national news, political news

There’s a silver lining in this flag debate

Wait! I think I see a silver lining beginning to shine through as the nation continues this debate over the meaning of a flag.

Americans — all of us — finally might begin to understand the meaning of the Confederacy, why it was formed in the first place and why its place in history has to be put completely in its proper context.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

The debate has ignited in the wake of the Charleston, S.C., church massacre. South Carolina legislators have agreed “to debate” whether to take down the rebel flag that flies on the statehouse grounds in Columbia. Let ’em debate, then take the thing down.

But the broader issue must be to determine the Confederacy’s place in American history.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in Atlantic magazine: “The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.”

I’ll stipulate here, as if it needs stipulation, that I am not a Southerner by birth. I was born and reared in Oregon, way up yonder in Yankee territory. Oregon became a state on Feb. 14, 1859 and sent troops to battle to fight to preserve the Union. But for the past 31 years, my family and I have lived in Texas, which was one of those Confederate States of America, those states that committed the treasonous act of seceding from the Union and fighting tooth and nail to preserve something called euphemistically “states rights.”

It has been papered over by Confederate apologists ever since that the underlying reason for going to war in the first place was to keep black Americans subjugated. The individuals who governed these Dixie states wanted to maintain the right to flout federal law and that if state officials felt it was OK to allow slave ownership, then they would be willing to fight to the death to preserve that right.

They did. They lost that fight. Yet the justification for going to war remains central to this discussion of “Southern heritage.”

The article attached to this post lays out clearly the intentions of those who decided to go to war with the United States of America. Read the notations taken from that time and you’ll understand why this discussion is important to have and how the tragedy in Charleston has opened up this effort to remind us of why Americans went to war against fellow Americans.

The shooting has stopped but the battle endures. Those who keep insisting that the Civil War was about protecting state sovereignty are going to lose this one, too.

 

political news

Fox dumps Palin … imagine that

The Fox News Channel says it has parted company with Sarah Palin, the former half-term Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee.

But it hasn’t. Not really. Palin will continue to get guest spots on Fox. She’ll get to have her voice heard. She’ll also be free to appear on other news and commentary outlets — have you put her on your speed dial, MSNBC?

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/sarah-palin-dumped-by-fox-119357.html?hp=l2_4

She remains a hot commodity among TEA party conservatives. She speaks their language, whatever that is.

But she also has become a political circus act. The reality TV appearances haven’t delivered any broader appeal. The drama involving some of her family members has created more snickers and ridicule than any politician should want. Her bombastic rhetoric has become tiresome and, frankly, quite repetitive.

However, in this age where public policy intermingles with pop culture, Sarah Barracuda will remain among us.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona chose Palin to run with him in 2008, seeking a “game-changer” in the race for the presidency. Her selection might have changed the game, all right, but not necessarily in the way Sen. McCain expected or hoped — especially as American began hearing the things that flew out of her mouth. Remember the “death panels”? And those amazing stumbles while being interviewed by what she calls the “lame-stream media”? Priceless.

As Politico reports: “When Palin was at her zenith, she made frequent appearances, and Fox installed a camera at her house. But executives consider her less relevant now, and her appearances were sometimes hampered by the vast time difference with Alaska.”

Is she going away? Not any time soon. If ever.

 

national news

Symbols matter, but keep eye on big picture

confederate flag

The Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, racism and human bondage.

So are the statues of Confederate “heroes” that populate public property throughout the Deep South.

It’s good that governments are taking aim at these symbols. Indeed, many pundits — and I include myself in that gang — have gone overboard to cry out for the removal of flags and statues.

It’s important that we rid ourselves of these visible, tangible and identifiable symbols. They need not stare us in the face and remind us of the path we’ve taken as a nation.

The bigger issue, though, lies in what they represent. The racism. The belief that some of us are better than others merely because of the pigment of our skin.

