Eight Brave Souls

Five of the eight young men and women who stole files from the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971, have now come forward.  The statute of limitations has run out--they can no longer be prosecuted.  

What a favor they did for our country.  J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoia and his efforts to stifle anti-war dissent were exposed to the press and to the American public.  The F.B.I.’s Counterintelligence Program (or Cointelpro) was revealed as an attempt to destroy lives and ruin reputations of innocent Americans.

Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, later held hearings on the F.B.I.’s abuse of power.  The Church Committee’s final report said this:  “Too many people have been spied upon by too many government agencies, and too much information has been collected.”  Not much has changed in the past 40 years.

Incidentally, the F.B.I. had over 200 agents assigned to the Media burglary.  None of the eight burglars were ever caught.

Candidates

Someone forwarded the following to me years ago.  It is so old that I had printed it out on a “dot-matrix” printer.  I thought it was timely, given that some of us are searching for a candidate to run against Rep. Heffley.

It’s time to elect a world leader, and your vote counts.  Here’s the scoop on the three leading candidates.

Candidate A:  associates with ward heelers. He’s had two mistresses.  He chain smokes and drinks up to 8 martinis a day.

Candidate B:  was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks up to a quart of brandy every evening.

Candidate C:  is a decorated war hero.  He’s a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn’t had any illicit affairs.

Candidate A is FDR, Candidate B is Churchill, and Candidate C, of course, is Adolf Hitler.  

The conclusion:  you don’t have to be perfect in your personal life to be a good political leader, and conversely, just because you are a nice guy personally doesn’t mean you should hold office.  Think about throwing your hat into the ring.

The 5000-year-old earth

To me evolution is like gravity.  It just is.  67% of Democrats accept the idea of evolution.  That means that 33%, or 1/3 of Democrats, don’t accept a concept that is basic to biology and medicine and has universal scientific support.

I take little comfort that only 43% of Republicans accept evolution.  I expect them to deny science.  They do it all the time.  But 1/3 of the Democrats?  That’s amazing.

The data comes from a recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. 

Help us out here, Sarah Palin

This past October Dick Metcalf, a columnist for the magazine Guns & Ammo, wrote an opinion piece entitled “Let’s Talk Limits.”  Mr. Metcalf said, “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.”  Two arms manufacturers (and major advertisers), Remington and Ruger, demanded Mr. Metcalf be fired. He also received death threats. The magazine did fire Metcalf, and he was taken off a tv show about firearms.

When the “Duck Dynasty” guy made homophobic and racist remarks, Fox “News” and Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter started yelling about First Amendment rights.  I am sure we will be hearing from them about Mr. Metcalf’s First Amendment rights any day now.

Social media as time suck

My friend Chris keeps telling me I need a Facebook page.  She says I could post on it, and expand my readership.  She says I need to get social media savvy.  She can’t believe that I don’t have a cell phone, let alone a smart phone.

Now I read in the latest issue of Rolling Stone in an article entitled “Snapshot of a New Generation,” that 31% of people ages 18-34 spend 4 hours or more a day on social media.  Only 14% of the same group think the electoral college works.

I’ll bet you that fewer than 5% of that group could give you a rudimentary explanation of how the electoral college works.  

I know that it is popular for old curmudgeons to decry the ignorance of the younger generation, but 1/3 of the millennials spending four or more hours watching cat videos and texting inane messages?  I mean, come on.

Health care on the agenda

In Public Administration classes students learn that policy-making generally follows a certain sequence.  An issue enters the political agenda.  Resources are mobilized for and against proposed changes.  Legislation action may then occur, followed by implementation of the policy.  Implementation results in feedback, which in turn brings about adjustments to the policy.  Policy-making, therefore, is often diagrammed as circular loop.

The most difficult part of the whole process is getting on the political agenda. Here are just two examples.  We were polluting the coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania for 150 years before acid mine drainage, air pollution, and mountaintop removal became a public issue.  Blacks were segregated for 75 years after the end of Reconstruction, but civil rights did not emerge as a national issue until the 1950s.  

Health care was on the national agenda during the Truman administration, but it never ever reached the legislative stage, and it died out as an issue.  Briefly revived during the Nixon and Clinton administrations, it again disappeared.  This didn’t mean the absence of problems--children and adults died every year from lack of affordable health care, but it wasn’t discussed.

This time the issue will stick.  I’ve written about flaws in the Affordable Health Care Act, and I’ve discussed some ways it might adjusted, but here is something I’m certain of.  Even if the Democrats lose big in 2014 Congressional races, we will not see a wholesale dismantling of government activity in providing health care.  We might see all sorts of adjustments and tweaks, but this issue will remain on the American political agenda.  We will not go back to 2008.

Laboratories for democracy

When we discussed federalism in my American government class, I would point out that one advantage of a federal system is that states can experiment.  If one state adopted a policy that worked, other states would follow, and eventually the national government might adopt the policy as well.  Right now we have Colorado experimenting with legal marijuana, and gay marriage is spreading as states discover it has no downside.

In an article entitled “The Obamacare We Deserve” in today’s Times, Michael Moore discussed another state experiment.  Vermont is starting a single-payer system beginning in 2017.  Moore points out that the Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance law.  He also notes that if Vermont’s plan works, other states will be following its example.

He points out that in Montana, the governor has set clinics to treat state workers with no co-pay and no deductibles.  Doctors are salaried.  He says that Cisco, Google, and Pepsi are doing the same thing for their employees.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.