Hungary: Model for U.S. Conservatives

 Viktor Orban was elected Prime Minister of Hungary in 2010.  He has made changes to the election laws to ensure that his party, Fidesz, will control a supermajority in Parliament.  Party discipline is tight; no one challenges his rule.

Policies have been put into place to counter Hungary’s low birthrate.  Hungarian babies are subsidized; immigrant babies are not.  Orban talks about leading a “Christian civilization,” and he has outlawed protections for gays.

He is using the power of the state to control the media and to roll back certain kinds of education, much like many conservative state legislatures are trying to roll back the teaching of any history that discusses the dark side of the American past.  There are reasons Tucker Carlson visited Hungary and praised its government.

"Election integrity"

 You will often hear the phrase “election integrity” when Republicans are discussing ways to make it more difficult to vote.  Today, for example, my sister was unable to drop off her husband’s ballot at the drop box because each voter must drop off her or his own ballot.  To illustrate how stupid this is, if you mail in the ballot, a postal employee is delivering it, not the voter.  So why is this rule in place?  To discourage voting.

It is the same with voter I.D.  Of course that sounds easy.  Doesn’t everyone have a picture I.D?  The answer is no, not everyone does.  This is especially true of the elderly or people who live in shelters.  It sounds reasonable, but it is put in place to cut down the number of voters.  

More poll watchers from out of the precinct?  It’s not for election integrity, it is to scare voters away.  Fewer drop boxes.  No more on-line registration.  Fewer voting precincts.  All for “election integrity.”  All to cut down on the Democratic vote.

Let the carnage begin

 Republican Sen. Cris Dush introduced a bill in April that would allow Pennsylvanians to carry firearms in concealed or open fashion.  You would not need a license.  Any Pennsylvanian would be free to carry firearms.  In June the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on an 8-5 party line vote.  

Earlier this week Gov. Wolf held a news conference and denounced the bill.  I would support this bill if it allows concealed or open carry by visitors in the State Capitol.  I must write to Sen. Dush and tell him that.  

Go outside

 I frequently wonder if people who think global warming is a hoax (I’m looking at you, Donald Trump) ever go outside and look around.  Today we had a blossom on our lilac bush with more buds about to pop.  Today is Oct. 27.

Booster shot

 Linda and I got our booster shots today.  The first Riteaid I visited said I had to make an appointment online.  I said I didn’t have a computer.  The pharmacist said I should get someone to help me.  

The second one, on First Street  in Lehighton, was more accommodating.  Linda and I walked in, filled out some paperwork, and ten minutes later got our shots, boosters for the Moderna vaccine.

Why some people are reluctant to get vaccinated is something I will never understand, but right now I feel good about it.  I’m protected.  Other people are protected.  What’s the problem?

Happy All the Time

Have you ever read a book where you annoy someone by constantly saying “listen to this” and you read them a sentence or a paragraph?  If you are reading it alone, you want to find someone so you share a phrase or anecdote.

That’s how I feel with Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin.  I read a glowing retrospective review of her work in a recent issue of the New Yorker, and I managed to get a copy of Happy All the Time on interlibrary loan.  It was published in 1978.  I am loving it.

Colwin wrote a cooking column for Gourmet magazine, but she also wrote five novels and two collections of short stories.  She died in 1992 at age 48.   

Low key pipeline victory celebration

The members of Save Carbon County, a group that has been fighting the PennEast Pipeline for the past seven years, celebrated the victory against the proposed fracked gas pipeline and methane-emitting compressor station.  However, the attendees also were raising money to continue a court fight against the PennEast Company.  While the New Jersey portion of the pipeline is completely dead, the company said it might take another look at the Pennsylvania portion.

The court battle revolves around PennEast’s failure to provide due process to affected property owners.  The suit is against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but PennEast actually provides the legal team to fight the suit.

Since the certificate for the pipeline will run out in January, why continue the lawsuit?  Because PennEast can revive the pipeline with a simple ruling by a staff member of FERC.  If the Federal Courts rule favorably on the due process lawsuit, we will have driven a stake through the heart of this vampire. 

The vote on the retention of Penna. appellate court judges

 In Pennsylvania we decide on whether or not judges in the appellate courts should be “retained.”  We voted on the retention of four this year, and I voted against all four.  All four are registered Republicans.  Here is my reasoning.  