We’ve had a lot of intense discussion about these issues in the past several days. A young white man walked into a black church, sat down next to black Christians and joined them in a Bible study. The young man then pulled out a gun and shot nine of his acquaintances to death. Dylann Roof has been accused of the crime and we’re learning more about the young man each day, about his hatred of African-Americans and the deep-seated racism he harbored deep within what passes for his soul.

Is he alone? Hardly.

How do we rid society of this kind of evil? That remains the 64 bazillion-dollar question today as we continue to grieve over the deaths of those people in Charleston, S.C.

Yes, the symbols must be taken down. The Confederate battle flag belongs in museums, as President Obama noted. Indeed, removing these symbols doesn’t mean we ignore the things for which they stand. It means we must redouble our vigilance against those who would do the kind of harm against fellow human beings that was done this past week in that Charleston church.

The campaign against hate must continue.

 

national news, State news, Uncategorized

Private prisons taking needed heat

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Columbia University has ended its investment program with privately run prisons.

Why? Too many reports of abuse by prison officials.

The report of Columbia ending this particular relationship brings to mind an issue that’s stuck in my craw for years. I’ve never liked the principle of turning over corrections to private businesses.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/23/3672903/columbia-divest-private-prisons/

My belief is that corrections completes a public obligation circle that ought to remain part of the public’s responsibility.

I’m likely to take heat for thinking this, but that’s what I believe.

I look at this in a straightforward way, in my view.

The public pays law enforcement to catch criminals, to arrest them, book them into jail and file detailed reports on what the suspect allegedly did.

Then the public pays the salaries of prosecutors to make the case for the state or the county that the individual is guilty of the crime for which he or she has been accused of committing.

The public also conceivably might pay the salary of the defendant’s lawyer if he or she cannot afford private counsel. It’s part of the Miranda rights text that all criminal suspects are supposed to hear while they’re being arrested.

The judge who presides over a criminal trial is paid from the public trough. The public also pays the jurors — admittedly not much — to determine the suspect’s guilt or innocence.

If jurors convict the defendant, then in my mind it falls on the public to pay for the incarceration of that individual for as long as the publicly paid jury determines he or she should spend in prison.

I’ve long been suspicious of private firms running correctional institutions because the public needs to have ironclad guarantees of its oversight responsibility. The public needs full, complete and unfettered access to everything that goes on behind those walls.

We’ve marched a long way down the road already toward turning over much of our corrections operations over to private firms. I wish we could reverse course.

I didn’t have a particular problem when Texas went on a prison-building boom in the early 1990s to make more room for prisoners. A federal judge had ruled the state had violated inmates’ constitutional rights against “cruel and unusual punishment” by cramming them into prison cells. So, it fell on the state to make it right.

Would a private prison firm be compelled to respond in such a manner?

The public pays for suspects’ arrest, prosecution and sentencing.

The public has a responsibility, therefore, to complete its duty by housing these individuals.

 

Sports news

Let’s end the Pete Rose campaign for HOF

How about we simply give up trying to debate whether Pete “The Gambler” Rose deserves to be in baseball’s Hall of Fame?

I’ve grown tired of the discussion.

ESPN has aired a segment that revealed pretty conclusive evidence that Rose bet on baseball while he was playing the game, not just managing a team.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/roses-hof-chances-now-all-but-gone/ar-AAbYo90

Didn’t the man dubbed “Charlie Hustle” deny all those years that he never bet on baseball while he played the game? Didn’t that stand as a possible qualifier that could get him inducted into the Hall of Fame?

Good grief. MLB’s rulebook is as clear as it gets.

Betting on baseball results in a lifetime ban. Pete Rose is still among us, last I saw. That means he doesn’t qualify for the hall.

He at first denied betting on games while he managed the Cincinnati Reds, where he played most of his career. Then he said, well, yeah I bet on games — but not on games involving my teams.

What else might we learn about this guy? He has said all along he didn’t bet while playing the game. That denial now appears headed for the crapper.

