Author: mjohnson

Insurrection, Trump, Watergate

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It…

Posted on by mjohnson

It was the summer of 1973.  Congress was struggling, amid tense and often angry partisanship, to understand who was really responsible for the break in a year earlier at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

The story – quickly dubbed Watergate – unfolded over a period of many months, with details large and small emerging in news reports and, we now know, by leaks from a top official at the FBI, among others. Watergate would emerge as an example of massive political corruption – one of the great scandals in American history.

In those days the United States Senate was led by a flinty Montanan, a former Butte copper miner who became a university history professor and eventually majority leader.

Mike Mansfield was a Senate “institutionalist,” meaning he literally dedicated his 24-year career to elevating the institution he led, and he was always protecting the Senate’s prerogatives and reputation.

When it became impossible to avoid questions of whether Watergate’s crimes reached the White House and were perhaps being covered up by officials in the government, Mansfield acted in the interest of the Senate and the nation.

He went to Republican leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and proposed a select committee to investigate. Scott agreed. Then Mansfield made one of the most consequential decisions of his consequential career – he selected a drawling, elderly North Carolina constitutional lawyer by the name of Sam Ervin to chair the committee.

Ultimately, the Senate vote to create the committee was unanimous, but only after Republicans tried to get a committee divided equally among GOP members and Democrats – Democrats held a healthy majority in the Senate at the time. Florida Republican Edward Gurney – shades of current Republican congressional tactics – attempted unsuccessfully to broaden the investigation to include the 1964 and 1968 presidential campaigns. The focus would be Watergate.

February 8, 1973 – Billings Gazette

Ervin was no one’s idea of telegenic. His fleshy face sported big jowls and a double chin. His white hair was often untamed. His black horned rim glasses perched uneasily on a big nose. Ervin was a throwback, a conservative southern Democrat and dead-end segregationist suspicious of too much government and too much racial equality.

But Ervin also revered the Senate and the Constitution, particularly that concept that no one is above the law. Importantly for Mansfield, Ervin was in his last term. He wasn’t running for anything.

Mansfield surrounded ol’ Sam with what appeared to many at the time to be a lackluster group of Senate second-stringers, but they had been selected with purpose. None had national political ambitions that might get in the way of a serious investigation of serious crimes.

Ervin’s investigation became critical to unraveling Watergate and forcing a presidential resignation.

From left to right – Senators Baker and Irvin, Majority Council Sam Dash, Senator Herman E Talmadge of Georgia and Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii

Republicans, meanwhile, selected a handsome, articulate senator from Tennessee by name of Howard Baker to co-chair the Watergate committee. Baker was the son-in-law of the legendary Senate Republican leader, Everett Dirksen, who had operated in a highly cooperative, bipartisan way with Senate Democrats, especially Mansfield.

Still, it was widely expected that Baker would be a loyal defender of President Richard Nixon, whose role in Watergate was always at the center of the investigation. And for a long time Baker was a defender. And then he wasn’t.

On June 29, 1973, Baker asked a simple question of former White House counsel John Dean that came to define Baker’s Senate career. Dean had been fired by Nixon and was now cooperating with the Senate committee.

“My primary thesis is still,” Baker asked, “what did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Baker posed the question believing he was helping Nixon, who had repeatedly denied knowledge of the Watergate break in or any effort to cover it up. He was hoping the question would exonerate Nixon, or at least make the issue one of Nixon’s word against Dean’s.

But Baker did not yet know there were tapes – many tapes – of Nixon’s conversations with White House aides orchestrating the cover up, including trying to get the CIA involved.

All this history is worth remembering in light of the increasingly apparent role of the former president in stimulating many of his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6. No Watergate analogy is perfect, but Donald Trump clearly egged on the attackers, delayed responding to the chaos aimed at Congress and his own vice president, and is now attempting to use every avenue to prevent the fully story from coming out. It’s very Nixon-like.

Text messages released this week to former Trump chief of Staff Mark Meadows – a 21st Century variation of sorts on Nixon’s White House taping system – seem to show that the former president was very involved in events leading up to and including January 6.

Trump’s own son begged Meadows to get the president to do something to stop the attack. “He’s got to condemn this s@#t ASAP,” Don, Jr. messaged.

The turd polishers at Fox News even weighed in imploring action from Trump to stop the carnage. Meadows knows all this. He also knows what Trump said and did. It’s why his contempt of Congress is so important.

One text to Meadows really stands out: a House Republican messaged him, even before several states had finalized vote counting, that Republican legislatures in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania ought just ignore the voters and name their own slate of Trump electors.

This was an early example of the political weaponizing of the “big lie” that the election was stolen. January 6 was a follow on.

Here’s a way to think about updating Howard Baker’s classic question: not only what did Trump know and when, but what did your member of Congress know and when?

It’s clear some members of Congress were communicating with the organizers of the attack and with the White House. What did they know and when? We deserve to know. If there is nothing nefarious about the actions of members of Congress who swore an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution then so be it, but we need to know.

Most House Republicans, including every member from the West with the exception of Liz Cheney of Wyoming has tried to hamper the January 6th investigation, labeling it “partisan,” and voting to let Meadows and others get away with stiffing Congress. But all that is a smoke screen.

Congress has every right – indeed an obligation – to investigate such fundamental and dangerous abuses.

Congressional power to investigate and hold accountable the executive branch was established as long ago as 1792 and has continued through the Civil War, the sinking of the Titanic, war profiteering during World War II, Watergate and Benghazi.

By undermining the ongoing investigation of January 6, Republicans may be protecting themselves from the wrath of Donald Trump and his most fevered supporters, but they are putting partisanship ahead of American democracy. We need to know what all of them knew and when they knew it.

Meanwhile, it seems worth noting that a detailed Associated Press survey of every single claim of voter fraud in six contested states found fewer than 475 questionable votes out of millions cast. “The findings build on a mountain of other evidence,” the AP report said, “that the election wasn’t rigged, including verification of the results by Republican governors.”

Yet, the lies continue. Holding to account those involved on January 6 has truly become the urgent necessity of democracy.

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Additional Readings:

A few other suggestions that I think will be worth your time…

Nicholas Kristof Wants to Be a Governor. Why Won’t He Talk to National Media?

Actually, I think it’s pretty smart of the former New York Times columnist turned Oregon gubernatorial candidate not to spend any time worrying about national media. He should be talking to the Eugene Register-Guard and the Ontario Observer. Still, this piece does pose some important questions.

Nick Kristof: journalist turns politician

Garret Epps, writing in Washington Monthly, used Kristof’s book – Tightrope – as a takeoff point for his questions.

“Tightrope is a terrific book, regardless of what one thinks of Kristof’s proposed policy responses, which include improved early childhood programs, universal high-school graduation, elimination of unwanted pregnancies, a monthly child allowance for families, programs to wipe out child homelessness, and a ‘baby bond’ given to each child at birth to generate wealth as kids grow up, and programs to guarantee a job for any American who wants one.”

Here a link to the full story with some historical context on whether journalists get very far in politics.

Spoiler: It’s rare, but Oregon has some history.

How a Kennedy Became an Anti-Vax Juggernaut

I confess I’ll never understand the anti-vax attitude. It boggles my mind. And there is this.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode onto the stage at a Southern California church, radiating Kennedy confidence and surveying the standing ovation crowd with his piercing blue Bobby Kennedy eyes. Then, he launched into an anti-vaccine rant. Democrats ‘drank the Kool-Aid,’ he told people assembled for a far right conference, branded as standing for ‘health and freedom.'”

Here’s the link:

When Radio Stations Stopped a Public Figure From Spreading Dangerous Lies

I have been listening to a terrific podcast called Radioactive. It’s produced by Tablet magazine and focuses on the rise and eventual demise of the 1930’s Catholic priest and radio personality Father Charles Coughlin.

The Royal Oak, Michigan radio priest who pioneered hate on the airwaves

Coughlin was a fascinating and dangerous character. Read this and then listen to the podcast.

“Coughlin’s Detroit ministry had grown up with radio, and, as his sermons grew more political, he began calling President Franklin D. Roosevelt a liar, a betrayer and a double-crosser. His fierce rhetoric fueled rallies and letter-writing campaigns for a dozen right-wing causes, from banking policy to opposing Russian communism. At the height of his popularity, an estimated 30 million Americans listened to his Sunday sermons.’

From Smithsonian magazine:

Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever

Finally, the viral story of the week – or perhaps the year. An absolutely hilarious and bitter review of a Michelin star restaurant in Italy.

“We headed to the restaurant with high hopes – eight of us in total, led into a cement cell of a room, Drake pumping through invisible speakers. It was sweltering hot, and no other customers were present. The décor had the of chicness of an underground bunker where one would expect to be interrogated for the disappearance of an ambassador’s child.”

It gets better. Here is the review:

And here’s the Washington Post on how the review went bonkers viral.

As always…have a good weekend. Be safe. Get the booster.

GOP, Politics

Bob Dole Is Not Amused…

Posted on by mjohnson

It seems fitting, in a perverse way, given the abysmal state of American conservatism, that much of this week has been given over to bipartisan tributes to a politician who was one of the last remaining links to a Republican Party not in thrall to conspiracy, crackpot science ideas and grifting con men.

