Monthly Archives: October 2013

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Can you say ‘gig ’em’ in Hebrew?

I was thrilled to see the Texas Tribune story about Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp’s planned announcement that A&M was going to the Middle East to open a “peace campus.”

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/22/texas-m-announce-plans-branch-campus-israel/

The Aggies are going to set up a branch campus in Nazareth, Israel, of all places. It’s the result of some communication between Sharp and Manuel Trajtenberg, an Israeli economist who’s had this idea of bridging the distance between his country and ours.

I’m fascinated for a personal reason. I got to spend some time in Nazareth in 2009 as part of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange team. I learned that Nazareth over the years has become a primarily Arab community. Much of the Jewish population has moved into the suburbs around Nazareth, leaving the city proper to the Arabs.

It’s also a city with some magnificent Christian antiquities, such as the Church of the Annunciation, where Scripture tells us Mary learned she would give birth to the Son of God.

Now the Aggies are going to set up a campus in this holy city, bringing modernity to a community that is steeped in ancient tradition.

The Tribune reported that Sharp visited Israel earlier and had lunch with Trajtenberg, whom the Tribune described as “an economist who has chaired the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education in Israel for about four years. In that role, Trajtenberg has worked to increase access to higher education for, among other groups, the ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities.

“’There is no major academic institution in any Arab city or town within Israel,’ he observed in an interview with the Tribune.”

The announcement hasn’t been made official just yet. Sharp, along with fellow Aggie, Gov. Rick Perry, and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, will make it official on Wednesday.

This is a big deal for all parties concerned. Texas A&M University is establishing a tremendous foothold in a place where deep faith and bitter conflict exist in close proximity to each other.

Is there a better place than Nazareth to establish a university campus dedicated to peace?

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Congressional polls keep plummeting

I keep track of polls on occasion, the favorite of which is the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls.

It keeps arguably the most accurate account of polling activity for one reason: It averages all the polls together, the left-wing polls, the right-wing polls, the neutral polls — all of them. It then calculates the average of all the surveys taken together.

The latest RCP poll average on Congress’s approval with Americans is worth noting.

It puts the approval rating at 9.2 percent.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

It was at 9.6 percent just two days ago. A week before that it was at 10 percent.

Many individual polls suggest that Americans are so angry with Congress’s handling of the budget and debt ceiling kerfuffle that they might return the House of Representatives to Democratic control in next year’s midterm elections.

The thought is putting stars in the eyes of congressional Democrats, namely Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, who could get the gavel back in January 2015 as speaker of the House.

The Republican House majority is neither narrow or huge. Democrats have to capture 17 seats from the Republicans to win back control. That’s 17 out of 435 total seats. It’s not many. Were that to occur, President Obama could get his legislative agenda unstuck in a hurry. Issues such as immigration reform might actually get passed. Americans also finally might be able to have a budget passed in a timely fashion, without the hysterics and histrionics we’ve seen of late.

The strangest aspect, in my mind, of the fallout from the debt ceiling and government shutdown debacles is that many hardline Republicans aren’t getting the message. They’re vowing to continue fighting the battle — to defund the Affordable Care Act — that they just lost.

I’m sensing that stubbornness lies at the heart of Americans’ disapproval of Congress in general — and in Republicans in particular.

The next year is shaping up as a rough ride for the GOP.

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Bullying on the football field? You must be kidding

Aledo High School scored a 91-0 football victory over Western High School this past week.

The response from one of the Western parents was for the books: The parent filed a bullying complaint against Aledo … for running up the score.

http://www.wfaa.com/sports/high-school/Aledos-91-0-win-earns-formal-bullying-complaint-from-Western-Hills-parent-228766911.html

I don’t quite know how to respond to this one. I can start, I suppose, by stopping my laughter.

Aledo Head Coach Tim Buchannan said he kept his starting players on the field for 21 snaps. That’s it. Then he put in his reserves, who then continued to romp over Western.

What does a coach do? Does he tell his players to deliberately miss tackles or blocks?

This incident reminds me a bit of a sporting event I once reported on back in Oregon when I first started out as a journalist in the late 1970s. I was a sportswriter for a small paper in Oregon City. West Linn High School, across the Willamette River, was one of the schools I covered. West Linn had a very good baseball team. They were coached by a fine guy, Terry Pollreisz, who knew when his team was matched against an inferior opponent.

