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Archive for the ‘America’ Category

Too Much Alertness

Posted in America, Humor, tagged , , , , , , on May 17, 2013 | 1 Comment »

When I woke up this morning the screen of my phone was covered with “alerts.”

There were several weather-related alerts, including the “alert” that there is a dense fog advisory for New Albany this morning.  (Thanks, but I figured that out when I looked out the window this morning and saw the streetlights shrouded in mist.)  There were some ESPN app “alerts” about the results of NBA games.  (Thanks, but I have no interest in the NBA).  I think there was a news “alert,” too, mixed in with the rest, but it vanished when I swiped the screen to log in.

On my commute to work I drive under a large electronic sign that routinely has “alerts” about missing people that typically tells me their gender, their automobile, and their license plate numbers.  I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to instantly memorize the information or write it down as I go rolling past at 65 m.p.h., but I do glance around to see if the car is in the immediate vicinity.  Of course, the fact that these “alerts” are so routine may tell you something about whether they are really “alerts” at all.

I feel like I’m overly “alerted.”  I’m not sure I’m ready for even more “alerts” on this foggy morning.  Maybe I should just go back to bed.

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A Little Bit More On The IRS And Politics

Posted in America, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2013 | 3 Comments »

When my friend the Biking Brewer recommends something to read, I take notice — and not just because he is accomplished at creating fine malt beverages and has a discriminating sense of Belgian ales.

The BB sent along a link to this article from Salon, entitled When the IRS targeted liberals, that seeks to add a little context to the current story about the IRS actions with respect to conservative groups.  President Obama has called the IRS actions “outrageous” and he’s right about that — but the Salon article usefully points out that the IRS has been embroiled in political issues before.

The key point here is not which groups are being targeted by the IRS, or who is the President at the time the targeting occurs, but rather the fact that IRS employees think they have the right to target specific groups at all.  Our federal government has become so colossal in size, and so removed from interaction with average citizens, that many government employees think they can do just about whatever they damn well please because they are from the government and, well, they just know better than we do.

This isn’t a political issue — or , at least, it shouldn’t be.  When agencies like the IRS can become politicized, no one at any point on the political spectrum is safe.  The question is how to change the culture of these bureaucratic leviathans, where employees have jobs for life and have little accountability to anyone who isn’t their direct line supervisor.  Shrinking the size of the bureaucracies, and establishing performance standards that don’t give every employee a lifetime job, would be a good place to start.

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A Government Too Big For Its Britches

Posted in America, crime, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2013 | 1 Comment »

The Department of Justice’s decision to covertly collect significant amounts of phone call data of the Associated Press is just another sign that we live in a country where the government has grown too big for its britches.

According to a letter sent by the AP to the Department of Justice protesting the action, the DOJ secretly gathered information about AP phone calls for two months.  The records include outgoing calls made on more than 20 telephone lines, including general telephone lines and a fax at AP offices in Hartford, Connecticut, New York City, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as records related to the calls of five reporters and an editor.  Although the government has not said why it collected the records, the five reporters and editor worked on an AP story about a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled a terrorist plot to blow up a plane and the Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation of the leak that led to the story.  The White House was unaware of the subpoenas and the gathering of phone records because the Department of Justice handles such actions independently.

Of course, reporters aren’t immune from prosecution if they commit criminal acts — but due regard for the First Amendment requires that any intrusion into news-gathering be strictly limited and carefully targeted, based on a particularized showing of need.  It’s hard to see how the DOJ action conformed to such restraints.  Finding out who the AP called goes to the heart of news-gathering, and collecting records on more than 20 phone lines used by AP employees hardly seems targeted or sensitive to First Amendment issues.  Instead, it seems like a fishing expedition — and perhaps one specifically designed to chill vigorous exercise of First Amendment rights.  And, of course, the veil of secrecy that the DOJ places over criminal investigations, and the lack of involvement by the White House, will make it difficult to hold people accountable for the action.