The Republican Party has been taken over by Trumpist thugs.  It is very easy to change parties–I’ve done it myself a number of times.  If someone is now a Republican, even if she or he does not back Trump–she or he is in a party that does back Trump, with over half of its adherents believing that Trump won the election in 2020.  A judge who retains membership in that party does not deserve to be on the bench.

If you want to share this with your friends, that’s fine with me.

Dangerous vaccine?

 Did you know that everyone who received a smallpox vaccine in the first fifty years it was given is now dead?  I am not kidding.  You can google it. 

M.I.T. cancels Dr. Abbot

 A front page article in today’s New York Times discusses the sad state of affairs in academia.  Schools like M.I.T. that should be in the forefront of protecting the clash of ideas and teaching tolerance are instead acting like bullies, shutting off debate for fear somebody’s feelings might get hurt.  

Dr. Dorian Abbot, an expert on climate change and atmospheric systems of distant planets, was supposed to give a public lecture at M.I.T.  Dr. Abbot has spoken out against affirmative action programs at the University of Chicago.  Dr. Abbot, who is white, said that some diversity programs treat “people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.”  Dr. Abbot is not a member of the Proud Boys; he said he favors a diverse pool of applicants selected on merit.  His lecture, by the way, was not about affirmative action and would not have mentioned it.

Some faculty members and grad students immediately protested.  They said Dr. Abbot was “infuriating,” and “inappropriate.”  They demanded his lecture be cancelled.  And M.I.T. did just that.  

What I thought was a bastion of learning, of academic freedom, of the free exchange of ideas and the scientific method caved.  Chickened out.

I have a number of thoughts about this.  First of all, at my very first teaching job in California at Hartnell College in Salinas, I publicly opposed Hartnell’s affirmative action plan, which involved hard quotas.  I believe those programs should be based on class and income, not race or gender, and should involve recruitment and encouragement and tutoring, not hard quotas.  I am pretty sure that today I would have been dismissed.

I firmly believe that American race relations should receive greater emphasis.  Much of our history has been hidden for too long, and it needs to be taught.  Do you know who doesn’t believe that?  Legislators in about 45 states.  Professors at M.I.T. and other universities who ban speech or even a hint of controversy are setting some very dangerous precedents.

Those professors and grad students and M.I.T. administrators who think they are protecting our feelings from being hurt ought to be ashamed.  Don’t shut ideas down, counter them with better ideas.  If the only way you can prevail is by censorship, you probably shouldn’t be teaching in a university.

Here’s the good news.  The day after Dr. Abbot’s speech was cancelled, Princeton University invited him to give the same speech on the same day.  (By the way, Dr. Abbot also opposes legacy admissions.  Let’s see what M.I.T. has to say about that.)

The Taliban and vaccines

 The Taliban have announced that they will be ensuring that Afghan children are vaccinated against polio.  

Restricting "forever chemicals"

 Biden’s popularity is dropping.  People are angry about rising gas prices, Haitians at the border, supply disruptions, etc., etc.  Me, I’m happy.  The EPA is on track to regulate toxic industrial compounds known as PFAS.  These chemicals are called “forever chemicals” because they remain in the environment for years, causing cancer and low birth weights.  They are used in all kinds of consumer products, including non-stick frying pans and water-repellant sports gear.  The chemicals have been found in over 300 military installations.

It’s high time they are restricted, and the EPA under Biden is doing it.

A little help here

 I am tired of seeing Trump signs around my neighborhood.  They are a blight on the landscape and a reminder that we had a president who did his best to subvert an election, egging on his supporters to attack the Capitol and his attorneys to use extra-legal means to prevent a president-elect from taking office for the first time in American history.

I would like to order signs to counter this cult of Trump.  I thought of “American Values:  Democracy and Science.”  “Democracy over Dictatorship” is probably too subtle.  I’d like some suggestions.  No vulgarity please.  You can send your ideas to <hiramc@ptd.net>.  

Asking Doyle Heffley for a favor

A few days ago Morning Call columnist Paul Muschick wrote about Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano’s efforts to overturn last November’s presidential election.  Muschick also noted that Pennsylvania had the third largest number of people charged for the riot at the Capitol on January 6.  (Texas and Florida had more.)  

I decided to write to my state representative, Doyle Heffley, who thus far, to my knowledge, has not spoken out on this issue.  Here is a copy of my letter:

Dear Rep. Heffley:  

I could probably count the number of issues on which you and I agree on one hand.  I assume that one of those issues would be that our governing officials are chosen by the people in fair and free elections.  People like Sen. Doug Mastriano are now casting doubt on our electoral system, as are a majority of Trump supporters, who, with no evidence, believe the presidential election was stolen.  