One afternoon, he found his team on the field against an utterly hapless opponent. They kept scoring runs virtually at will. Pollreisz then employed a strategy that backfired. When his players hit routine singles, he told them to run for second, hoping the other team would throw them out. It didn’t happen. The outfielders would toss balls into the stands. Pollreisz’s base-runners then would advance to third. Then they’d score on the next hit.

This went on until the game ended. I cannot recall the score. Suffice to say it was a mega-blowout.

The opposing coach then became angry with Pollreisz, accusing him of “running up the score.” Pollreisz’s said his intent was to give the other team ample opportunity to end these rallies.

The other team did not file a bullying complaint against West Linn’s team, which incidentally went on to win the Oregon state 5A championship that year.

I feel badly for Western High School’s team. Those kids’ esteem has been battered by a 91-0 defeat. However, they weren’t bullied.

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Jobs numbers ‘bad’? Not really

I was preparing myself this morning for a terrible jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

It didn’t arrive. What we got instead was a tally of 148,000 jobs created in September, with unemployment falling to 7.2 percent, the lowest it’s been since November 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/22/news/economy/september-jobs-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Are those figures great? No. Are they dismal? No.

I don’t quite know how to describe them. The political hounds on either side will spin it in their direction. Democrats will say the fight over whether to shut down the government hampered hiring. Republicans will say the shutdown didn’t have that much of an effect. Democrats will say 148,000 jobs added means more Americans are working than the previous month. Republicans will say the economy is still too sluggish to be described as being in “recovery” mode.

Hanging over all this is that 16-day shutdown, which delayed the release of the government figures. Maybe we need to wait for the October jobs report to determine what impact the shutdown had, if any.

I’m getting the sense that the mood in Washington is casting a pall over everything these days. Americans are angry at Congress and the White House. Although polling — the scientific kind, not those instant media polls that tell us nothing — tells us Republicans are taking the major body blows as a result of the shutdown and the debt ceiling “crisis.”

That’s the bad news. You want worse news?

The 2014 midterm elections are just around the corner. Get ready for even more politicization.

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JFK or the Gipper today? Forget about it!

Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe’s conservative columnist, believes John F. Kennedy’s name would be mud in today’s Democratic Party.

Perhaps so, given that JFK was no flaming liberal a la Barack Obama, John Kerry or Al Gore Jr.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/10/19/would-jfk-never-liberal-still-find-home-democratic-party/ZrxV7lJYHrvWxOjXItAuZJ/story.html

But allow me to finish the rest of that argument.

Just as Democrats wouldn’t embrace JFK today, the current Republican Party seems out of step with some of its own stalwarts — such as Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and, dare I say, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

All this is evidence of just how polarized the political climate has become in America. It’s become a place where working across the aisle is anathema to the so-called “true believers.” The result has been a government that no longer works as it should for the good of the entire country.

Kennedy was a pro-defense hawk. He hated communists. JFK sought to govern with muscle and was unafraid to threaten to use military force against our foes if the need presented itself … e.g., the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. A romantic thought has been kicked around for 50 years that had he lived and been re-elected in 1964 the Vietnam War would have ended much sooner, that Kennedy would have realized our involvement there was a mistake. I’m not quite so sure of that. Besides, who can know for certain what he would have done?

If we’re going to examine our partisan icons of the past, it’s good to look at all of them.

Goldwater is the father of the modern conservative movement. He became a classic libertarian who despised government interference in people’s private lives. Is that the GOP of today? Hardly.

Richard Nixon’s administration created the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the bogeymen that modern conservatives today want to abolish.

Ronald Reagan? Well, he made working with Democrats in Congress a virtual art form. His friendship with House Speaker Tip O’Neill became legendary, even while both men were at the height of their power.

They were icons in their day. Of the three GOP leaders of the past, only Reagan conjures up warm memories among today’s conservatives. My own view is that the Gipper would be disgusted at the open animosity his political descendants are exhibiting.

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Must vote early, but I still hate doing so

It occurred to me some time back that I have to vote early if I want my ballot to count.

Dadgummit!