Stories about overreaching government employees and lack of accountability have become all too commonplace.  I think it’s one reason why many people have turned to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, hoping that the the written words will serve to restrain governmental excesses.  As the DOJ action in this instance show, however, written words have an effect only if people are paying attention to them.  How many of the DOJ employees who approved the broad collection of AP phone records, in their zeal to catch a leaker, really gave serious thought to what their actions were doing to the AP’s First Amendment rights?

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The IRS ‘Fesses Up — Sort Of

Posted in America, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , on May 13, 2013 | 1 Comment »

The Internal Revenue Service admits that its agents engaged in “inappropriate” targeting of certain conservative political groups and has apologized — but there seems to be a lot more to the story.

Some people in the IRS decided that groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their names should be given additional scrutiny, to see whether they were acting in ways inconsistent with their tax-exempt status.  About 300 groups received the scrutiny.  The IRS says that low-level employees were responsible and that, when more senior officials learned about it months later, the practice was stopped.  However, it now appears that the IRS simply adopted new criteria that focused on “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.”  That doesn’t really seem much better, does it?

This story is disturbing on many levels.  First, when individual IRS agents can target groups because of their politics, that should be troubling to everyone — regardless of their political views.  When people are given the authority to act on behalf of the IRS, we expect that authority to be exercised responsibly, not politically.  If IRS agents can agree to look at groups that have “patriot” in their names, what criteria might they use under the next Administration?

Second, where were the supervisors?  How much unbridled discretion do individual IRS agents possess?  Didn’t some manager notice a pattern in what the agents were doing and realize they were targeting groups on a political basis?  The actions of the agents seem to contradict the statements made by the former IRS commissioner, Douglas Shulman, in testimony to Congress, and the IRS response contends that knowledge of what was happening was limited to people multiple levels below Shulman.  So, the IRS defense seems to be that it is so bureaucratic that the Commissioner isn’t told about what is actually happening on the ground!  That’s not very comforting, either.

In his recent remarks at the Ohio State University, President Obama encouraged graduates to reject cynicism and decline to listen to “voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.”  This IRS story is precisely the kind of story that breeds such cynicism.  When IRS agents can target groups for political reasons, the IRS Commissioner denies that such targeting is occurring, and the IRS defends the truth of those denials because the agents involved were too far down the chain for the Commissioner to notice, perhaps a little cynicism is in order.

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Free, And Open To The Public

Posted in America, Columbus, Ohio, tagged , , , , , , on May 11, 2013 | 1 Comment »

A reminder to all of you book lovers and readers out there:  the Ohioana Book Festival is today, at the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, downtown.

The Ohioana Book Festival is free, easy to reach, and open to the public.  Parking is free, too.

It is one of the great, yet perhaps underappreciated, things about living in America — our country and our communities are chock full of civic organizations that put on street fairs, speeches, church festivals, neighborhood bazaars, and other activities that don’t cost a cent and are open to whoever would like to come.  The events tend to be put on by charitable groups and hard-working volunteers who support what the groups are doing.  They are the kind of quirky, non-cookie cutter activities that can give a weekend more flavor, introduce us to new friends, and draw communities closer together.

We’re lucky to have interesting events that are free and open to the public.  And speaking of which — the doors to the Book Festival open at 9:45, with panel discussions, a book fair, author signings, and other activities continuing throughout the day.

 

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High On Tax Revenue

Posted in America, Politics, tagged , , , , , , on May 10, 2013 | 3 Comments »

Colorado is set to become the first state to regulate and tax the recreational use of marijuana.  Don’t expect it to be the last.

The Colorado legislature has passed a series of bills dealing with marijuana.  In the wake of a 2012 voter initiative that approved recreational use of marijuana by people over 21, the legislature has decreed how many marijuana plants people can grow for their personal use (no more than 6), how much marijuana visitors to Colorado can buy (a quarter ounce), and how marijuana offered for sale must be packaged (in child-proof containers that specify potency).