You know the people who run our elections in Carbon County.  You frequently visit polling places in the County.  You know that while occasional mistakes are made, no one is cheating on the vote count.

I urge you to step forward and defend our electoral process.  This is not an issue like Sunday hunting or bridge tolls or mask wearing; this gets at the heart of the American republican form of government.   

Yard signs

 Today I took around yard signs for the Democratic candidates for Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Superior Court, and Commonwealth Court, four candidates in all.  I put over 100 miles on the truck and either delivered the signs to various activists or actually stuck them into lawns–with permission, of course.

I did a tour of Carbon County, visiting Towamensing, Lower Towamensing, East Penn, Mahoning, and Banks Townships the boroughs of Summit Hill and Nesquehoning, and the village of Tresckow.

Are yard signs important?  Short answer:  yes.  They increase name recognition, and they give hope to supporters.  I am convinced that one of the reasons Biden did better in Carbon County in 2020 than Clinton did in 2016 is because of the large number of Biden yard signs along with billboards.  All Clinton voters saw was Trump signs; Biden voters realized he had support and they weren’t alone.

Bottom line:  I feel good about today’s work.

Guns and Knives

 Tonight I was discussing “open carry” with a friend of mine, and he said more people were killed each year by knives than by guns.  I told him no way, but I didn’t have anything to back up my opinion, so I let it go.  After he left I looked up some statistics.  In 2018, according to the FBI, the murder statistics looked like this:

handguns 6,603

knives         1,515

blunt objects           443

rifles   297

shotguns           235

“other guns”   167

There were also poisonings, drownings, asphyxiation, and a few other minor categories, but they were fairly insignificant except to the people who were murdered and their friends and families.

The Official Song of the Commonwealth of Virginia

 We just returned from a visit to Linda’s uncle in Newport News, Virginia.  No Wi-Fi, which explains why no new posts the last two days.  But I’m back now, and I want to share the former official song of the State of Virginia, adopted on Feb. 22, 1940, by House Joint Resolution No. 10.  Over the years the legislature made some word changes, and the song was dropped in 1997.  It was written by James Bland, a Black songwriter known as “the Black Stephen Foster.”  I found it when I was picking through some material I had collected on Virginia.  The sheet also included the state tree, state flower, state bird, state flag, and the state dog.  No, the state dog was not the bloodhound, and no, the state bird was not Jim Crow, although I would not have been surprised.  

Here is the song “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia.”

Carry me back to old Virginia,

There’s where the cotton and the corn and ‘tatoes grow,

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,

There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.

There’s where I labor’d so hard for old Massa,

Day after day in the field of yellow corn,

No place on earth do I love more sincerely,

Than old Virginia, the State where I was born.

The Chorus is the first four lines above.  The second verse goes like this:

Carry me back to old Virginia.

There let me live ‘till I wither and decay,

Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wander’d,

There’s where this old darkey’s life will pass away.

Massa and Missis have long gone before me,

Soon will we meet on that bright and golden shore,

There we’ll be happy and free from all sorrow,

There’s where we’ll meet and we’ll never part no more.

My kind of Democrat

 Today, when I was distributing yard signs for the Democratic judicial candidates, I met a older guy who told me how he began to vote Democratic.

Years ago, when we voted by machine, you could pull down the little levers above each candidate’s name if you wanted to split your ticket, or you could pull a big lever for either the Democrats or the Republicans, and all the little levers above the candidates would click into place.  After you closed the curtain, voting straight ticket took about three seconds.

This guy’s father told him to go in and pull the big lever above the Democratic Party.  His father went with him to the polls, and he took his time voting.  When he opened the curtain his father said, “What the f--- took you so long?”

He replied, “I just wanted to look around.”

His father told him, “Listen.  In the future you just go in there and pull the big D.”  He said he always remembered that advice.

Stuffing a drop box?

 Somebody in Lackawanna County put a number of ballots in a drop box at the same time, and now some Republicans are in a tizzy, using this as an excuse to try to eliminate drop boxes for ballots.  What they ought to do is get rid of the requirement that each voter must put only his or her ballot into the drop box.  If I can collect ballots from my neighbors and save them a trip to Jim Thorpe, why shouldn’t I be able to do that?