We’ll be unable to vote Nov. 5, as we’ll be very busy that day. That means we’ve got to troop down to the Randall County Courthouse Annex and cast our vote early on a number of key ballot measures.

The state of Texas wants to amend its constitution nine more times, so the Legislature has referred nine amendments to voters; Amarillo City Hall wants to amend its century-old city charter and it, too, has referred some amendments to its residents; finally, the city is asking voters for permission to spend $36.5 million on a bond issue to build a recreational center in the southeast corner of the city.

This is a big deal. It’s also why I always prefer to vote on Election Day.

I’ve been voting in virtually every election dating back to 1972, when I became old enough to vote. The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, was ratified the previous year and that meant 1972 would be the first year I could vote. I turned 21 on Dec. 17, 1970, so my age put me in the middle of some kind of calendar vortex, meaning that I was too young to vote in 1970, but old enough to vote two years later.

It was a huge moment for me. I loved the form of pageantry associated with it. I loved waiting for my turn, visiting with fellow voters about what we were about to do.

You know what? I still enjoy voting on Election Day for that reason — and because of one more important factor.

Voting early — especially in elections involving living, breathing candidates — exposes voters to being snookered by their candidate. Suppose you vote for John Q. Candidate on the first day of early voting and then the story breaks the very next day that Mr. Candidate was caught stealing from Grandma’s bank account. Name the crime, you get the idea.

You cannot take your vote back. You’re stuck with having voted for a crook.

That’s another key reason I prefer waiting until Election Day to vote. I realize fully that you run into the same potential consequence the day after Election Day. John Q. Candidate could be caught committing a felony between that day and the time he is supposed to take office. But you’ve limited the possibility at least enough to be reasonably confident your vote won’t be wasted on such a bum.

The only thing worse than voting early is voting by mail, which is the law in some states — including the state where I was born, Oregon. You mark your ballot, stick it in an envelope, mail it to the secretary of state’s office — and pray to God in heaven it gets there, right?

No thanks.

Well, I’ll suck it up this time and cast my vote early. I still won’t like it. Voting early, though, is far better than not voting at all. At least I’ll preserve my right to complain about my government.

 

 

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Watch these jobs numbers carefully

The U.S. Labor Department is going to release some jobs numbers Tuesday, a bit later than planned.

Here’s my thinking on what we might see and what might be the reaction. The economy likely will not have added as many jobs as it has in recent months and the White House spin machine is going to kick into high gear to blame the slowdown on congressional Republicans.

The Labor Department was scheduled to send out those jobs numbers — along with the latest unemployment rate — on Oct. 4. It got delayed because part of the federal government had shut down three days earlier. That must have included those “non-essential” Labor Department analysts who crunch those numbers and release them to the public.

And why did the government shut down? It was largely because congressional Republicans kept insisting on a defunding of the Affordable Care Act. It didn’t happen. The government remained partially shuttered until just this past week, when the Senate leadership from both parties cobbled a plan together to reopen the government and lift the nation’s debt ceiling.

The impact of the shutdown, however, reportedly did have an adverse impact on the economy. Employers suspended their hiring; businesses stopped their buying, as did consumers; manufacturers slowed their output.

Some estimates put the net loss to the economy at something around $24 billion — although I haven’t yet heard anyone translate how the bean counters compute that dollar loss.

So, the latest jobs report might not be as rosy as recent reports. Republicans might try to blame it all on President Obama’s “failed economic policy,” even though the nation has added something like 8 million jobs — mostly in the private sector — during the past four years.

Democrats, meanwhile, will be able to play to citizens’ fresh memories about the government shutdown. It hurt the economy and the Labor Department numbers we get Tuesday might give Democrats more ammo to fire at their adversaries across the aisle.

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Would the ARC deprive business of revenue?

I am inclined to support a bond issue proposal heading for the Amarillo municipal ballot on Nov. 5, but a question comes to mind about the proposed Amarillo Recreation Center.

Is the city going to compete head-to-head with a private health club for business?

The Amarillo Town Club at 45th Avenue and Cornell Street has a large swimming pool where swimmers from Amarillo Independent School District’s four public high schools practice. AISD pays the Town Club a fee, which of course creates a nice revenue stream for the business. I asked someone this morning at the Town Club whether the firm would lose business to the city if the ARC is built, given that it, too, will include pools where athletes can train.

