being promoted to be on the fast track to Sainthood…by people who agree with his belief system. Does this internal promotion by his promoters make him a more saintly figure? (I happen to be Catholic, but not in agreement with the fast track notion which cheapens the whole idea of sainthood.)
Both the President and the Pope were at the top of their respective leadership pyramids (some would call them hierarchies) and are simply two of infinite numbers of persons, past and present, who claim some authority by virtue of being at the top of the Power heap.
I’ve thought a lot about hierarchies over a period of many years, and for a lot of those years, the metaphors of a Wine Bottle and Pyramids very often come to mind. (See below. Rough illustration drawn by me a few days ago – I am not an artist.)
Wine Bottle and Pyramids
First, the Pyramid:
Our society is dominated by power pyramids. It is almost a natural occurrence of humanity. Where three gather in one place, one probably becomes the de facto or actual leader. There are endless variations on the same theme. I’ve been part of many pyramids; in leadership in some of them from time to time. Even in retirement I am at various levels in various organizations. To a limited extent, hierarchies serve a necessary and even useful function to maintain some semblance of order where there could be chaos and anarchy.
But there comes a point when pyramids become self-defeating and even destructive. There are endless examples, seldom acknowledged by the person and his/her retinue at the top. Failure is assessed in later and more objective history of what happened and why.
As stated, I have been involved in one way or another in a number of organizations and alliances, all headed by some leader or other. Some of them are quite large and important, with a fairly large base (population) beneath the “summit” (President, or whomever). Once in awhile I was the leader of such a group.
Over many years I have come to notice that within clusters of Pyramids – for instance, groups which have some kind of general community of interest, but represent different constituencies – the assorted leaders on the hill or mountain tops have some specific understanding of each other, including a common vocabulary and, often, playbook (think people like lobbyists and lawmakers). Sometimes they even communicate pretty well leader to leader (the horizontal arrow on the above illustration.) But they remain separate (and less powerful) because they cannot agree on a common vision. They compete with each other.
But, even worse, between them and their loyal supporters and advisers, and their less loyal ‘base’, is an non-penetrable fog bank or cloud, such that they do not relate to their base, nor does their base relate to them. Hard as they might think they are trying – and the leaders are the only ones who can control this – the people that give them their power are essentially invisible and can seem almost irrelevant except as tools to get reelected or reappointed.
Being a retired person, I spend most of my life in this seemingly irrelevant category – a guy below the fog bank, unimportant. It is not a good place to be. And it is even less a good place for leaders to have someone like me who feels dis-empowered.
Enter the Wine Bottle (it could be a bottle including anything, but the shape of the Wine Bottle fits my metaphor best.)
I have noticed often over the years, in many settings and in many, many ways, that people who have climbed to the peak of their respective pyramid can create a bottleneck which can keep their base isolated from outside information, and thus unable to communicate back and forth with persons outside the systems, most especially people who could be helpful to the organization. A place like North Korea might be the most visible example of this bottleneck effect, but the effect prevails anywhere where a leader fears empowerment of the very base which gives him (rarely, her) power.
Inevitably, in each and every case, these isolated pyramidal systems collapse upon themselves, too often to be replaced by new pyramids whose leaders seem to think that they can control outcomes simply by being in control of their small niche.
Leaders should learn that there is a huge amount of richness in the base that is all of us.
One wonders why there are not more visionary leaders who recognize this richness – often the richness of diversity – and use the richness to build a stronger and more enduring and useful system, and in the process make more secure their own feeling of power, built on respect.
One wonders….
Related posts Feb. 6 , Feb. 8, and Feb. 10.

#325 – Dick Bernard: Part 1. Waiting for the Superbowl

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Saturday we went over to watch our 6th grade grandson play basketball in the local athletic league. The league is like leagues in most towns of any size: if you show up, you play. There are eight five minute segments, and if there are ten boys on a side, five of them play every other quarter. That way, every one gets time on the court. When the quarter starts they line up more or less by height. The aim is to practice, a step above play.
This day Ryan’s team won their second game in a row…after five consecutive losses. They celebrated their first win “like we won the championship” he said, all excited.
My guess is that this year is the last non-competitive year for kids Ryan’s age. Now the competition begins: first to make the team, then to win. You win, or you’re a loser.
*
In a few hours the U.S. will come to a functional halt as Green Bay and Pittsburgh square off for the Super Bowl at Cowboys Stadium Arlington TX. It is Super Bowl XLV – one of the few remaining uses for Roman numerals.
Along with the football will be the Super Bowl of TV ads. If there could be a religious tie-in, Super Bowl Sunday would vie with Christmas.
But everything later today will focus on winners, and not only the team that won, but on those few who get a seat in the stands or the Star Level boxes. Best as I know, there’s no ‘knot-hole gang’ at the Super Bowl.
The rest of us can, and many of us will, watch the spectacle at home, hopefully consuming the advertised foods and drinks of the day.
And then the day will end. One team from one town will wear the crown for one year. And the absurdity of it all will settle in…until next year. Odds are, this years winner won’t repeat next year. In 44 years so far, only on eight occasions has a team had successive Super Bowl championships. Two have been to the Super Bowl on eight occasions; only 16 cities have had representatives in the Super Bowl. There are no dynasties.
This particular year follows a year when my Minnesota Vikings almost made it to the Big Game, defeated in the semi-finals by the eventual champion New Orleans Saints. A year later and the Vikings were a disaster; coach fired before the end of the season, Brett Favre back to Mississippi to the farm. The ultimate indignity was the collapse of the roof of the Metrodome under the weight of heavy snow.
The indignity of the season didn’t derail the owners lobbying for a new Minnesota stadium – the 5th in recent years by my count for assorted pro franchises here – and, I suppose, a dreamed for new beginning for the Vikings. They’ll probably get it. The old metrodome, so functional for so many years, will continue for monster trucks and the like.
Meanwhile, the Superbowl has yet to be played, and the NFL owners are threatening to lock-out the players if an appropriate contract deal cannot be reached.
*
The game of winning and losing…mostly losing…has been refined to a high art in this country. Those in Cowboys Stadium today are clearly among the “winners”. They represent a tiny, tiny slice of America, but yet they are to represent the American dream of victory.
Of those twenty sixth graders I watched play basketball yesterday, perhaps one might end up on the varsity at the local high school by the time he’s a senior. The others will be doing whatever they will be doing.
In our country, competition is sacred. And it is killing us, slowly but surely.
I’ll probably be watching the game today, but mostly my vision will be on the absurdities of the spectacle both on the field and in the stands and the sky boxes….
UPDATE: 9:30 p.m. Sunday evening.
Green Bay 31, Pittsburgh 25. It was Green Bay’s 4th Super Bowl win, including the first two in 1967 and 1968. At the end of the game, tonight, does it have any enduring meaning at all? Is our society any better, short or long term, for having experienced the Super Bowl?
Note from Bob Barkley, after reading the original post: “One of the most important books (to me anyway) I ever read was “The Case Against Competition” by Alfie Kohn.”
Related Posts Feb. 7, Feb 8, and Feb.10.