I understand fully that Rose got more hits than anyone else in the history of the game. I get that he played his guts out and got the most of the talent he had, which — truth be told — wasn’t as much as many other players of his era. He was a stellar hitter.

He also was a compulsive gambler — who broke one of baseball’s cardinal rules.

I know the Hall of Fame is full of racists, drunks, drug users, womanizers — and even a couple of pitchers known for throwing spitballs.

None of those sins, though, translates to lifetime bans.

Gambling on baseball? That’s the deal breaker.

local news

Social Security makes my head spin

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

This morning my wife and I had a conversation with a woman who manages our retirement account. She is as sharp as they come and she works for one of the financial services giants.

It involved Social Security. I’m about to become fully eligible for SSI benefits. That will happen near the end of the year when I turn 66 years of age.

So, what’s the issue? Easy to do. Just sign up and start collecting the benefit into which I paid for my entire working life. No sweat, right?

Oh, no. Not even close.

I’m likely going to have to jettison one or more of the part-time jobs I’ve been working at since the fall of 2012, shortly after my full-time job as a print journalist came to a screeching halt.

Why is that? I’d make too much money … possibly. If I earn too much income in addition to what Social Security benefits I’d start collecting, the federal government could start taxing me heavily on the SSI income.

Don’t want to do that.

Do I want to wait until I’m 70, at which time the monthly benefit would increase? Probably not. I’m still working those part-time jobs, and by the time I turn 70 1/2 years of age, I need to start withdrawing money annually from the retirement fund my wife and I have built over many years of hard work.

That money becomes part of our taxable income.

So that money also is factored into what the feds can tax us.

At this point, as I listened to our financial adviser explain all this, I could feel the veins in my neck start to throb.

My wife and I had gone downtown to get some answers to a simple question: When is the best time to collect Social Security; do we do it now or do we wait?

It turns out there’s no simple answer to the question. It’s complicated. Highly complicated.

The more I listened to all of these explanations of what happens if we do this or that, or don’t do any of it, the more I began to think that perhaps the tax-simplification advocates out there may be on to something.

Our adviser’s final recommendation: Come back and see me just about the time of your 66th birthday and we’ll see where we stand.

I want to collect the benefit to which I’m entitled. However, these jobs I’m working are providing me with too much fun to give any of them up.

Little did I realize that retirement could be so complicated.

 

 

national news

‘N-word’ burns my ears, even when POTUS uses it

Barack Obama’s use of the “n-word” the other day in an interview made me cringe.

OK, he’s the president of the United States. He’s partly of African-American descent. The subject of his media interview was racism. So he’s entitled, I guess, to use the word.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/245793-obama-uses-n-word-to-provoke-talk-about-racism

But I hate the sound of the word. I hate seeing it written. I hate hearing it spoken. In the words of one of my sons, “It makes my ears bleed.”

The use of the word had become a staple of black comedians’ efforts at some sort of self-deprecation. They have felt it’s OK to use the word, drawing laughs in the belief of audience members that “It’s all right for them to use the word.”

Where I come from, it’s not all right for anyone to use a word intended as a racial slur.

That includes gang members who tag buildings with the word and who use it in casual conversation among themselves.

Rap artists have bastardized the word with crazy spellings meant for mispronunciation. It’s not the actual “n-word,” but you hear it said and you know what it means.

According to The Hill, Obama told an interviewer: “Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n—– in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”

The comments, of course, have come in the wake of that hideous massacre in Charleston and the intense debate it has launched — yet again — over whether racism still poisons our society.

Of course it does.

I get what the president says about the impolite use of the “n-word” and whether it can bring an end to the racist strains that infect so many of us today. Striking it from our vocabulary, though, is a start.

legal news, national news

Your guns are safe … honest

Given that social media commentary becomes part of the public domain once it’s posted, I want to share a thought from a friend of mine who put this out there.

