Size doesn't matter

The problem isn’t the size.  If you reduced the size of the Pennsylvania legislature without reforming the voter registration and balloting procedures, without a fair system of drawing legislative districts, without thoroughgoing campaign finance reform, and without increasing ballot access for parties other than Democrats and Republicans, you would have the same mess you have now.

In fact it might be worse.  Bigger districts mean even more campaign funds would be necessary to run for state legislative office.  The money saved would be less than half a percent of the state’s budget.  

The reduction is another one of those symbolic proposals to make the voters believe something is being accomplished.  If the legislature wants to accomplish something, enact a severance tax on fracking.  Equalize school funding.  Increase the minimum wage.  Legalize marijuana.  Quit trying to privatize the wine and spirits stores.  Pass the goddam budget.

I’m talking to you, Simmons and Knowles and Heffley.

New York Daily News

I’ll admit to being a newspaper snob.  I read the New York Times; I would never deign to buy the Daily News.  It’s a tabloid, for heaven’s sake. 

I have to re-evaluate.  When Ted Cruz accused Trump of having New York values, the Daily News had a cover with the Statue of Liberty giving Cruz the finger and the caption “Drop Dead, Ted.”  I so wish I had a copy of that.  

When Sarah Palin endorsed Trump, the Daily News had a picture of Trump and Palin with the headline, “I’m with Stupid.”

When Rupert Murdoch announced that he would wed supermodel Jerry Hall, the News announced the engagement as “Beauty and the Beast.”

When the mass shooting occurred in San Bernardino, the Daily News ran quotes from the Republican candidates calling for prayers with the headline, “God Isn’t Fixing This.”

I’ll have to start buying the Daily News.

"We are all Jews here"

In January 1945 Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds was in the Ziegenhain stalag with 1000 of his fellow prisoners.  Edmonds was the highest ranking American officer, and he was told by his German captors to order all the Jews to step forward.  Instead he ordered all of the men to stand together and then told the Germans, “We are all Jews here.”

That act may have saved the lives of up to 200 Jews.  This week President Obama went to the Israeli embassy where he participated in a ceremony recognizing Sgt. Edmonds as the first American service member to be named “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.  

In these days of bigotry and xenophobia, it is good to be reminded of people like Sgt. Edmonds. 

[Information from this post came from an article by Julie Hirschfeld Davis,. “Wartime Act of Defiance:  ‘We Are All Jews Here,’” New York Times, 28 Jan. 2016, p. A8.  It should be noted that Sgt. Edmonds never spoke of what he did.  His actions came to light because of testimony from Jewish soldiers who were saved.]

Anti-Muslim bigot gets earful

My friend Connie was in the Lehighton Giant market.  She was wearing a coat with a hood over her head.  A man passing her in the aisle muttered under his breath, “Muslim bitch.”

Connie, who has a voice that carries, whipped off her hood, turned to the guy, and said, “F---k you, I’m Irish Catholic.”  

The guy had nothing more to say.

Never shopped at Wal-Mart

Hundreds of Wal-Marts are closing down in American small towns, and people are devastated.  Evidently many of the small shops in these towns have gone under as people flocked to the every day low priced items at Wal-Mart.  Now that Wal-Mart is leaving, people have no stores to buy groceries or other items.

I have no pity.  Nobody held a gun to these people’s heads to force them to shop at Wal-Mart.  The problem with so many Americans is that they know the price of everything but the value of nothing.  For a few bucks in their pockets they are willing to abandon family-owned businesses to shop at some giant chain that pays its workers a pittance and sells cheap plastic crap.

I have never shopped at Wal-Mart.  I’ve been in one to use the restroom when we had a labor action at the Stroudsburg store, and I did pick up my Aunt’s prescriptions at the one in Lehighton, so I can’t say I’ve never been in one, but I never bought anything.  And having seen what they are like inside, I’m amazed that anyone would want to set foot there.

Oh, yeah, I forgot.  They have low prices.