The kids have to be members of the Town Club, my friend/Town Club employee told me. They could retain their membership even if the ARC lures the students to the new facility, so the Town Club wouldn’t lose the membership revenue.

But, she said, the Town Club could lose revenue if the school district no longer pays the business the fee for sending the kids there to practice.

The ARC would cost about $36 million. It’s going to include a lot more than just swimming pools. It will have fields where athletes can play softball, baseball, soccer, football … you name it. Private interests are working to raise about $6 million of that total to offset the cost to taxpayers. It could mean the city can attract tournaments that bring visitors to the city, who then will spend money and give the city a boost in sales tax revenue.

I still consider the ARC to be a good investment for the city. This notion of a public entity competing with a private business, though, may be something to ponder.

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Cruz doesn’t work for party bosses?

I cannot believe I’m about to write these next five words: I agree with Ted Cruz.

Sen. Cruz told CNN he doesn’t work for “party bosses.” He said he works for Texans who elected him to the U.S. Senate and that he doesn’t care that Senate Republican elders are mad at him for the tactics he used to gum up the government.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/20/cruz-to-cnn-i-dont-work-for-the-party-bosses-in-washington/?hpt=po_c1

The fact that I agree that he shouldn’t care what Senate senior statesmen think of him doesn’t mean I support what he did to keep the government shut down and to prevent the Congress from increasing the nation’s debt limit. I still think he’s a loudmouth and a self-serving showman. His own political future remains his key interest, in my view.

His statement about not working for party bosses reminds me a bit of what another Texas Republican did some years ago to stick it in the eye of his party bosses.

U.S. Rep. Larry Combest was a key member of the House Agriculture Committee. However, he disliked the way House Speaker Newt Gingrich was pushing something called Freedom to Farm, a bill that would have dramatically altered U.S. farm policy that helped subsidize farmers and ranchers who, for reasons relating to forces outside their control — such as Mother Nature — couldn’t bring in crops.

Combest told Gingrich then he couldn’t back Freedom to Farm, saying he worked for the West Texas cattle ranchers and cotton farmers who helped elect him to Congress. Combest’s resistance would cost him temporarily the House Agriculture Committee chairmanship, a post he coveted. He didn’t care. Combest stood firmly on the side of his West Texas congressional district.

Ted Cruz, though, isn’t really listening to all Texans if he insists that he is speaking for them in this battle over the budget. Some of us out here may wish the government would curtail spending, but we do not want to see it paralyzed through political dysfunction, which is what Cruz is espousing.

I agree with Cruz that he doesn’t work for the party bosses. He works for all Texans, even those who prefer to see their elected representatives work constructively to get things done on their behalf.

Keeping the government functioning is one of those things.

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Banish non-scientific ‘polls’

I detest those instant “polls” that seek — ostensibly, at least — to gauge public opinion on contemporary issues.

The Amarillo Globe-News today posted one such “poll” question on one of its opinion pages. It asks readers whether they agree with Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s view that the House of Representatives should impeach President Obama.

OK. Let’s see. The Texas Panhandle in two presidential elections has given the president about 20 percent of the vote. Eighty percent of the vote went for Republicans John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. The tea party wing of the GOP — the party’s most strident voice at the moment — is entrenched firmly in this part of an extremely Republican state.

I’ll take a wild guess that when the results of this “poll” are tabulated, we’ll get roughly a 90 percent approval rating for Dewhurst’s call for a presidential impeachment.

This is just one example. The media do this kind of thing all the time. They ask for immediate responses to pressing national issues. TV networks do it. The one that just slays me comes from a liberal TV talk show host, Ed Shultz, whose MSNBC program “The Ed Show” asks viewers to send in their answers to questions relating to the topic of the evening.

A question might go something like this: Do you agree that the Republican Party is looking after the best interest of rich people while ignoring the needs of poor folks? The answers usually come back about 95 to 5 percent “yes.”

OK, I embellished that question … but not by very much.

These “polls” merely feed into people’s anger, their frustration and they serve no useful purpose other than to gin up responses on websites.

They provide not a bit of useful information.

I just wish the media would stop playing these games.