As far as taxes are concerned, Colorado ganja will be subject to a 10 percent sales tax and a 15 percent excise tax.  In other states where the sale of “medical marijuana” is taxed, significant revenues have been obtained; in California, $100 million is raised annually from such taxes.

We can expect other states to follow Colorado’s lead, for entirely predictable reasons.  States need cash, and that means they need things to tax.  Through “medical marijuana” exceptions, the use of recreational drugs has become increasingly accepted by Americans — and that use is largely untaxed.  With Colorado, and Washington, and other states taking the lead, what state legislator who’d like to have a bit more revenue to spread around to his pet programs can resist a marijuana tax?  At all levels of government our politicians are addicted to taxes, and this is another way for them to get their fix.

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Trying To Get To The Bottom Of Benghazi

Posted in America, Politics, World, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2013 | 5 Comments »

Congressional hearings are underway into the storming of the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the killing of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.  The hearings are interesting — both for what they are telling us about what happened in Libya and within the U.S. government itself as the attacks unfolded, but also for what they are telling us about the twisted, hyper-partisan world of Washington, D.C.

During yesterday’s testimony, which the New York Times described as “riveting,” a veteran U.S. diplomat named Gregory Hicks gave a detailed account of the night of the attack.  Hicks, a 22-year Foreign Service veteran, became the head State Department official in Libya after Ambassador Stevens was killed.  He testified about how a Special Operations team wanted to fly to Benghazi to help but was overruled by officials in Washington, who concluded it could not arrive in time to help.  Hicks also described being “stunned” and “embarrassed” when Administration officials, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice, initially portrayed the attack as a response to a YouTube video and how such comments angered the president of the Libyan National Assembly, who had called the attack a preplanned terrorist act.  Hicks testified that the Libyan government’s feeling of being undercut may have delayed their cooperation with Americans investigating the incident.  Furthermore, he said that when he raised questions about Rice’s comments, he was effectively demoted and led to understand that he should stop asking questions.

The testimony of Hicks and two other officials, Mark Thompson and Eric Nordstrom, indicate that there is still information to be uncovered and lessons to be learned about Benghazi.  When four Americans, including an ambassador, are killed, their deaths deserve a detailed inquiry and a careful evaluation, at the congressional level.  Such an evaluation should determine whether changes in law, security arrangements, staffing, or emergency response procedures are needed to prevent such an incident from ever happening again.

Unfortunately, in our modern government, things are never quite that simple.  The Times story linked above reflects that unfortunate fact, because much of the article is devoted to the “politics” of what should ideally be an apolitical, objective fact-finding exercise.  It’s ludicrous, and disheartening, and it is happening on both sides of the aisle.  Republicans should stop portraying every incident as “another Watergate”; it just allows their opponents to dismiss hearings such as yesterday’s as a politically motivated witch hunt.  And Democrats should stop trying to downplay the significance of Benghazi and resist every inquiry about why four Americans died.  That much, at least, is owed to the memories of those four Americans — and to the many other Americans who serve their country in diplomatic posts in dangerous parts of the world.

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Finding The Faces On The Milk Cartons

Posted in America, crime, Ohio, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 7, 2013 | 2 Comments »

An extraordinary story is being reported from Cleveland.  Three women who vanished a decade ago when they were teenagers have been found, alive.

The three women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight — apparently were held captive for years in a house on Cleveland’s near West Side.  One of the women escaped through a broken door with the help of a neighbor who heard her cries for help.  She then called police, who came to rescue the other two women from the house.  The three women were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were found to be in fair condition.  Three brothers have been arrested. 

As the Cleveland Mayor has been quoted as saying, there are a lot of questions to be answered in the coming days.  How were the three women held captive for so long in a Cleveland neighborhood?  Were neighbors aware of their presence?  Were there any signs that should have led to their rescue at an earlier date?