Kansas senator and Republican candidate for both vice president and president Bob Dole, who died recently at age 98, was about as removed from the current crop of do-nothing, stand for nothing GOP senators as it is possible to imagine.

As Bob Dole might have said, “Bob Dole doesn’t understand this craziness.”

Dole: A Different Kind of Republican…

The Kansas politicians was many, many things: a legit war hero who lost the use of his right arm to fascist bullets in Italy but whose party now thinks nothing of a bunch of Neo-Nazis marching brown shirt style in Charlottesville; a bipartisan deal maker whose party now wants to shut down the government over efforts to control the worst pandemic since Kaiser Wilhelm; a guy with a sense of humor in contrast to a party totally lacking in self-awareness, not to mention soul.

Dole was a hard-core Republican, but I find no record of him dismissing Democrats as “communists.”

In truth, Bob Dole was a serious guy. Remembering his career underscores how incredibly unserious one political party – his party – has become.

Dole’s legislative record puts to shame virtually every sitting United States senator. He will forever be remembered for his role in creating the Americans with Disabilities Act, a law written by a disabled guy who had to teach himself to write with his left hand. Dole worked with liberal Democrats Tom Harkin and Ted Kennedy to get it passed.

Dole could be a rough, even nasty partisan. He once called Jimmy Carter a “Southern-fried McGovern,” but still worked with liberal George McGovern to establish food security programs like food stamps and school lunches. Dole voted for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

This was once what serious political leaders did – they worked to address serious national problems. Today’s Republican Party, devoid of true conservative principles, is a nativist cesspool of disinformation, culture war nonsense and performative grievance.

Consider in the days since Dole died:

  • A former Republican congressman and White House chief of staff – Mark Meadows – has defied a congressional subpoena compelling him to tell what he knows about the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters. The same day Meadows reversed course on the summons – he originally said he would comply – he went on Fox News to downplay the assault. This Republican won’t respect a lawful demand from the branch of government he once served but will happily talk nonsense to Sean Hannity.
  • While the president was engaged in diplomacy at the highest level with Vladimir Putin, a Republican senator – Roger Wicker of Mississippi – actually suggested the United States lob missiles at Russian military bases, volunteered that American troops might “be on the ground” in Ukraine and that the U.S. might engage in a nuclear first strike on Russia. Wicker’s reckless, warmongering loose talk is a glaring example of the arrogance, ignorance and lack of seriousness on the American right.
  • And in Wisconsin, a Republican former judge investigating phony allegations of vote fraud has threatened to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay over their responses to his hyperventilating nutjobbery. Meanwhile, an independent conservative group has again confirmed there was no vote fraud in Wisconsin in the last election.

One could go on at length but suffice to say this is not Bob Dole’s Republican Party. Dole acknowledged as much in a final piece written earlier this year and by his agreement released after his death.

“There has been a lot of talk about what it will take to heal our country,” Dole wrote in the Washington Post. “We have heard many of our leaders profess ‘bipartisanship.’ But we must remember that bipartisanship is the minimum we should expect from ourselves.

“America has never achieved greatness when Republicans and Democrats simply manage to work together or tolerate each other. We have overcome our biggest challenges only when we focused on our shared values and experiences. These common ties form much stronger bonds than political parties.”

What Republican today thinks like that, much less behaves like that?

“When we prioritize principles over party and humanity over personal legacy, we accomplish far more as a nation,” Dole said in his last op-ed. “By leading with a shared faith in each other, we become America at its best: a beacon of hope, a source of comfort in crisis, a shield against those who threaten freedom.” Dole wasn’t describing the Republican Party.

A top aide to retiring Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has succinctly described the GOP approach to politics. “If you want to spend all your time going on Fox and be[ing] an a**hole,” Corry Bliss told National Journal, “there’s never been a better time to serve. But if you want to spend all your time being thoughtful and getting s**t done, there’s never been a worse time to serve.”

It logically follows that the Senate Republican leader recently announced that the party will have no legislative agenda in 2022 – none. Oh, Mitch McConnell and his acolytes will continue to obstruct, delay and fail to engage, but they won’t try to solve any problems.

Little wonder Portman is retiring. Bob Dole would understand.

It is impossible to remember Dole and his role in American political life over half a century without recalling his remarkable sense of humor, another attribute totally missing in today’s political class.

When Republicans took Senate control in 1980 for the first time in a quarter century, Dole realized the Senate – and his party – was changing. He knew that successful Republicans candidates that year like Dan Quayle in Indiana, Steve Symms in Idaho and Chuck Grassley in Iowa were nothing to celebrate, and he joshed truthfully: “If we had known we were going to win control of the Senate, we’d have run better candidates.”

Dole meant that as a joke, more or less, but we live with the legacy – a party unconcerned about policy, often devoid of truth and increasingly undemocratic.

We do well to celebrate a serious politician like the man from Russell, Kansas. We’d do even better to elect more like him.

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Additional Reading:

A few other items you may find of interest…

Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade against Hitler’s favorite film-maker

An Austrian documentary filmmaker has dedicated much of her life to correcting the record about Leni Riefenstahl, the woman who made movies for the Nazis.

“During the Nazi era, Riefenstahl had been the regime’s most skilled propagandist, directing films that continue to be both reviled for their glorification of the Third Reich and considered landmarks of early cinema for their innovations and technical mastery. Once the second world war was over, Riefenstahl sought to distance herself from the regime she had served, portraying herself as an apolitical naif whose only motivation was making the most beautiful art possible. ‘I don’t know what I should apologize for,’ she once said. ‘All my films won the top prize.'”

A long and fascinating story from The Guardian:

What Propelled Vivian Maier’s Earliest New York Photographs?

I can unreservedly recommend an excellent film about a remarkable photographer – Finding Vivian Maier.

Three Rabbits by Vivian Maier

And this is an excerpt of a new book on Maier, who captured daily life in New York and elsewhere starting in 1951.

“Many have observed that Vivian possessed an underdog’s perspective, and regardless of her circumstances, she identified primarily with the working class. While the beginnings of such an affiliation is apparent in her French photographs, this point of view would permeate her New York work. Possessing a progressive perspective, she was drawn toward capturing the intersections of race and class.”

Here’s a link to the excerpt…and be sure to look up the documentary.

The Woman in Black

I really enjoyed this piece – it is a bit gruesome – about the last judicial duel in France in 1386. A bit before my time, but really fascinating.

The story is the basis for a new film – The Last Duel – starring Matt Damon and Adam Driver. The story line involves an alleged rape, the accusations of a noble woman and a fight to the death between the accused the woman’s husband. OK, then…

“The trial by combat would decide whether she had told the truth—and thus whether she would live or die. Like today, sexual assault and rape often went unpunished and even unreported in the Middle Ages. But a public accusation of rape, at the time a capital offense and often a cause for scandalous rumors endangering the honor of those involved, could have grave consequences for both accuser and accused, especially among the nobility.”

Link to the piece here:

The 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written

I can nitpick a few of these “best 100,” but it is a pretty solid collection of books on baseball. Reading about the great game will have to do while the billionaire owners sort out their issues with the millionaire players.

“There are, of course, inner-circle Hall of Fame baseball books. On any self-respecting list, you’ll find The Glory of Their Times, The Summer Game, Eight Men Out, The Natural, Veeck as in Wreck, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, Ball Four, The Boys of Summer, The Lords of the Realm, and Moneyball. Those titles appear here, of course, along with our pick of 100 indispensable books no baseball fan should be without. In no particular order…”

Good piece from Esquire:

Thanks, my friends, for following along. Get the Christmas cards done. All the best.

Education, Politics

Illiberal America…

Posted on by mjohnson

There was a time when Boise State University, the 22,000-student college in Idaho’s capitol city, only made national news with a football team that played on a garish artificial blue turf.

Now, with the football team struggling, BSU is grabbing national attention for arguably more important reasons. The school is front and center in the raging culture wars around the value of higher education, diversity and equity, sexual orientation and, believe it or not, feminism.

The Boise State story has many threads, including being part of a growing national effort – orchestrated on the illiberal libertarian right – to broadly discredit education at every level. Like everything else these days it’s all political. Stay with me. I’ll try to connect some of the dots.

The latest Boise State angle involves a tenured professor in the political science department of the university, Dr. Scott Yenor. Yenor is a scholar of political theory, but more importantly he is a provocateur, which is an important angle of the larger story.

Yenor recently gave a speech in Florida at the National Conservative Conference. Among other intellectual luminaries on the agenda for this Trumpy conference were Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, two Republicans who aided and abetted the January 6th insurrection. Christopher Rufo, the guy who singlehandedly created the pseudo-controversy about Critical Race Theory, also spoke.

Yenor’s Florida speech – now widely available on the Internet – advanced some of his theories about family life, marriage and feminism.

Using language that would have made Archie Bunker, TV’s most famous bigoted white guy, blush, Yenor said, among other things, that “independent women” who seek fulfillment in “midlevel bureaucratic jobs like human resource management, environmental protection, and marketing” are – I kid you not – “more medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome than women need to be.”

The professor suggested it was a mistake for women to be recruited into fields that have long been dominated by men. “Young men must be respectable and responsible to inspire young women to be secure with feminine goals of homemaking and having children,” Yenor said, suggesting that the achievements of men have not been adequately “celebrated.”