John Fetterman, Senate candidate

The PA Democratic Party has three candidates running in the primary.  The winner will face Pat Toomey in the fall.  Former admiral Joe Sestak is a smart guy, but he lost to Toomey six years ago.  Katie McGinty worked for Al Gore and ran for governor in 2014.  I voted for her, but she received less than 10% of the vote.

Then there’s John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania.  Braddock is a former steel town near Pittsburgh that has seen better days.  Much better days.  It is majority African-American, its population has dropped precipitously, and it has no industry and few jobs.  As mayor, Fetterman gave the town hope.  Crime has gone down and the town has a new spirit.  

Tonight I met Fetterman at a Carbon County Democrats for Progress meeting in Jim Thorpe.  The room at the Inn at Jim Thorpe was packed, and the audience, with some Republicans included, was impressed.  I went into the meeting prepared to scoff, but I liked what I saw and heard.  I even volunteered to circulate a nominating petition for Mr. Fetterman.  

I do like being in a party in which any of the three candidates running is head and shoulders above the incumbent Toomey.  Toomey was head of the Club for Growth, a group of filthy rich plutocrats whose main desire was to amass even more wealth at the expense of the rest of us.  Toomey should be in jail rather than the Senate.

Burqas in Kansas

A short item in Saturday’s Morning Call noted that a Kansas Senate committee chairman has imposed a dress code prohibiting women testifying on an elections bill from wearing certain clothing.  

State Sen. Mitch Holmes’ 11 point code of conduct says “low-cut necklines and miniskirts” are inappropriate for women.  He said such clothing would be a distraction to the Senate committee.

While Sen Holmes did not specifically say so, I am assuming that burqas would be appropriate dress.

Hillary v. Bernie

I don’t usually have any trouble picking my presidential candidate.  By this time in the season I’ve got my bumper stickers, my buttons, and my precinct lists to pass out literature.  This year, however, I am what is known in political science as “cross-pressured.”

I like Bernie Sanders.  Always have.  I like his attacks on Wall Street tycoons, his support for labor, his environmental record.  I like the fact that he is bringing college students into his campaign.

I like Hillary Clinton.  I like her experience.  She knows policy, and I hate the way Republicans are trying to demonize her.  She was gracious in 2008 when she lost the nomination to Obama, and she was an excellent Secretary of State.

My heart is with Bernie.  I am a left-winger, influenced by democratic socialist theorists like Edward Bernstein, and a strong labor union supporter.  

On the other hand, I wonder what would happen if the Republican nominee were Rubio or Kasich running against Sanders.  They would paint Sanders as a radical, they’d superimpose Karl Marx’s face on Bernie’s body, and they would do their best to conflate democratic socialism with Stalinist communism, not difficult to do in America.  

I also am annoyed by the unreality of Sanders’ proposals.  Single payer health is not going to happen.  President Obama barely got through a weakened health care bill, and Republicans have been doing their best for six years to kill it.  Sanders had a poor record of getting bills passed in the Senate, and he does not play well with others.

Clinton also has drawbacks.  For some reason, there are many Republicans who simply loathe Clinton.  While I believe much of that comes from antipathy toward any strong woman, that makes it no less worrisome.  Nevertheless, at this point I think Clinton would make a better candidate and a better president.

Really bad football prediction

Chicago U. Physicist Says Big-Time College Football Is on Way Out

That was the headline in a short article in the Morning Call, Dec. 28, 1939, p. 16.

The prediction was made by physicist Arthur H. Compton, a one-time football player at Wooster (Ohio) U.  

He stated “I think college football has been over-professionalized for the last 10 years.  Moreover, when people in Chicago want to see good football now, they go to a professional game.” 

He said he appreciated the value of training, of sportsmanship, and loyalty the sport taught, but “At the same time, the way football works in large universities, little of that touches the average student.  The number of men on the football squad is a small fraction of the whole student body.”

Compton was right about the values, but oh so wrong in his prediction, made before television and national rankings.  Plus, the NFL teams now use college teams as farm clubs.  And ask yourself this.  What departments at the University of Alabama or Clemson University are known for their academic excellence?

Lessons from Scott Walker

When Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was trying to weaken unions by pushing “Act 10,” which basically ended collective bargaining for public employees, he said public employees didn’t need unions, since they had civil service to protect them.  He also said private workplace unions were fine.