“Is it just me, or did I miss the President saying he wanted to confiscate all guns? No one wants your f****** guns!!!! What I want is a conversation of whether or why gun violence is an epidemic in this country and what we can do about it. For beginners, you folks on the other side need to convince me why adding more guns is the answer. And I’m skeptical about defending yourself from the government, because right now quite frankly some gun owners scare me a helluva lot more than the government. Thanks for listening.”

My friend is a lawyer. He’s a smart fellow — and not just because I happen to agree with him.

Gun-rights advocates keep saying things that aren’t true, starting with their false claims that President Obama wants to take our guns away from us. After that, the lies spin off into fairy tales about martial law, seeking to suspend the Constitution and a conspiracy to get Barack Obama elected to a third consecutive term.

Another friend of mine actually told me — to my face — that he believes the third-term conspiracy actually has merit. I laughed out loud.

My friend’s request is a reasonable one, which is to have a rational conversation about whether there’s a way to stem the flow of guns in our society without doing harm to the Second Amendment, the one that guarantees Americans the right to “keep and bear arms.”

Can’t we have that conversation without the crazy talk that comes mostly from one side proclaiming that it’s all a plot to take away our guns?

 

national news, political news

Confederacy debate picks up steam

This national discussion we’re having about the Confederacy, its symbols and its place in American history has energized a lot of Americans.

News came out today that Wal-Mart — a company headquartered in Bentonville, Ark. — is pulling its Confederate gear out of its stores.

I mention the hometown of Wal-Mart because it’s in Arkansas, one of the states comprising the Confederate States of America.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wal-mart-pulls-confederate-flag-products-in-wake-of-shooting/ar-AAbXYMU

The catalyst for this discussion, of course, was that terrible tragedy in Charleston, S.C., where a shooter vented his rage against black people by killing nine people in a church as he reportedly was studying the Bible with them.

Dylann Roof is accused of the crime. Roof, 21, is all but known to be a racist hater, wanting to launch a “race war” in the United States.

The Confederate States of America — and its symbol, the flag that for now flies on the statehouse grounds in South Carolina — committed a treasonous act in 1861 by seceding from the Union and then starting the Civil War with its bombardment of Fort Sumter in, of all places, Charleston Harbor.

The Confederacy long has symbolized treason. Over time it has symbolized hatred of some white people against black people.

Now we see a corporate giant taking its Confederate gear off its shelves.

Yes, the let the discussion continue and let it make clear the things for which the Confederacy stands.

 

local news

Drought broken in South Texas?

You meet the most interesting people at RV parks.

We made an acquaintance the other evening. An elderly couple is traveling toward Calgary, Alberta to attend the Calgary Stampede. They were parked a few yards from us at an RV park in Dodge City, Kan. I noticed the Texas license plate on their fifth wheel.

“Where in Texas are you from?” I asked. He said he lives in McAllen.

We chatted a little bit. Then he told me the “drought is broken” in South Texas.

“Wow!” I thought. That was news to me.

He said they got about 7 inches of rain in a single day. The Rio Grande River is flowing nicely, he said.

I mentioned to him that we’ve nearly achieved our annual precipitation total so far — and the year isn’t quite halfway done.

Their drought is broken? But not ours?

I’m not going to challenge the gentleman’s assertion directly. Heck, for all I know the National Weather Service’s drought declarations for South Texas haven’t been as severe as they’ve been for much of the rest of the state.

But the drought surely is far from broken way up yonder, in the Texas Panhandle or all along the High Plains.

I will say this, however, about what we saw on our four-day excursion to Dodge City: The range land is remarkably green and lush. We didn’t see many playas on our travel north of Amarillo, through the Oklahoma Panhandle and into western Kansas.

But the ground looked gorgeous.

Is our drought broken? Hardly.

I hope our acquaintance from McAllen is correct about the drought condition in his part of the state. I’m a bit skeptical, but only because the drought hung for so long and it might take a bit longer for it to be declared a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, we could use some more rain to keep our grassland so green.

 

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