No word on what the professor thinks about women as political science majors, but this part of his speech might provide a clue. “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade.”

It appears the larger point Yenor was attempting to make is that “feminism,” and the radical notion that women and men should be treated equally, have come close to destroying the American family, weakening the institution of marriage, and generally putting us on a path to utter societal destruction. Yenor has produced a wide array of articles and books on this theme.

Typically, many were quick to condemn Yenor, and he may have created serious questions about whether women students he has taught at Boise State have a cause for action, particularly if they can show Yenor’s “theories” have penalized them in some way. Did he grade the “striving women” in his classes differently than men, for example? Expect more on this. The university would do well to get in front of the issue with its own investigation.  

Boise State, correctly in my view, defended the professor’s odious views under the necessary umbrella of academic freedom. Pointy-headed academics on the nutty right are entitled to be as silly as are their counterparts on the crazy left.

Yenor’s ideas, while backward, demeaning, even hatefully misogynistic are worthy of debate. Worthy of being demolished. Worthy of being broadly rejected. Yenor should not earn a wider platform by becoming the latest crackpot martyr who has been “silenced,” which one suspects was part of his rationale for taking on half the human race. What better way to get a bucket load of attention these days – and a Fox News hit – than by saying outrageous things and being called on them by “liberals?”

The university’s “official” response was supplemented by a tepid statement to the effect that women are appreciated at the school. But to date there has been no serious pushback against Yenor’s nonsense. This is what you get, I guess, when you operate in a state where the political leadership is either weak or fully onboard with the craziness of modern conservative politics.

But here is where the Yenor/Boise State story goes wider. Make no mistake, the real agenda here, and that of the people who gave Yenor a platform in Florida, is to discredit public education. The goal is to play to growing resentment among conservatives about modern “liberal” education – and I use liberal in the classic sense – being a leftist plot to undermine America.

Yenor is deeply connected into the world of the anti-education Idaho Freedom Foundation, and he was a member of the phony education indoctrination task force created by Idaho’s Trump-endorsed candidate for governor, current Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin.

Yenor is a “Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute,” the once widely respected conservative California think tank that now happily endorses the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the last election.

The Institute’s “Center for the American Way of Life” – Yenor is listed among the Center’s scholars – argues, Trump-like, for a new rightest movement. “The Right must be morally unflinching in refuting the Left’s ideologies,” its website proclaims. “It must speak clearly and confidently about the effects of radical feminism, ‘antiracism,’ and globalism. It must be prepared to protect its children, its property, and its standards from encroachments.”

Nothing short of revolution is required, Claremont says, to free the country from “the adversarial press and media, Big Tech oligopolies, and corrupt universities.” Trump authoritarianism, however, is just fine.

A Claremont “Senior Fellow” is John Eastman, a law professor and author of the crazy, anti-constitutional “Stop the Steal” memo that attempted to create a rationale for then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College votes of several states and keep Trump president.

Eastman is deeply implicated in the events of January 6, subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Scott Yenor, you might not be surprised to learn, recently wrote a defense of the insurrectionist law professor who was – surprise – not exactly given the red-carpet treatment at the recent National Political Science Association’s conference.

So, back to the Boise State prof. He’s clearly not a dim bulb – I have met him, by the way – but even gifted minds can lead others astray. He’s playing a game on the fringes of the far, far American right, not unlike the old Birch Society or Phyllis Schlafly once did. The game is to inflame by outrage and hearken back to “America’s better days” when mom was home in an apron waiting for her man to return from men’s work.

Birch Society billboard

This is the “real America” these throwbacks advocate, and what better way to channel it than arguing that women are always better off barefoot in the kitchen rather than as educated professionals?

The American “revolution” Claremont and its scholars envision isn’t just insulting, illiberal and undemocratic, it’s a profound rejection of modernity and a repudiation of a society that has struggled for decades to create equal opportunities for all its citizens without regard to the makeup of their chromosomes.

It is essential to refute and reject these dangerous people – mostly mediocre white men – who claim so cavalierly the moral high ground that justifies revolution. They have already proven they will stop at nothing to create an authoritarian America, and they are prevailing. It’s probably just a coincidence that Scott Yenor’s misogyny is in the news just as the Supreme Court prepares to roll back the abortion rights American women have had for 50 years

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Additional Reading:

A few more things worthy of your time…

Is society coming apart?

I am a huge fan of the historian Jill Lepore. Her recent long read piece in The Guardian explores what’s happened to the ideas of social fabric and community. Very good.

“Forging stronger bonds in a post-pandemic world, if one ever comes, will require acts of moral imagination that are not part of any political ideology or corporate mission statement, but are, instead, functions of the human condition: tenderness, compassion, longing, generosity, allegiance and affection. These, too, are the only real answers to loneliness, alienation, dislocation and disintegration. But the fullest expression of these functions across distances as easily spanned by viruses and flood waters as by broadband cables and TikTok videos, requires both society and government.”

Always read Jill. Here is a link:

How to Save a Ski Town

Affordable and workforce housing is in shockingly short supply across the American West. This piece from Outside Magazine explores how one town in Colorado is trying to address the need.

“When the situation reached its breaking point over the summer, Crested Butte officials acted swiftly. In June, the town council declared a state of emergency, the first time a Colorado municipality had used the designation for a housing crisis. This enabled them to bypass certain municipal codes and provide some immediate relief, like purchasing a six-bedroom bed-and-breakfast and converting it into dorm-style housing for local workers. They also began allowing RV and tent camping on private property in town. In July the council issued a moratorium on new short-term rental licenses for a year, and officials resumed discussions about a controversial tax on empty homes, which they had started in 2020 but tabled for the pandemic.”

Link here.

Fabiola Letelier, Chilean human rights activist, dies at 92

Some of you may remember a sensational and outrageous murder that took place on the streets of Washington, DC in 1973.

The gruesome scene of the assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1973

“One of the most brazen acts of state-sponsored terrorism ever perpetrated in the United States took place on Sept. 21, 1976, when Orlando Letelier, a Chilean exile and leading critic of strongman Augusto Pinochet, was assassinated in a car bombing on Washington’s Embassy Row.”

Orlando Letelier’s sister never gave up on the memory of her brother or on the fight for human rights and justice.

Read her story here:

Scotland names its snow plows and their titles for 2021 are still amazing

Love this story…

“On first glance, some of the names may not make sense to people in the US, but note the country calls these vehicles ‘gritters’ — that makes ‘Gritney Spears’ make much more sense. This week, social media again took note when revamped names started appearing on the national map of snow plows. The pun game is still very strong.”

Link here…and Vermont is doing the same:

Thanks a million for reading. Stay well. And stay in the game.

Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving of Our Discontent…

Posted on by mjohnson

The public opinion polls tell us that about two-thirds of our fellow citizens think we are seriously off on the wrong track. That number has been remarkably consistent for the last year.

And why not? We’re in year two of a deadly pandemic. Our political system is broken. Seventeen-year-old boys, most of whom would not be considered safe at the wheel of an automobile, can show up in a neighboring state with an assault rifle and create tragedy. The Internet, once considered as great a creation as Gutenberg’s printing press, is a smelly cesspool of conspiracy, hate and craziness, and quite a few dog photos. A murderous thug is threatening war in the heart of Europe, while a Chinese strongman does the same in the South China Sea.

What is the world is there to be thankful for in this season of thanks?

Well, Adele has a new album.

Adele…has a new album

No, seriously. Why even bother with all this thankfulness? The world is a mess. The country is going to hell. Kevin McCarthy is measuring the drapes in the Speaker’s office. Joe Biden’s feet and back hurt. And due to the world’s supply chain chaos, my plastic Christmas tree is stuck in some shipping container in a loading dock in Long Beach.

Actually, that last thing is not true. I am thankful that I have never had, nor will I ever have an artificial Christmas tree. So, begin from there.

I do think the country is in a bad place and there is much reason to be very concerned about everything from politically motivated violence to gerrymandering to a washed-up television game show host making another run for the White House, but this week I’m not going to despair. At least not too much.

This is the week, after all, for the most American of holidays, a day of thanksgiving created by the most American of presidents in the midst of the uniquely American civil war. I’m thankful there was an Abraham Lincoln. I’m thankful he was aware enough to proclaim Thanksgiving at a moment of supreme trial for a country divided and in danger of collapse. That bloody war ended. The nation got a new birth of freedom, well sort of. We have work to do, my friends.

Lincoln began that first Thanksgiving proclamation with thanks for “fruitful fields and healthy skies.” He reminded Americans that to “these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”

Indeed.

So be thankful for your turkey, if you had one, or even your vegan main dish and remember you might do a good turn for someone less fortunate who has much less and much less reason to give thanks.

Give thanks for family if you have one. Remember to be grateful for friends if you have some. Do you have a good book or a football game on the tube for entertainment and distraction? Be happy. Be thankful.

Do you have a fly rod or golf clubs? How about a working automobile or a dry and warm place to put your head down tonight? Is there a six-pack in the frig? Did your mom call? How about the memory of that high school basketball game or the girl or boy friend you made the summer when you were 14-years old? Be thankful.