Then, last year, he signed a “right-to-work” law that said union members could opt out of paying dues, the first step to weakening all unions in the state.  That was a measure which the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been pushing in other states with much success.

As a final step to ending worker rights, Walker is supporting a bill that would gut the state’s civil service provisions.  For example, the new rules would replace anonymous exams with resumes, would lengthen the probationary period for new employees during which they can be fired for any reason, and would centralize hiring within the politicized Department of Administration consisting of Walker appointees.

If the civil servants and teachers in Wisconsin are anything like those in Pennsylvania, probably quite a few of them voted for Walker in the last election.  I know personally a number of local teachers and government workers who supported anti-worker Republican candidates.  Perhaps they could call up a civil service friend in Wisconsin and ask, “How’s that working out for ya”?

Pig meat in Denmark

Of all the nations of Europe conquered by the Nazis, Denmark had the best record of protecting its Jews.  When Jews were ordered to wear the yellow star, the King of Denmark wore a yellow star.  When the Danes got word that the Jews were to be rounded up, a network of Danish citizens managed to warn almost every Jew in Denmark and then ferry them across the North Sea to neutral Sweden, which also is to be congratulated for taking them in.

Now the council of Randers, a Danish town of about 60,000, voted this week to require public day care centers and kindergartens to include pork on their lunch menus.  

Denmark is a big exporter of pig meat, but that is not why this law was adopted.  It is clearly a slap at the Muslim immigrants.  Of course, it is also an inadvertent slap against any Jews who live in Randers.  What a sad day for a country that I had always admired.

[Information on the Randers policy is from Dan Bilefsky, “Mandatory Pork:  Menu Rule in Denmark Opens New Front in Immigration Debate, New York Times, 21 Jan. 2016, p. A10.]

Sarah Palin endorses Trump

Go figure.

Level the Playing Field

In the U.S. the Courts have allowed workers to refuse to finance their union’s political activities. 

It is only fair that shareholders should also be able to opt out of paying corporate political contributions.  In the past the courts have made a distinction between shareholders and union members by saying it is easy to sell shares, but not easy to get a new job.

That is a bogus argument.  Many shareholders are small potatoes investors who hang on to their stocks.  I own small amounts in two companies, and I don’t even know how I’d go about selling them.  If the Supreme Court rules against mandatory union fees, and I think it will, then we need a law suit from some share holders demanding the same rights for people who invest in companies.  It would only be fair.

Father shoots son

Earlier this month in Cincinnati a father dropped off his son at school.  Unbeknownst to him, the son returned home.  The father, hearing a noise in the basement, thought an intruder had entered the house, opened fire, and shot his son in the neck, killing him.

All of these NRA types who say things like “Gun control means hitting what you aim at” or “Gun control means holding your pistol with both hands” may have a point.  Since we aren’t about to get rid of guns, can we at least require gun owners to take a safety course on how to handle them?  

For example, you don’t shoot before you know what your target is.  You don’t keep a loaded gun under your pillow.  You don’t have a loaded gun where a child can pick it up.  This might seem like common sense, but given the number of accidental shootings, a large number of people need some education.

Every hunter in Pennsylvania is required to take a hunter safety course.  Given the number of hunters in the Pennsylvania woods, there are actually very few hunting accidents.  The course works.  Surely a gun safety course would not be too much to ask of gun owners.  A Cincinnati father might not be grieving today for killing his only son.  

P.S.:  I also don’t think grieving is enough.  I’d put the stupid son of a bitch in jail.

Immigrant criminals

A study by sociology professors at U.C. Irvine and George Washington University using census data and F.B.I. data showed that incarceration rates of native-born Americans were far higher than for migrants.

As one professor involved in the study said, “An immigrant does not come here to commit crimes and get on welfare.  They come here to work harder than native-born people do.”

I keep hearing that Americans are angry.  Much of that anger is directed downward to the poor, to immigrants, to refugees, to those on the bottom.  Redirect your anger.  Point it upward to the guys in suits, to the hedge fund managers, to the Wall Street manipulators, to the Koch Brothers, to the 1%.  They are the ones causing the problems and wrecking the country.