I would remind these Republicans that each ballot has to be inside a security envelope, and that security envelope must be signed by the voter.  The only thing that seems to have happened in Lackawanna County was that a voter was no doubt doing a favor.  Luckily we don’t have restrictions on mailing letters or returning library books for friends.  Now let’s get rid of the requirement that each voter must individually drive to a drop box.

PA adults like their bodies

 “Pennsylvanians proud of their physical appearance.”  That was a headline in the Allentown Morning Call today.  An online art gallery entitled SINGULART looked at a year’s worth of Google searches that inquired how to boost body confidence.  

According to this study, which is definitely NOT scientific, Colorado ranked first in ”body confident adults,” but PA was second.  This has to be the biggest example of self-delusion ever.  I mean, go into any Walmart and look around.  

On the other hand, Pennsylvanians may have transcended issues of how they appear on the outside, confident that physical appearance counts much less than enlightened attitudes and inner happiness.

Or they are high on something.

Rally in Scranton

 Today the Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania sponsored a rally at Scranton City Hall.  The rally, featuring Congressman Matt Cartwright and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, urged Congress to pass the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill.  Speakers pointed out the bill had provisions to clean up acid mine drainage, an important issue in the anthracite coal region.  Linda and I drove to Scranton to lend our support.  If you saw the rally on TV, we were the ones behind the speaker holding the signs that said “Climate Action Now.”

Parks and Monuments

 You are probably aware that National Parks have become overcrowded, especially since the Covid epidemic.  Overuse often means a less meaningful experience for visitors as well as harm to the natural areas in the parks.  

One way to lessen the crowding at parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone would be to increase the number of parks, and that can be done very easily simply by re-naming what are now called monuments.  We visited the Colorado National Monument this past summer.  It is less than five miles off I-70 near Grand Junction, and it is magnificent.  I had driven past that monument probably 20 times and never stopped because of the word “monument.”  When you think monument, you think one thing, like a statue.

Re-naming a monument a park really would have an impact.  After the New River Gorge in West Virginia was renamed a park last December, visitors increased by 21 percent in the following months.  

By the way, the difference between a monument and a park is that monuments are named by Presidents and parks by Congress.

I will admit that spreading out visitors might not be m much of a solution if there are simply too many people trying to visit natural areas.  It may be that parks have two incompatible purposes, first to preserve natural areas, and second, to provide recreation.  I’m not sure those two purposes can co-exist.

One-person rule

 About 30 years ago I was a delegate to the Green Party organizing convention held in Oakland.  One proposal was advanced to make decisions by unanimous consent.  The person who made this suggestion noted that some Indian tribes discussed issues until everyone in the tribe agreed with the decision.

I have no idea if that is true, but I strongly objected on the basis that any decision that required unanimous consent potentially gave dictatorial power to one person.  That one person could hold up the entire group unless all the members of that group came around.

That is exactly what Senator Manchin of West Virginia is doing.  It isn’t one bit democratic, either small “d” or large “D.”  I hope that in 2022 the Democrats increase their majority so that democracy can return to the Senate.

The day anger disappeared

 OK, maybe not entirely.  People still got righteously mad at creepy Mitch McConnell, and some idiot in Arizona killed some people on a train, but overall the level of anger in the country dissipated considerably.

Facebook and Instagram were disabled most of the day.  Maybe there really is a god.

An amazing Covid graph

 My friend Bill sent me the link to a graph of Covid deaths by country over the past two years.  It is truly amazing, and I urge you to take a look at it.  It will take less than two minutes.

https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=covid+deaths+usa&fr=yfp-t-s&ei=UTF-8&fp=1

Instagram Kids

 Facebook executives were on Capitol Hill this past week to discuss the “Instagram Kids” app.  Before the hearing, Facebook announced it was pausing work on what has become a controversial development.  Facebook’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said, “Our products actually add value and enrich teens’ lives, they enable them to connect with their friends, their family.”

Facebook said the new app would insure that body shaming, trolling, bullying, racism, and targeted advertising were kept out, and the version would be safe for kids 12 and under.

Facebook also announced that it was developing a new line of products derived from snake oil, and that it also had a bridge in Brooklyn it was planning to sell.

Commander Cody, 1944-2021

 There are times when I think about life on Morton Street in Alameda in the early 70s, Saturday nights, cheap red wine, various roommates and friends, sitting around smoking and listening to Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen singing “Down to Seeds and Stems Again Blues,” and I get all verklempt.  

Now that was a band.  And those were good times indeed.  On Sunday Commander Cody, whose real name was George Frayne, died.  Rest in peace.