I’m thankful for journalists and the First Amendment, even if it does tend to elevate nitwits like Tucker Carlson. I’m grateful for real historians and librarians and people who listen. I’m thankful that the country has had some remarkable political leaders. Mike Mansfield. Mark Hatfield. Howard Baker. Maurine Neuberger. John McCain. Cecil Andrus. John Lewis. Birch Bayh. Margaret Chase Smith. Phil Hart. Frank Church. Dr. King. John Sherman Cooper. Nancy Kassebaum. Everett Dirksen. Google them. Be grateful for great people.

I’m thankful for baseball. I’m thankful for NPR and the BBC and a warm fire on a cold November night. And poetry – Yeats and Sandberg, Auden and Sylvia Plath. I am grateful for community newspapers and people who volunteer at food banks, donate to libraries, adopt dogs and pick up junk on the beach. Be thankful for life saving medicine and health care workers.

I give thanks for my parents who didn’t have much, including no higher education, but who made sure my brother and I had everything we needed, including a diploma. I’m grateful for a favorite uncle who wrote me letters and treated me like royalty and for an aunt who could stroke a golf ball straight and long and made the world’s best raspberry jam.

Thankfulness extends to all the people – they know who they are – who gave me chances, handed me more responsibility than I was old enough or smart enough to exercise and then congratulated me when I didn’t totally screw up, and forgave and forgot when I did.

I’m grateful for the person who is the first reader of everything I write and who can talk me down off a ledge or get me off my high horse. Be grateful if you are fortunate enough to have a love of your life.

I’m thankful for memories of Thanksgivings past and cranberry relish and whiskey from the Highlands. And I am really and truly thankful for what it has meant, can mean and must mean again to be an American. I tired of the tribal wars and senseless divisions. I long for leaders who get that and want to be Americans before they want to be re-elected.

I am thankful for that original Thanksgiving and Lincoln’s eloquent proclamation. And I’m thankful for his call to fellow Americans in another dark and troubling time where this most wise and decent man fervently implored “the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”

Let it be said. Let it be so.

Be thankful.

Additional Reading:

Some Thanksgiving weekend diversions and thought provokers…

Ryan Smith has a pitch

I have said it before and will say it here – read everything McKay Coppins produces. His work usually appears in The Atlantic, but this piece about the new owner of the Utah Jazz basketball team, Ryan Smith, was in the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.

It is definitely worth your time.

Billionaire Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith

“When he bought the Jazz last year from the Miller family — old-school Utah stalwarts who made their fortune in car dealerships — it felt emblematic of a broader changing of the guard. The state’s new establishment is younger, richer and more connected to the global elite than any class of leaders that’s come before. And they may be better positioned to finally win Utah the prestige and recognition it’s always craved.

“But not everyone is on board with their vision. For all of its recent aesthetic transformation, many in Utah are still governed by a small-c conservatism. Detractors fear that if Smith and his peers get their way, the state will be overrun with fleece-vested finance bros and Silicon Valley expats. They warn of a Utah diluted of its focus on family, faith and frontier frugality, and defined increasingly by workaholism and decadent consumption.”

High tech, big basketball, Utah and LDS culture. What’s not to like. Here is the link:

It Wasn’t a Hoax

Another writer and thinker who has found his voice during our troubled time is David Frum. His latest piece reminds us that it’s a lie – a really big lie – when The Former Guy talks about “the Russia Hoax.”

It is not a hoax…

“Since Donald Trump declared for president in 2015, it’s seldom been possible to get to the bottom of one scandal before Trump distracts attention with a bigger and worse scandal. For more than a year, the United States has been convulsed by Trump’s frontal assault on election integrity and the peaceful transfer of power. He has, one by one, eliminated from politics Republicans who upheld the rule of law, and urged their replacement by stooges who repeat his Big Lie. Republican candidates for office talk more and more explicitly about taking power by violence if necessary. These dark threats have understandably overwhelmed the effort to fill in the blanks of the Trump-Russia scandal of yesteryear.”

Frum does a marvelous job of reminding us what everyone who has followed this story knows as fact. Link here:

Family, Pfizer, Zoom, and Other Things I’m Grateful For

Mona Charon writes in the same vein as my essay this week.

“There’s lots to lament, which is why it’s more important than ever to exercise gratitude.” Indeed. The link:

D. B. Cooper Homage Music Video “November 1971″

I saved the very best for last. You’ve probably seen the stories this week recalling D.B. Cooper and the mystery still surrounding his skyjacking of an airliner in 1971.

Do yourself the favor of watching this utterly delightful 5:48 short film, a musical takeoff on the old and still fascinating story.

Take it easy. Get some rest. Be grateful. And then get to work. We have a democracy to save.

Thanks for reading.

Books, Politics

Don’t Ban Books…

Posted on by mjohnson

I own a lot of books.

Some might say an excessive number of volumes. I’m a collector, but also a book advocate. I like books. I live in many ways to be surrounded by books and the ideas, insights, controversies and confusion contained between their covers.

I own books I love and some I hate. I grew up with books. My dad subscribed to the old Readers Digest condensed book program that sent several times a year a hard cover volume of five or so “condensed” books to our living room. My dad would devour those stories and patiently wait for the next volume to arrive. It rubbed off.

Growing up I loved books by Clair Bee, a hugely influential basketball coach at Long Island University from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Coach Bee invented the one-third-one zone defense, which can still be effective if you have a quick team that can shift, cover and defend.

Most of all, from my perspective, Clair Bee wrote books – the Chip Hilton series, 23 books in all about a humble kid who starred in football, basketball and baseball. These books for would be sports stars had titles like “Buzzer Basket” and “Touchdown Pass.”

A Chip Hilton book…

I eventually moved on to history and biography and finally discovered novels. My love for books led me to serve on two library boards in two different states. I collect books on presidents and U.S. senators and have books on ones I admire and loath. I have critical books about Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan and books that place both of them among them the greatest political leaders of the 20th Century.

Books are like that. Complicated. Full of controversial ideas. Some are well done. Some aren’t. Some endure, many don’t.

I have a book that was written in 1937, a critical, first-hand account of Franklin Roosevelt’s scheme to “pack” the U.S. Supreme Court that same year. Two well-placed journalists wrote it. It reads like a novel and has stood the test of time as a source on the near Constitutional crisis FDR created. Is that book the total story of that controversial part of the Roosevelt presidency? Of course not, but it is a piece of the story. Dozens of other books have been written about the same subject and I expect many more will be written. They should be written and read.

I have a dozen books, at least, on Thomas Jefferson. Not one of them is the complete Jefferson. Individual books point the way to begin to understand a subject, and no book is the only “truth” about any subject. That is why I have a dozen books about the third American president. He is a complicated story.

All this by way of saying be wary, be very wary when anyone says they want to ban or remove books. Sadly – and this happens periodically, which is also sad – a bunch of folks across the country right now think banning books is a good idea. But in fact, it is a horrible, dangerous idea.

Search “book banning” and you’ll find some shocking stuff right now. Two school board members in Virginia actually said recently that some books in the school library ought to be burned. They clearly haven’t read any history.

A school board member in Florida actually filed a police report suggesting it was crime to feature one particular book in a high school library. A Texas lawmaker has suggested more than 800 books that he believes ought to be prohibited in the state’s schools, books dealing with race, sex, human rights and a volume that would be laughably ironic on such a list if it wasn’t so sad, a book entitled The Year They Burned the Books.

“We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Executive Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom told Time. “I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis.”

Here’s something you can learn from reading books. One of the first things that happened in Germany in 1933 after Adolf Hitler came to power was the destruction of thousands of books. This is widely documented, including at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, but also by historian Richarad L. Evans in his brilliant three volume study of The Third Reich.

A book burning in Germany under the Nazis

On a single day – May 10, 1933 – organized and well attended demonstrations took place in 19 different German university towns, as Evans wrote, where “huge numbers of books by Jewish and left-wing authors were piled up and set alight.” But in Germany, of course, more than books were banned. Jewish and leftist professors were pushed out of universities and artists and museum directors were sacked, with many fleeing the country.

It wasn’t just the ideas espoused by these people or the concepts in their books, paintings or films that Hitler and his henchmen sought to eliminate. “What the Nazis were trying to achieve,” Evans says, “was a cultural revolution, in which alien cultural influences – notably Jews but also modernist culture more generally – were eliminated and the German spirit reborn.”

It was a kind of Make Germany Great Again moment.

The cultural war that is flaming on the political right in America has, of course, the same basic aim. The “alien cultural influences” that are under assault today are members of the LGBTQ community, anyone who believes the study of American history must reckon with race and slavery, “elites” of every flavor, university professors, school board members, and always Jews and people of color.

And some conservatives, seeing this cultural war as a means to sow division and frankly scare people, are weaponizing books for political means. A conservative just won the governor’s office in Virginia by these means, and governors from Texas to Idaho will happily fan these flames of resentment and anti-intellectualism if it means placating the fringe actors who want to cancel any culture at odds with their own beliefs.

Put me down as a radical believer in free expression. I favor books and ideas, even especially ones I disagree with. Banning books is abhorrent. Allowing this to happen, or heaven forbid normalizing it, is a big step down a very slippery slope.

We should know better.

We must know better.