[The material on immigrants is taken from an article in the Times entitled “Data Link Immigrants To Low Rates of Crime,” Jan. 14, 2016, p. A10.]

Reconstruction

I was taught that Reconstruction in the American South was a negative American experience.  Two terms we learned in grade school were “carpetbaggers” (Northerners who came south to exploit the whites) and “scalawags,” Southerners who turned on their fellow whites for personal profit.  We did not learn about the thousands of lynchings, the mistreatment of blacks after Northern troops were withdrawn, or the day-to-day horror of a system based on racial superiority.

We were not taught about the thousands of idealistic northerners who traveled south to teach former slaves.  We were not told about the “black codes,” passed in some states after the war that said “all of the regulations that applied to slaves now apply to freed negroes.”  The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were glossed over.  The contributions of blacks to the northern victory in the Civil War were not mentioned.  I didn’t even know the Union Army had black troops until I was in college, and even then it wasn’t emphasized.

From the time Federal troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877 until the Civil Rights movement, life for Southern black men and women was a decades-long descent into bigotry and hate.  

The National Park Service runs 408 sites nationwide.  In the last two decades many of those sites have been incorporating new information on slavery and its role in American history.  Of those 408 sites, however, not one is devoted exclusively to the activities of Reconstruction.  We celebrate Martin Luther King day, but we still aren’t quite there yet, are we?

Ted Cruz on the bottom

If I were forced to choose among the current crop of Republican Presidential candidates....  That’s a sentence I have a hard time completing, but I can tell you the one I would rank at the very bottom.  No, not Carson, although I think he is an idiot.  Not Fiorina, although she is a liar.  Not Christie the blowhard.  Not even Trump.

It would be Ted Cruz.  The man has no redeeming qualities.  Even Huckabee and Santorum have talked about the people on the bottom of the economic scale.  But, as David Brooks pointed out in a recent column, Ted Cruz is simply mean.  As a Texas official, he tried to keep a man in prison after the courts ruled the man had been wrongly sentenced.  Brooks can’t figure why so-called Christian evangelicals would support a man so obviously the antithesis of a Christian.

He also loves the rich.  In his Senate race he neglected to report a low interest loan from Goldman Sachs of hundreds of thousands, after telling a reporter he used all he and his wife had saved.  His wife, incidentally, works for Goldman Sachs.

You can see his meanness in his support for bombing civilians in the Middle East.  You could see it in his criticizing Trump, not for his policies, but for being from New York.  You can see it in his vicious attacks on the President.  

Cruz’s father suggested that Obama should be sent back to Kenya.  It is time to send Mr. Cruz back to Canada. 

I once saw a bumper sticker that said “Mean People Suck.”  Amen to that.

The Supreme Court Arm of the Republican Party

In Shelby County v. Holder (2013) the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act by striking down Section 5, which required states with a history of discriminatory practices to seek federal permission to change their voting laws.  

Just hours after the Shelby decision was handed down, Texas announced it would implement a photo ID law.  Weeks after Section 5 was struck down, North Carolina moved to shorten the early voter period and end same day registration.  Over 90,000 voters had used this provision in 2012.

Other states took similar actions.  All of these moves were aimed at lower income and minority voters.  I suppose you know which party those voters generally favor.  

If you can’t win an election fairly, change the rules.  And that is what Republicans have been doing in state after state.  Surely the five Republican Supreme Court members know that.  The Court is simply another partisan body, and it has been since the 2000 election in case after case.

The apple doesn't fall from from the tree

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oil magnates who are funding all kinds of far right movements, including Carbon County’s own 9-12 group, inherited much of their money from their father, Fred Koch.

It turns out that Fred Koch made much of that initial fortune building oil refineries for Adolph Hitler.  All of this is detailed in a new book by Jane Mayer entitled Dark Money.   As my mother would say of the Koch Brothers, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Buying eggs

You are expecting a post on the State of the Union, and instead I’m writing about my chickens.  Maybe tomorrow night I’ll say something about the state of the union, but President Obama is in the middle of his speech right now.  (So far, so good.)

