Monthly Archives: October 2013

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Abortion becomes ultimate wedge issue

An editorial in the Monday Amarillo Globe-News poses an interesting — but patently unfair — question about a Texas state senator and probable candidate for Texas governor.

“(W)hat does state Sen. Wendy Davis bring to the table other than support for abortion?”

That was the question. Davis, D-Fort Worth, is likely to announce this week that she’ll seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2014. She’s a star in a Texas Democratic Party that has been bereft of shining lights for the past two decades.

I’ll talk later about Davis’s candidacy but I will discuss abortion as a campaign issue.

Davis filibustered a Republican-sponsored bill this past summer that would have placed serious restrictions on women’s ability to seek an abortion. She won a temporary victory and gained considerable political mileage from that fleeting triumph. The Legislature approved the bill in a subsequent special session and Gov. Rick Perry signed it into law.

Does she “support” abortion? One would have to assume that Davis’s filibuster was meant to signal a support for the procedure on demand, for whatever reason. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Wendy Davis declare her “support” for abortion. What she opposes, I’m able to surmise, are laws that restrict women from making that choice for themselves.

Indeed, it is unfair to ascribe “support for abortion” to Sen. Davis, if one is to look at her own history. She became pregnant while she was unmarried. She chose to give birth to her child. She reared that child to adulthood and along the way earned a good education and has carved out a nice career in public service.

Yet the abortion debate too often turns on these wrong-headed assumptions anti-abortion rights folks make about those who favor the rights of women to end a pregnancy. They often suggest that if you believe a women should have the right to make that choice then you are by definition “pro-abortion.”

The discussion should be far more nuanced than that. Sadly, it’s not. Abortion has become arguably the most divisive wedge issue in American politics.

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VA: A federal agency that actually works

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I come before you today to sing the praises of a federal government agency that actually delivers for the people it is intended to serve.

Yes, I realize such praise is highly unlikely on this day when much of the federal government has shut down because of crappy political posturing in our nation’s capital. I have to get this opinion off my chest.

I ventured to the Thomas E. Creek Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Amarillo this morning for a minor — and routine — dermatological procedure. The note I received the other day asked me to report 30 minutes early to ensure that the staff at the VA hospital could stay on time. I figured that was a good call, given that my appointment was in the late morning and it likely would be backed up no matter how early everyone got there.

So, I reported 30 minutes early. My appointment was at 11 a.m. At precisely 11, the nurse practitioner called my name and I went back to the room where she would perform the procedure. We exchanged a few pleasantries; the NP told me she recognized my name from my previous life as a newspaper columnist and offered a nice word about the work I did back then.

She asked about my military service. We talked some more as she filled out some paperwork. She cut the small lesion off my leg, told me what to take to ease the discomfort and said she’d have the results back from the lab in a few days.

I walked out the door at 11:25 a.m.

This event deserves mention today because the federal government gets pilloried almost every minute of every waking hour by those who have a bone to pick with some agency. The VA hospital in Amarillo is known throughout the Texas Panhandle — although I’m certain not unanimously — as an agency that performs beautifully.

The feds at every level — from the White House and Capitol Hill on down — are getting scorn heaped on them because of the shutdown of many key agencies. I would hate to be a tourist today who was hoping to spend a day at one of our national parks.

I’ve only been a VA patient for a few weeks. I enrolled in late spring; indeed, that process took less than 45 minutes from the moment I walked into the lobby to get it started. Thus, my experience with the VA has been fairly limited. I enjoy good health now and hope to sustain it well into my much older age, which should augur well for future appointments with the Department of Veterans Affairs medical establishment.

So, on this day when no one can predict when much of the federal government will work again — if ever — for the people who pay the freight, I want to hand out a bouquet to one agency that’s working just fine.

This veteran appreciates it.

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Paychecks, please, members of Congress

I watched President Obama spell out Monday afternoon which government functions would shut down and which would remain open.

Fine, I thought. I knew that. Then he got to the part about federal employees’ pay. Those who work in, say, our national parks system, wouldn’t get paid while the government closes down their operations, according to the president.

OK. Let me stipulate once more: The people responsible for this mess need to give up their pay right along with the folks who are working on the front lines of the federal government.

I have stated already that I place the bulk of the blame on this cluster bleep on congressional Republicans who keep looking for ways to defund a health care reform that’s already been enacted and affirmed by the highest court in the land. If they were not so adamant in their hatred of the Affordable Care Act, much of the government would be operating today.

But they don’t shoulder this responsibility alone. Democrats have been on the field too. So has the president and vice president. So, how about all of them giving back their pay while the government remains shuttered? They could really do the country a service by insisting that they not collect it when operations resume fully.

None of this will matter much to the government’s bottom line. Leadership, though, at times requires leaders to demonstrate that they are willing to pay the same price as those who depend on them for their own livelihood.

Damn few of these folks need the money they earn to put groceries on the table.

Give some of it back, ladies and gentlemen, while you’re messing around with our government.

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Bilingualism done right

I met a charming family today and I want to share what little I know about them. I sense they are plotting a bright future for their children.

Mom and Dad are immigrants from Mexico. They moved to the Oklahoma Panhandle about eight years ago. They have two daughters, one 3 years of age; the other girl is an infant. I spoke freely with Mom and Dad and as I spoke to the little girl, Mom informed me she speaks very little English.

“We speak Spanish at home,” Mom said, adding that the 3-year-old “understands” English quite well, but she just doesn’t speak it much. No need, apparently, given her age and the apparently limited exposure she has to other children.

No sweat, I thought. She’ll get that exposure in due course.

I thought briefly for a moment about my own parents. They were children of immigrants, too. Neither of them spoke English at home prior to enrolling in public school; Mom grew up in Portland, Ore., Dad in New Kensington, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. All four of my grandparents were Greeks through and through. They spoke their native language at home, period. Dad’s parents brought seven children into the world and all of them were and are as fluent in Greek as they are in English. Same for Mom and her two brothers. All of my grandparents became U.S. citizens and all were devoted patriots who loved their adopted homeland. My maternal grandmother was especially proud, as she once declared she had no interest in returning to the place of her birth. “Why should I?” she asked. “America is my home.”

Both of my parents learned English the old-fashioned “total immersion” way. They were thrust into environments where English was mandatory. You spoke it or else. You learned it or you didn’t succeed. “English as a Second Language” classes didn’t exist in the late 1920s.

They do now.

My hope for the children of the folks I met today? I hope Mom and Dad throw them into the proverbial language “water” when they’re old enough for school. Total immersion learning isn’t harmful to children, who learn to adapt quickly. My own parents — and millions of others in their generation — were perfect examples of how that system of language-learning works.

I’m glad for this couple I met today that they speak their native tongue at home. It’s good that the children will be bilingual and will grow up in a society that should encourage more children to speak more than one language.

They’re headed for successful lives.