—–0—–

Additional Reading:

Some other items I found of interest and hope you do…

Who Poisoned Joe Gilliam…Twice?

A remarkable story from Willamette Week’s outstanding Nigel Jaquiss.

“Two criminal investigations are pending into Joe Gilliam’s attempted murder, one in Lake Oswego and another in Arizona. Police in both jurisdictions declined to comment.

“Both agencies believe, however, that someone close to Gilliam tried to kill him last year with a toxic metal called thallium. And they did so not once, but twice.

“His guardian and the judge overseeing his custody are concerned enough that someone will try again that they will not reveal his exact location.”

A fascinating and disturbing true crime read.

Inside the Red-State Plot to Take Down a Top Trump Ally

I always read the work of McKay Coppins in The Atlantic and this piece about Utah Senator Mike Lee is great.

“First elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, Lee has long rankled the local establishment in Utah, where he is viewed by many as a showboating obstructionist whose penchant for provocation routinely embarrasses his home state and its predominant religion. Lee’s MAGA makeover during the Trump presidency served only to exacerbate that perception. Now, as he prepares to run for reelection next year, Lee is bracing for a concerted, multifront campaign to unseat him. He seems to know that a third term isn’t guaranteed.”

Good political reporting. Here’s the link:

Sam Huff, Fearsome Hall of Fame Giants Linebacker, Dies at 87

Sam Huff: Football great

“Playing for the Giants in their glory years of the late 1950s and early ’60s, Huff came out of the West Virginia coal country to anchor a defense that gained the kind of renown that had previously been reserved for strong-armed quarterbacks and elusive runners.”

A great obit of the Hall of Famer in the Times.

And while I was reading about Huff’s remarkable career, I came across this – a CBS documentary about Sam Huff, narrated by, who else, Walter Cronkite. Great stuff.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

And…an early Thanksgiving wish for all of you. This review of my favorite Thanksgiving themed movie with the greatly missed John Candy and the vastly talented Steve Martin.

Anyone need any shower curtain rings.

Be safe. Keeping reading books. Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving.

Football, Pandemic

No Statute of Limitations on Stupidity…

Posted on by mjohnson

In his great book about legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, David Maraniss quotes one of Lombardi’s players about how most big-time athletes – perhaps particularly professional football players – really are.

Most “are basically lazy guys,” said one-time Packer safety Tom Brown. “We want to take the easy way out. We are so far superior. We’ve always been better. As nine-year-olds. Ten-year-olds. We were always the best athletes on the field. We probably got preferential treatment from youth coaches and all the way up. So we really never had to give one hundred percent effort. Because if we gave seventy-five percent, we were better than all the other kids.”

A terrific book about a coaching legend

We easily distracted Americans love our sports stars and celebrities. When those people seem genuine – faking sincerity, after all, is the greatest talent of celebrity – we love them all the more. If they are a little outrageous at times, no worries. A bit of outrageousness is a small price to pay for a pass brilliantly thrown or an interception skillfully picked.

Aaron Rodgers, at least until a few days ago, had all the ingredients we relish in a big-time sports celebrity. The Packer quarterback is a really good player. He plays for what is still the marquee franchise of the National Football League, a team with fans who actually own shares in the team and show up for games played on frozen turf in a stadium so far from the bright lights that Wikipedia locates it in “the north central United States.”

Rodgers seems – or seemed – to be the real deal. A legit sports hero of the old school. A three-time NFL Most Valuable Player with a sure-fire lock on the Hall of Fame. But like Tom Brown’s typical player, it turns out Rodgers is just lazy. So far superior to the rest of us and to his teammates, coaches, locker room attendants, and football opponents, not to mention family and friends, that he assumed he could lie his way through a requirement that he be vaccinated against Covid-19.  

Turns out Rodgers is a role model. A role model for millions of selfish, self-centered, fact-challenged Americans of the year of our lord 2021. Rodgers is in the words of columnist Max Boot “a pandemic ignoramus,” a role model for the millions of Americans who continue to deny science and through their ignorance keep a deadly pandemic rolling along.

Rodgers’ defense of his indefensible behavior sounds like it could have been uttered at any number of local school board of public health meetings across the country. The “woke mob” was after him, Rodgers claimed in an interview where he riffed on conspiracy theories, peddled nonsense about vaccine effectiveness and generally made a fool of himself.

Of course, the Packer quarterback – he missed last week’s game after testing positive and his team lost, but hey, no biggie – is different in one respect from most of his fellow science-denying conspiracy theorists. He gets paid $33.5 million a year. But in our times, there is clearly no price point on stupidity.

The sports journalist Sally Jenkins sacked the quarterback pretty effective. “He will now be known as a guy who is slicker than his TV hair,” Jenkins wrote, “who thought he was unique, too much so to follow rules, and more precious than anyone in the room. May he make a speedy return to the Green Bay Packers with no symptoms, but as for sympathy, that should be diverted to people who shared spaces with him when he was unmasked, who now have to sit around and wonder whether they brought something home because he was too coy with the coronavirus.”

In a second interview earlier this week, attempting to clean up his first interview, Rodgers appeared to attempt contriteness, saying, “I made some comments that people might have felt were misleading. And to anybody who felt misled by those comments, I take full responsibility for those comments.”

Rodgers: We thought he was smart, but he called an audible

It was a classic non-apology apology, the weasel words of our times. What Rodgers was really saying was, “I’m sorry if you were offended by my stupid comments, but, you know, that’s kinda your problem.”

Rodgers will no doubt return to the Packers, and the NFL, home to all number of domestic abusers and cranks of every kind, applied a tiny financial slap on his $33.5 million wrist. Rodgers’ endorsement deals, undoubtedly worth more than his play calling, will continue. And we’ll move on to the next dust up, maybe the socialist vaccine indoctrination tactics of Sesame Street’s Big Bird.

In the whole scheme of things that matter, Aaron Rodgers ranks somewhat lower than the Detroit Lions. He’s a winner that has become a loser, an “I did my research” crank masquerading as an All-Pro quarterback. What does matter with this loser from Green Bay is what matters with the millions like him who keep fueling the pandemic. They are not just stupid; they are damn poor citizens.

Sure, don’t get vaccinated for yourself. That is your right. Anyone can be nitwit, a nitwit who could get really sick and maybe die.

If the selfishness, stupidity, and self-centeredness just impacted the Aaron Rodgers of our world it would be one thing, but he – and so many others – must know they impact their family, friends, neighbors, the mom and child casually encountered in the grocery store or the teammate in the locker room. It’s not about a silly quarterback, it’s about the community. It’s about something bigger and more important than some stupid misinformation he read on the Internet.

Whether Rodgers appreciates it or not, he and every Packer lives a Green Bay career in the shadow of the great Lombardi, a man with low, if any tolerance, for nonsense and selfishness. His “brilliance was his simplicity and dependability,” Maraniss wrote, and his insistence on standards.

Surely some of the Lombardi legend is the product of myth making, a feature of much of sports history, but the guy did speak of enduring values. “People who work together will win,” the coach said. “whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.”

The problems of modern society. What a concept that an individual might have some, even tiny responsibility to help with the problems of modern society.

Anyone old enough to remember Lombardi and his great Packer teams can be pretty certain of what the old man would think of the silly guy in the huddle acting a whole lot smarter than he is.

—–0—–

Some good reads…

My “carefully” curated selections this week.

Lee’s Fault

The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee

A new biography to add to the shelf of biographies of Robert E. Lee. I think I’ve read most of them. Here is an interesting review of the latest by Allen C. Guelzo.

“In 1861, of the eight colonels from Virginia who had graduated from West Point, Lee was the only one to fight against the United States. As Adam Serwer, a columnist for The Atlantic, argues, ‘But even if one conceded Lee’s military prowess, he would still be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the South’s authority to own millions of human beings as property because they are black.'”

History is all about grappling with figures like Lee, worts and all. Here’s a link to the review:

A year after the election, America has turned the news off

Turns out a lot of Americans aren’t paying all that much attention to the news. Short article from the Columbia Journalism Review.

“On television, between October 2020 and October 2021, according to Nielsen data, CNN was down 73 percent, to 661,00 viewers. Over the same period, MSNBC was down 56 percent, to 1.2 million viewers, and Fox News was down 53 percent, to 2.3 million viewers.”

Might be the you know who is no longer president factor. Link here:

The Literary Adventures of Polly Adler, the Algonquin Round Table’s Favorite Madam

Great piece…

“In one of the most spectacular examples of the law of unintended consequences in American history, Prohibition gave the underworld a cachet it had never had before. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution banning the sale of ‘intoxicating liquors’ had the perverse effect of transforming the sleazy underbelly of vice into a cutting-edge counterculture. ‘Slumming’ had long been the hobby of sporting men, raffish intellectuals, and wealthy young rakes who had so much money and social stature that they could afford to flout conventional morality. Now anyone who wanted a glass of beer was forced to consort with criminals.”

Here’s a link:

See you next week…be careful out there.

Media, Politics

Tomorrow Will Be Worse…

Posted on by mjohnson

Random notes and data points on the state of American politics and culture.