Here’s the deal on eggs.  At one time we had 26 chickens, but between the hawks and death from old age, we are down to 15.  One of those is a rooster, so 14 hens.  One is so old it is lame and probably should be put down, but it’s tough to do, for me anyway.  Now factor in the cold weather, the very short days, and the fact that I’m not using artificial light, and we are down to one or two eggs a day, and three times this past week, none.

So today Linda went out to Haydt’s Meat Market and bought a dozen eggs.  

We received a catalog in the mail today from a hatchery.  I’ll look at it tomorrow.

Justin Simmons and chutzpah

Last night I noted that tea party darling Rep. Justin Simmons, a man first elected to the PA House when he was 23 and living at home with his parents, was reneging on his promise to only serve three terms.  He is running for his 4th, since where else could he get a job that paid $85,339 a year.

Today Simmons published a piece in the Morning Call explaining why he was breaking his promise.  He explained why he had changed his mind.  He didn’t know six years ago that Pennsylvania would have the “most liberal governor in America,” and he needed to remain in Harrisburg to fight for the people of his district.

Also, and I am quoting this directly, “The fact is that now is not the time to step down and leave the taxpayers I serve to the unproven, untested, or unknown.”

That is real chutzpah.

Throw the bums out

Earlier this month Morning Call columnist Bill White wrote an essay entitled “Throw the bums out, Pennsylvania voters.”

White pointed to the outrageous behavior of Justin Simmons, a tea party snot nose, who won his primary election against Republican Karen Beyer by tarring her with the label “career politician.”  Simmons, who was 23 and living with his parents when he won his first election, promised that he would never hold office for more than three terms.

Now he’s running for his 4th term.  As White noted, where else can a guy with no discernible skills find a job that pays $85,339 a year with pension and good benefits.

I saw a few days ago that Jerry Knowles in Schuylkill is running again.  I don’t think Doyle Heffley has announced, but I’m sure that continuing to feed at the public trough will be too good to pass up.

Why do these people, unable to pass a budget after a full year, unable to reform property tax, keep winning reelection?  Is it because they pass out free PA maps at the fair, sponsor senior expos, have their staff answer constituent letters, rake in huge donations from PACs, attend firemen breakfasts, show up for civic events?  Yes.

Do they vote in ways that benefit the average citizen?  Are they willing to buck their party leaders to aid the average citizen?  Do they even think about the effect their actions have on the rest of us who can’t match the contributions of the 1%?  No.

I agree with Mr. White.  Throw the bums out.

Farm Show Anti-Fracking Rally

Today we arose at 6:15 a.m. to drive to an anti-fracking rally at the Pennsylvania Farm show.  Do you know it is still dark at 6:15?

We heard stories from farmers on the front line of the fracking activities–polluted water, still-born calves, compressor station explosions, health issues.  We heard that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania does little or nothing to alleviate the problems.  We heard that the fracking companies are arrogant, uncaring, ruthless.

We are experiencing some of the arrogance of the gas industry with the pipeline that is slated to run through our farm.  Here’s just one example.  PennEast/UGI representatives will approach a land owner and tell her, “All your neighbors have given us permission to survey,” or “All your neighbors have already signed agreements.”  When the land owner calls her neighbors, she finds out that nobody has signed anything.

I thought the irony was clear in today’s Times News.  The PennEast/UGI spokeswoman, who probably has never been in the field, said the company does not trespass.  At the top of the article was a picture of the surveying equipment above a no-trespassing sign.

Here is the way trust works.  Once you have been lied to, you will not trust that company ever again.  And we’ve been lied to more than once.

Zapf Dingbats

In the list of available fonts on my previous Apple computer, the last one was Zapf Dingbats.  They were weird symbols and might be considered precursors of emojis.  What I didn’t realize until I read his obituary was that a man named Zapf invented those.  

The Dingbats were not his only font that lives on.  He also invented the Optima font, which was used at the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C., to list the names of the dead.  This sentence is written in Optima.  It is an elegant font, and suitable for memorials, which is why it was also used for the September 11 memorial in New York.  