  • Cable news is, generally speaking, a cesspool of division, disgust and distraction. Therefore, “the Alec Baldwin shoots a person on a movie set” story was the perfect cable news event. A Fox News freelance photographer summed up this reality perfectly: “Baldwin, he’s as close to US/American royalty as we have in this country, so that put the British TV on the story … A lot of it is timing and what else is going on in the news cycle.”
  • Also in the news cycle: “Government leaders face two choices in Glasgow, Patricia Espinosa, head of the U.N. climate office, declared at the summit’s opening: They can sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions and help communities and countries survive what is becoming a hotter, harsher world, Espinosa said. ‘Or we accept that humanity faces a bleak future on this planet.’”
  • In 1985, academic and writer Neil Postman published a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. Among other observations, Postman wrote: “Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
  • A conservative, pro-Trump candidate won the Virginia governor’s race this week by defeating a former governor with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. In part, Glenn Youngkin won because of books, including controversial books by a Black female author. Youngkin’s victory was widely portrayed as a defeat for Joe Biden, even though the party in the White House has lost the Virginia governor’s race in 11 of the last 12 elections.
  • One Youngkin campaign ad “features an older blond woman, wringing her hands and telling a story about a book that her son had to read for school – one that was so upsetting, so explicit, that her ‘heart sunk’ to think of it. Internet sleuths didn’t have to look far to find out that the woman was Laura Murphy, a Fairfax County conservative activist; the son is Blake Murphy, who’s now 27 and works for the National Republican Congressional Committee; the traumatizing reading was done almost a decade ago; the explicit book was Toni Morrison’s much-decorated masterpiece, Beloved.”
  • “A Texas Republican lawmaker has launched an investigation into some of the state’s school districts’ libraries, demanding in a letter that educators say whether their schools own books named in a list of 850 titles, many of which cover issues of race and sexuality.”
  • Again, Neil Postman: “What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
  • “At a school board meeting in Illinois, a man was arrested after allegedly striking an education official. At another in Virginia, one man was arrested for making a physical threat, and a third was injured. And at other meetings in states such as Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Tennessee, school board members have had to adjourn early after being confronted by angry mobs.”
  • “Violence and true threats of violence should have no place in our civic discourse, but parents should absolutely be involved in public debates over what and how our public schools teach their children, even if those discussions get heated,” according to a letter read by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
  • Postman: “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
  • Meanwhile in a rural, medically underserved area of northwest Oregon, an all-volunteer school board worked with a not-for-profit health center to create a school-based clinic for middle and high school students. A local foundation contributed to the effort that aims to improve health care for youngsters leading to better educational outcomes. So far, the effort has received no media attention.
  • The former president of the United States attended Game 4 of the World Series in Atlanta and participated in the controversial – racist – “tomahawk chop” with Braves fans. He lied about being invited to the game by Major League Baseball. “Former president Donald Trump will attend Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday at Truist Park, Atlanta CEO Terry McGuirk told USA TODAY Sports. ‘He called MLB and wanted to come to the game,’ McGuirk said. ‘We were very surprised. Of course, we said yes.’”
  • Fox, carrying the game to millions, showed pictures of the former president, because of course they did.
  • More Postman: “Television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”
  • The Associated Press: “The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems. Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The U.S. alone has recorded over 745,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.”
  • Conservative commentator Tom Nichols latest book is called Our Own Worst Enemy. In his newsletter this week, Nichols wrote: “Of course, we’re still a powerful country. We have military muscle, from bullets to nuclear weapons, beyond measure. And we’re awash in money, with a GDP nearly as large as our next three competitors combined. We hold bags of patents and buckets of Nobel Prizes. The products of American institutions from universities to movie studios are exported across the planet. But when it comes to seriousness—the invaluable discipline and maturity that allows us to discern matters that should transcend self-interest, to set aside churlish ego and emotionalism, and to act with prudence and self-restraint—we’re a weak, impoverished backwater.”
  • Tomorrow promises to be worse.

—–0—–

More Reading:

Other items you may find of interest…

Julia Ioffe

I admit it. I appropriated the title of Julia’s newsletter for the column above. She’s great. Check out her writing here.

The Call is Coming From Inside the House: On Fighting Disinformation

“Disinformation and today’s online information ecosystem are more nuanced than news headlines might suggest. Here are five books that will enhance and expand your understanding of the tools of disinformation, its adjacent harms, and the future of the threat in a way that the morning news can’t.”

Books to make you smarter:

Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction

A not particularly encouraging piece here about our collective approach to the impending climate disaster.

“If we cannot pierce the glassy surface of distraction, and engage with what lies beneath, we will not secure the survival of our children or, perhaps, our species. But we seem unable or unwilling to break the surface film. I think of this strange state as our ‘surface tension.’ It’s the tension between what we know about the crisis we face, and the frivolity with which we distance ourselves from it.”

From The Guardian.

Why is Baseball the Most Literary of Sports?

Freddie Freeman, the heart and soul of the new World Series champs

It happens every year at this time. Baseball goes away just when you need it the most. Well, you can still read about the great game.

“Why does baseball translate so well to the page?

“Part of the answer is the basic nature of the game. Baseball plays out largely in a series of one-on-one matchups with very clear dramatic stakes. Do you hit the ball or swing and miss? Get on base or strike out? Catch the ball or get an error? Not only are the stakes clear from moment to moment, but the game is played out over a lot of tension-building downtime punctuated with short bursts of dramatic action. While haters will say this makes the game boring to watch, it certainly makes it easier to render on the page. The chaotic non-stop action of sports like hockey and basketball are trickier to pull off in text.”

You won’t ground into a double play with this essay.

That’s all I got. Have a good weekend. Be safe.

GOP, Simpson

How Far We’ve Fallen…

Posted on by mjohnson

I’ve been around politics all my life. I’ve know some great ones and a few scoundrels. I’m enough of a realist to know that all politicians – like all of us – have feet of clay.

Yet, what worries me about our political moment – and I worry a lot – is the willingness of people who I know know better to give into rank political opportunism, even at the risk of undermining democracy.

I also know it’s tough – and some find it impossible – to go against your party or your tribe. It can be lonely being an independent, even if you really truly what to be principled and honest with yourself.

Yet, once you’ve made the accommodation with what you know to be wrong and tried to explain it away, the next accommodation, and the next become easier. You convince yourself that it’s more important to go with the flow, stay in office, and not upset your supporters than it is to do the right thing.

What really worries me is that so many good people in the modern conservative movement have made this calculation. Even if they really, truly know better.

I’ve known one of them for years.

—–

The question before the U.S. House of Representatives wasn’t complicated or partisan. It was a question of whether Congress, in service to its need to investigate in order to legislate, could enforce a lawful subpoena.

What made the issue controversial was the nearly total opposition of House Republicans. These Republicans attempted to stop a resolution referring to the Justice Department for possible prosecution one Steve Bannon, a figure widely implicated in the planning and execution of the pro-Trump January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Steve Bannon

Bannon invoked a nonsensical reason for refusing to produce for Congress documents and his own testimony. He claimed he was subject to a declaration of “executive privilege” by the former president, even though Bannon is a private citizen who hasn’t worked in the White House since Donald Trump fired him in August of 2017.

The special House committee investigating January 6 said, in essence, wait a minute. It doesn’t work that way. A congressional subpoena is just as valid, just as lawful as any summons any citizen might receive to produce records or appear in court.

Yet, Idaho’s two members of Congress – along with 200 fellow cowards – ignored these facts and in essence said Steve Bannon could break the law. In a way, the vote of Representative Russ Fulcher was to be expected. He actively participated in the plot to reject legally certified Electoral College votes from several states. Fulcher even bragged about his role in the insurrection the very morning the mob stormed the Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence.”

The vote to let Bannon flaunt a congressional subpoena that is hard to square – actually hard to stomach – is the vote of Representative Mike Simpson. He knows better. It least he once did. The simple truth is Simpson gave in to cowardliness. He’s afraid of Donald Trump. He even more afraid of his constituents.

Simpson violated – Fulcher did, too – his oath of office to defend the laws and Constitution of the United States. And he did it for the smallest, most selfish reason – to protect his job, which has clearly become more important to him than anything else.

That may seem a harsh verdict on a politician who has done some good for Idaho in his long career, but sadly it’s the truth. Simpson has become a metaphor for what has happened to the modern, Trump-infected Republican Party. Consider the congressman’s evolution.

After the “Access Hollywood” tape, Simpson called Trump “unfit.”

The Idaho congressman was more prescient than he could have possibly known when he said as the Trump-Russian investigation continued, “What I’m worried about is, in the early 1970s, politicians like me were standing around saying, ‘Nixon’s okay, he didn’t do anything,’ and look what it led to,” Simpson said. “And every day there is something that adds on to it.”

As Trump railed in the summer of 2017 about Republican failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but also repeatedly failed to offer an alternative, Simpson grew exasperated with a president who displayed no ability to grow into the job. “I don’t even pay any attention to what is going on with the administration because I don’t care,” Simpson told one interviewer. “They’re a distraction. The family is a distraction, the president is a distraction.” 

Explaining his frustrations, Simpson said, “At first, it was ‘Well yeah, this is the guy we elected. He’ll learn, he’ll learn.’ And you just don’t see that happening.”

When Trump threatened to declare an emergency and divert funds from military construction projects to build his border wall, Simpson pushed back gently. “It’s not the way to do it. I can understand why they’re looking at it,” Simpson told the Washington Post. “I don’t like the idea of pulling money out of defense and military construction and the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s not a good option.”

But when Trump went ahead and declared a national emergency Simpson went along. “I’ll be real honest,” Simpson said, “if Obama had done this, Republicans would be going nuts. That’s just the reality.” Simpson justified his about face on the dubious grounds, particularly coming from a senior House appropriator, that Trump had the authority to usurp the Congressional power of the purse. 

On several occasions during the first 18 months of the former guy’s presidency, Simpson seemed to be on the verge of breaking with Trump, yet the break never came and as the 2020 election approached and Trump’s grip on the Republican Party, nationally and in Idaho, grew even stronger, Simpson never again deviated, even a bit, from the Trump line.

That line has now led to Simpson’s vote to give Steve Bannon, a guy who continues to spread lies, encourage violence and who predicted the anarchy of January 6, a pass.

Simpson’s explanation of his vote for Bannon certainly must rank as one of the most disingenuous statements ever penned by an Idaho politician. He might have used the moment to educate and inform about the compelling need to understand who was behind the plot that nearly resulted in an American coup. He might have upheld the rule of law. He did the opposite.

“Pelosi’s Jan 6 Commission has become the partisan circus I wanted to avoid,” Simpson tweeted. “Congress doesn’t get to play law enforcement when it’s politically convenient for the Dems just to score political points.”

Partisan circus? Political points?

What does the congressman think happened on January 6th while he and his colleagues hid from the mob that came for them?

When a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, died after began assaulted on January 6, Simpson said:

“His family deserves our prayers and his perpetrators deserve prosecution to the fullest extent.”

Congress and the American people are entitled to find out if Steve Bannon was one of those “perpetrators.” If he was involved, he almost certainly has information that leads back directly to the former president.

Mike Simpson, the guy who once saw straight through the rot pervading his party, has, with his Bannon vote – and his refusal to condemn the kooks, insurrectionists and law evaders in his own party – thrown all in with the effort to ignore the attempted coup he lived through. Now he’s helping rewrite the history of what happened.

Simpson’s political calculation was simple, if cynical. If he voted against Steve Bannon, Trump would turn on him. Mike Simpson voted to ignore Steve Bannon’s law breaking to save his political career. He folded.

The pre-Trump Mike Simpson I once knew would be appalled by the post-January 6 version. That this once principled, independent politician now fits so well in the modern GOP tell us how low we’ve fallen.

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More reading:

Some of my “carefully” curated reads this week from across the World Wide Web…

SEAL of Disapproval

I’ve long been a big fan of Tom Ricks, a historian and commentator on military history. His recent piece in The Washington Monthly looks at how the United States Navy failed to stop—and Donald Trump championed—a murderous special operations leader.

Donald Trump pardoned Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher

“Eddie Gallagher’s military and political trajectory is shocking, but it isn’t necessarily surprising. American leaders have a two-decade history of mishandling our wars in the Middle East, and officials have authorized needless violence against our enemies, real and perceived. Gallagher may or may not have been inspired by the dishonesty and brutality that underscored our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But his story is certainly a parable for what we did wrong.”

Read the full piece. It may make you mad.

Solar storm confirms Vikings settled in North America exactly 1,000 years ago

Seems that old Chris Columbus was way behind in the race to “discover” the New World. The Vikings beat him by hundreds of years.

“The Icelandic sagas – oral histories written down hundreds of years later – tell of a leader named Leif Erikson and a settlement called “Vinland”, assumed to be coastal North America. But while it is known that the Norse landed in Canada, exactly when they set up camp to become the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic, marking the moment when the globe was first known to have been encircled by humans, has remained imprecise.”

New scientific methods give us much more information. From The Guardian.

Terry Tempest Williams on the Loves (and Appetites) of the Great Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison

“Harrison tells us insight begins in that place of standing on the precipice of darkness and light. Being human means being stretched between the known and the unknown: the longest day of summer is also a move toward winter, the longest night in winter is a turn toward brighter days. We bow to time and the cycles of change that are beyond our control. Light will come. Darkness will come. We are held in the numinous hours of grace before dawn and after dusk.”

A fine meditation on the late novelist and poet by another very fine writer.

Have a good weekend…and be well.

History

Misusing History, Missing the Point…

Posted on by mjohnson

Weird things happen in Texas: the Astros cheat in the World Series, the state runs its own power grid that crashes during a rough winter storm leaving millions in the cold and dark, the state has had more Covid deaths than most medium sized countries. The state has created a bounty system to allow Texans – or anyone else – to hunt women who have an abortion, and get paid for it.

Austin, the Texas state capitol, has adopted the slogan: Keep Austin Weird. It works.

Two weeks ago in Southlake, Texas, a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth, a curriculum director at the local school district told teachers something truly weird. “Just try to remember the concepts of [Texas House Bill] 3979,” the director said. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

House Bill 3979 is a reference to the legislation passed in Texas – similar to legislation in many other Republican dominated states – that attempts to prescribe how history is taught. The idea is to apparently make certain “controversial” subjects are presented in a “on the one hand and then on the other hand” fashion.

Holocaust survivors stand behind a barbed wire fence after the liberation of Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945 in Nazi-occupied Poland. Surveys have shown that many younger Americans know next to nothing about this history.

Unless you seek to deny that it happened there is no on the other hand regarding the Holocaust, the planned, systematic effort by Nazi Germany to exterminate European Jews in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The mere idea that there is a both sides to the great crime underscores the absurdity of playing partisan political games with history.

Texas has another law going into effect in December that seeks to outlaw the teaching of critical race theory (CRT), which is not taught in high schools. But no matter. Outlawing CRT has become a talking point on the political right, a way to structure history to deny or eliminate the uncomfortable parts. The Texas political history monitors are very prescriptive about what is acceptable history and what is off limits.

As Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson recently noted the Texas history standards eliminated any of “Frederick Douglass’s writings, the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that forced Indigenous Americans off their southeastern lands, and Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists defending the separation of church and state. The standards lost ‘historical documents related to the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations’ including documents related to the Chicano movement, women’s suffrage and equal rights, the civil rights movement, Indigenous rights, and the American labor movement.”

What Texas and other conservative states want to teach isn’t really history, but rather scrubbed, sanitized mythology. Or another word for it would be lies.

Understanding the courageous history of the American Revolution, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, is fundamental to the American story. But so is the fact that the Constitution treated millions of Black Americans, held in slavery, as three-fifths of a person, devoid of basic human rights let alone political rights.

Jefferson’s soaring words in the Declaration must be studied and examined but cannot be understood without also grappling with the fact that Jefferson, and many others of the Founding generation, lived contrary to their words. They owned other humans, believing them to be inferior, and were determined to exploit human capital for economic gain.

Americans cannot understand the current raging debate over voting rights without understanding that for millions of American these basic rights were won – or not – in spite of violence, intimidation and systematic efforts to prevent certain Americans from casting a ballot. Congress struggled for years to pass civil rights and voting rights legislation that was resisted at every turn by white politicians who embraced white supremacy.

You cannot fully understand the ongoing debate about efforts to prevent the extinction of Northwest salmon without grappling with the importance of the iconic fish to indigenous Americans, the first Americans whose land was stolen by whites and whose culture continues to be disrespected and marginalized.

This is not comfortable information, but it happens to be true. You can, if you chose, actually study these stories and come away with a deeper appreciation of the long path our country has been on since 1776, or even since 1619. It is a bumpy, often tragic path. But that is what history is. As the conservative writer Michael Gerson said recently, “The discipline of history teaches us to engage with discomforting, distressing ideas without fearing them.’

Here is an example of how history works – and should work – ripped from the headlines. A man many Americans rightly consider an American hero, general and former secretary of state Colin Powell, lived an important and, yes, controversial life.

Not his best moment. Colin Powell makes the case for the Iraq War before the United Nations

Powell’s recent death spawned a host of tributes and assessments. The heroic versions featured the classic American story of Powell’s rise to the pinnacles of power as the child of Jamaican immigrants. Powell might have been president. I for one wish he would have run since a Colin Powell presidency might have altered the awful trajectory of the modern Republican Party. That he didn’t run is history.

But there is more to Powell’s story. He carried the water for the fable that weapons of mass destruction required a foolish and tragic military misadventure in Iraq, a war he might well have prevented. Powell was a brave and decorated soldier, but his role in investigating the massacre of as many as 500 civilians at Mai Lai during the Vietnam War is still in some dispute. Powell was by all accounts a strong and principled leader, but he also came out on the short end of many bureaucratic fights that, had they been exposed at the time, might well have altered history.

The point is: Powell’s history and ours is complicated, nuanced. There is no one way to look at Powell’s story – or the American story – the truth is in the sifting, the understanding, the effort to place in context. That is history.

As the great Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan has written: “As they look at the past, historians learn to behave rather like the examining magistrate of the French judicial system. What happened and why? the historian asks. History demands that we treat evidence seriously … history does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process.”

Never has it been more important to grapple with the American story, the strengths and weaknesses of our democratic system, and its fragile nature. Truth be told, if we don’t handle our history better and ignore the cranks and mythmakers the last chapter of the American story is going to be written as tragedy.