Mr. Zapf spoke at Harvard when computers were coming into vogue.  He said, “Does the new technology mean the serious lettering artist will be dispensable?”  He answered, “No.  The alphabet remains.”

Birthers question Cruz

After seven years of listening to “birthers” questioning President Obama’s citizenship, it is with a measure of schadenfreude that I listen to Trump questioning the citizenship of Ted Cruz.  Is this what is known as karma?

Shiite v. Sunni

The Times today ran a front page map showing areas of the Middle East that were mostly Shiite and mostly Sunni.  An article than explained what the whole dispute was about.  It goes back over a thousand years and makes about as much sense as the Protestants and Catholics fighting in Ireland.

Congress without a spine

In December President Obama said, “For over a year, I have ordered our military to take thousands of air strikes against ISIL targets.  I think it’s time for Congress to vote, to demonstrate that the American people are united and committed to this fight.”

Two senators, Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona and Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia, have introduced a measure to support authorization of force.  It has gotten nowhere.  Rubio and Cruz have not supported it.  Trump would rather insult Hillary Clinton than say something serious.  Christie doesn’t know what ISIL is.  It is so much easier to criticize the President than to step up and take some responsibility.

The Imperfect Primary

Barbara Norrander, my office mate at San Jose State, recently published a book on the way we nominate presidential candidates.  The book, entitled The Imperfect Primary. (N.Y.:  Routledge, 2015), details the strange way we pick our presidential candidates.

One of the amazing aspects that Norrander points out is the low level of participation in caucus states.  Even in Iowa, which is the ground zero of presidential nominating politics, less than 5% of the eligible voters turn out for the caucuses.  In Maine in 2008, in the hot race between Obama and Clinton who were clawing for every single delegate, about 1% of the eligible voters turned out.  

Norrander also emphasizes the jury-rigged system of delegate selection.  States are pretty much free to set their own rules, resulting in all sorts of delegate selection processes.  

Here’s another interesting item from the very first page.  Candidates go through a process called “discovery, scrutiny, and decline.”  When the candidates first come on the scene, there’s a spate of favorable publicity.  Then, after the candidate is in the limelight, the media begins to investigate.  Finally, after the negative aspects of the candidate emerge, the candidate sinks.  In the current cycle, we can see this most clearly in the Ben Carson trajectory, although I believe with Trump we are now in the scrutiny phase, and I predict a rather swift decline, especially after he blows it in Iowa.

Muslims reply to ISIS

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio recording on social media sites urging wannabe fanatics to join the Jihad.  

A Muslim from the United Arab Emirates, Iyad El-Baghdadi (no relation), who is currently living in Norway, translated the ISIS message and encouraged people to respond in sarcastic ways.

Here’s one response:  “Too busy being part of a civilized and functioning society.”  That message went on to say that the new season of “Sherlock” was more important.

Another message stated, “Sorry, but I’m watching Star Wars, maybe tomorrow.”

One of the responders told the New York Times, “Basically our work not only cripples their ability to spread propaganda, but also wastes their time.”

Information for this post was taken from “Muslims Reply to ISIS Offer:  Sorry, We’re Busy,”  The New York Times, 31 Dec. 2015, p. A9.

Death penalty

A court in Bangladesh sentenced two people to death for killing a blogger.  They didn’t like what he said about religion.

I’m not usually a big fan of the death penalty, but in this case I don’t have a problem with it.

The Big Short

“The Big Short” is a film that manages to make the financial collapse of 2007-08 interesting and occasionally funny, although you will leave the theater angry at Wall Street, the big banks, and the rating companies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor.

The film stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, and follows the fortunes of three different financial firms that realized the housing market was a bubble about to burst.  The film, based on a book by Michael Lewis by the same name, makes clear that the financial shenanigans were not just an accident or a result of ignorance, but rather the result of fraud.

And how many of the hundreds, if not thousands of people involved in the fraudulent activities went to jail?  One.  

We saw the film tonight at the Carmike at the Promenade Shops off of I-78.  If it doesn’t come to your local theater, rent it.