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Additional Reading:

If you are inclined…a few good items:

Facebook’s Historian: Professor Heather Cox Richardson

I know many readers follow the amazing work of HCR, who I quoted in my essay this week. I came across this piece from 2018 with lots of information on the professor’s rise to near cult status as an interpreter of our history.

Heather Cox Richardson

“On Nov. 21, 2016, two years after publishing her most recent book, a conservative group by the name of Turning Point USA launched a new website called Professor Watchlist, on which it listed close to 200 college professors who it claimed had, ‘…records of targeting students for their viewpoints, forcing students to adopt a certain perspective, and/or abuse or harm students in any way for standing up for their beliefs.’

“Richardson, who was briefly included on the list, was more annoyed than upset—that her hard work was dismissed as leftist propaganda, that her credibility was in-question, and, most of all, that the forum of academic debate was shamed and discouraged from its pursuit of truth.”

Here is a link to the piece that appeared in the Boston College magazine.

Is Trump running in 2024? The Claremont Institute hopes so

Regular readers know I’m a fan of The Bulwark, a news and opinion site founded by conservative Charlie Sykes and some other refugees from the modern conservative movement.

Charlie has a great daily newsletter, a podcast and contributes to MSNBC, among other outlets. He is always worth reading. A recent piece on the transformation of the Claremont Institute caught my attention.

“Once one of the most prestigious bastions of conservative thought, Claremont now spends its time putting lipstick on the Trumpian wildebeest.

“Trumpism is, of course, less an idea or set of principles than it is a cult of personality and series of angry impulses. But even the ugliest movements have their pseudo-philosophers and their rationalizers.

“And this where Claremont comes in: It is attempting to put a veneer of intellectual respectability on some of the darkest impulses of the right. It’s not at all surprising that Claremont was at the center of the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.”

Charlie Sykes on Claremont. Wow.

Writing from Home: Lessons from a Novelist-Slash-Small-Town Newspaper Columnist

I love this piece from the novelist Nickolas Butler on writing as an act of service and the power of local news.

“When my wife and I moved our family back to our hometown after fifteen years away, one of the first things we did was subscribe to the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. And when the delivery-driver pounded a heavy steel stake beside our mailbox and hung an orange newspaper-box along our rural road, I felt a sense of community, yes. I was buying into something that didn’t necessarily make sense, but that was surely bigger than me, or my family. This was another kind of stake—an investment—in local journalism, in local journalists, in our place.”

Pretty good take on the importance of small-town journalism.

Thanks, as always, for following along. All the best.

Journalism

The Great Erosion

Posted on by mjohnson

By one accounting, more than 2,100 U.S. newspapers closed between 2005 and 2020.

We’ve all heard the stories, many pretty bleak.

Smaller newspapers are purchased by large chains, which cannibalize newsrooms in order to squeeze the last cents – and sense – out of “the product.” Hedge funds with track records of slashing costs – meaning jobs – and maximizing returns for a handful of already really wealthy people are buying up newspapers.

Alden Global Capital is one such hedge fund. The group recently purchased the Tribune Company, owner of the venerable Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News, among other papers.

“The purchase of Tribune reaffirms our commitment to the newspaper industry and our focus on getting publications to a place where they can operate sustainably over the long term,” said Heath Freeman, the president of Alden. Separately it was reported that at least ten percent of already depleted newsroom staffs at Tribune were taking financially slim buyouts, while senior top editors were replaced.

The spectacular Tribune Tower in Chicago, once home to a great newspaper, is now converted to condos

Freeman, the hedge fund guy, is doing great, however. He recently plunked down $19 million for a modest little six bed, six bath joint in an exclusive neighborhood in Miami.

More is at stake here than the survival of the local paper. As local news has been crushed under a variety of burdens from declining ad revenue to non-discerning readers and viewers who gravitate only to “news” outlets that serve only to confirm own ideological opinions, democracy has taken a hit, as well.

The non-profit Niskanen Center, a think tank doing first-rate, deeply researched work on a range of public policy issues, has produced an important new report on the links between local news and the health of American democracy.

“As local news has withered,” the authors of the new report noted, “so too has citizens’ ability to monitor the effectiveness of state and local officials. This has been a key driver in the ‘nationalization’ of politics, which refers to voters only drawing on preferences regarding national politics to evaluate politicians and policy at all levels of the federal system.”

Or put another way, as we increasingly frame all our thoughts about politics at every level around a question of “Biden or Trump” we ignore many of the really vital issues in our own communities. When the local newspaper shrinks or goes away this reality becomes even more pronounced.

As dire as the local journalism situation seems – and it is dire – there are some flickering signs of hope out there.

States Newsroom, a non-profit, now offers free online and first-rate coverage of state capitol and other news in 22 states. In every state with a States Newsroom – Idaho, Montana and Oregon have such outlets – the newsroom leader is a veteran “local” journalist doing superb work.

The non-profit news outlets under the banner States Newsroom represent a truly positive development

The Daily Montanan recently broke a blockbuster story, reported by Keila Szapaller, about sexual harassment at the University of Montana law school. The expose forced the resignation of the school’s dean and his deputy.

The Idaho Capital Sun and reporter Audrey Dutton have provided the very best statewide coverage of the state’s pitifully inadequate response to Covid-19. (Full disclosure: I have contributed opinion pieces to both organizations.)

In Arizona, as another example, the Arizona Mirror, reported this week on Congressman Paul Gosar’s recent trafficking in neo-Nazi and white supremacy images. A story larger news organizations missed.

Another potentially promising local news development is the union of legacy news organizations with public broadcasters. This type of union is unfolding in Chicago where WBEZ, the local public broadcast outlet, is fixing to acquire the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. Initial plans contemplate no layoffs, but instead the addition of more staff.

Authors of the Niskanen Center report offer another intriguing idea: “Political donors could redirect their financial support to local media.” A deep pocketed contributor to political campaigns might spend thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a candidate or cause never knowing if the contribution had any real impact. By contrast, the same amount of cash supporting a hyper-local news gathering effort could produce immediate and obvious results, and “could be a better return on investment for those who are alarmed by the state of our politics.”

A proposal in Congress contemplates creation of a national endowment for local journalism, something akin to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the long-established national endowments for the arts and humanities. The effort might be limited to “non-profit” news organizations and supported by individual taxpayers choosing a “check off” on their tax returns in the same way that millions of American provide public funds for presidential elections.

There are many reasons for the troubled state of American democracy – toxic cable television shouting matches that feed on fear and division, bald faced lies and conspiracy theories elevated by candidates, and a demonizing of legitimate news organizations and their reporters as “enemies of the people.” By any measure, the drastic decline of local journalism in so many communities, and the companion inability to focus on real and important local issues has to be part of the cause, as well.

We need to get on with addressing this.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “it expects what never was and never will be.” It’s worth remembering in light of our fractured, tribal politics that Jefferson champion a free and critical press even as he was often viciously attacked in print by his political opponents.

“For most of American history, localism came naturally,” the Niskanen Center report says. “But that’s no longer the case in our age of national and international connectivity. And while much has been gained in this changed environment, that connection to the local that our political system takes as a given has been severely undermined. Recapturing that type of community connection would help America’s political institutions function as intended. And a robust local media landscape is a prerequisite for a reinvigorated localism.”

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Additional Reading:

A few more suggestions from my reading file…

The January 6th Investigation is Ramping Up … Will it Matter?

A deep dive into the congressional probe of Donald Trump’s attempted coup from Lawfare.

“The committee has an enormous pile of information to dig into—some of it of potentially dubious value—and no end of questions to pursue about what happened on Jan. 6 and in the days, weeks, and years before. In doing so, it is likely to run into legal disputes over its ability to obtain information from recalcitrant witnesses close to former President Trump—along with information that Trump might object to releasing on the grounds of executive privilege.”

Here’s the link:

Ryan Zinke is Running for Office Again in Montana. On Instagram, He’s Often in Santa Barbara

I’m so old that I remember when being forced to resign in the midst of an ethics investigation would be disqualifying for future political office, but not so apparently for former congressman and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

You may recall Zinke as the guy photographed with his fly rod rigged all wrong...

Zinke is trying to go back to the House of Representatives, but Politico checked out where the self-proclaimed cowboy spends most of his time. Spoiler alert: it’s not in Cut Bank.

Miranda Green went looking for Zinke in Montana.

“But Zinke wasn’t in town.His campaign consultant had not responded to requests to make him available for an interview in his home state. I eventually learned from his wife’s Instagram account that the Zinkes were on a beach vacation in Bodrum, Turkey. (Lolita has family ties to Turkey, and the Zinkes travel there often, including at least three separate trips documented on Lolita’s Instagram account in 2019.)”

The Instagram account also documents how much time the guy spends in southern California, just like ever real Montanan.

Here’s a link to pretty interesting story:

Meet the man who pulled nearly 100 snakes from under an SF Bay Area home

Eeww…

I’m with Indiana Jones when it comes to snakes. I’m not a fan. A women in California had a nest under her home.

“”This lady wasn’t afraid of them,” the snake removal guy said. “She doesn’t mind having them there. There were just a couple too many.”

Well, right. There are pictures. Slither right to this one:

Thanks for reading. Be careful out there.