For now, though, the families of the three young women are just thankful that they have been freed from captivity and returned to their loved ones.  Their story should give hope to the families of others who have been missing for years, who are shown in the blurry pictures on milk cartons and whose families have experienced terrible pain and loss.  How many of the missing are still alive, held captive somewhere in an otherwise normal-looking American neighborhood, always hoping for a chance to escape?

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Reflection, And Remembrance

Posted in America, Ohio, tagged , , , , , on May 4, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Forty-three years ago, four students at Kent State University in Ohio were killed when the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a group protesting the Vietnam War.  Another nine students were wounded.

Forty-three years later, it remains a mystery to me how anyone, Guardsman or officer or politician, could ever have thought that American soldiers should fire live ammunition into a crowd of protesting students.  It is one of the enduring questions about the shooting that, I think, will never be satisfactorily answered.  Kent State University, however, offers information that seeks to present the competing viewpoints on that issue and to answer other questions about the shootings and their aftermath.

Forty-three years is a long time.  The Vietnam War and Cambodian invasion that prompted the protests that led to the shootings ended long ago.  The lessons to be learned from the shootings, however, remain fresh and vital today.  Kent State was an example of what can happen when government goes too far and forgets its ultimate role as protector of the people and guardian of individual liberties.   American citizens therefore should be mindful, and skeptical, of the accumulation of governmental power.   Blind trust in governmental institutions is not wise.  I’m sure the students protesting on the Kent State campus 43 years ago never dreamed that the Ohio National Guard unit would fire — but it did.

That’s one reason why it’s an incident worth remembering.

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Let Him Be Buried

Posted in America, crime, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 4, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

According to the BBC, there’s a controversy brewing in Boston about the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  People are protesting outside the funeral home that holds his body, and his family is struggling to find a cemetery that will allow his burial.

Like every American, I’m angered and sickened by the terrorist actions of the Tsarnaev brothers, and I can understand the impulse to deny a final resting place on American soil to someone who cruelly and intentionally killed and injured innocents . . . but I say let Tsarnaev be buried.  A controversy about his remains is just a distraction from the real issues raised by the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston Marathon bombing — issues like whether they should have been permitted to come to America in the first place, how they came to be radicalized and whether there are steps that can prevent others from becoming similarly radicalized, why Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends allegedly would try to cover up for someone who committed a terrorist act, and whether the FBI and other authorities missed warning signs that should have alerted them to the dangers posed by the Tsarnaev brothers.  Picketing some unfortunate funeral home that holds Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s remains isn’t going to help answer any of those questions.

I say, plant Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s corpse in the corner of some remote cemetery and be done with it.  Ignore this wretched excuse for a human being and let his headstone crumble into dust.  Forget about his body, focus on his actions, and figure out what we can do to keep them from ever happening again.

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Colonial Cannibals

Posted in America, Science, tagged , , , , , , , on May 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

In school, we were taught that the colonial settlers were thoroughly admirable — hardy yet devout, hard-working and keen on personal liberty, bringing civilization to an untamed continent.  The reality, it turns out, isn’t quite so trim and tidy.

Anthropologists have uncovered strong evidence of cannibalism among the Jamestown settlers.  The evidence consists of human remains that appear to date from the “starving time” — the winter of 1609-10, when beleaguered settlers were crowded into a fort and under attack by local Indians.  The bones are of a 14-year-old girl who, based upon marks to her skull, appears to have been butchered after she was dead and stripped of meat for the remaining settlers to consume as they desperately sought to stay alive.

Interestingly, there were written accounts of cannibalism that date from the early days of Jamestown, including accounts of starving settlers digging corpses out of the ground to eat their flesh and a crazed husband who killed his pregnant wife and salted her flesh to preserve it for later consumption.  Of course, we weren’t taught any of that in our American history classes, but the recent forensic studies serve to corroborate the early written accounts.

So much of what we have learned about America has been air-brushed and sanitized — and for what purpose?  Why try to make early settlers into saint-like creatures rather than recognizing that they often acted out of desperation, anger, jealousy, greed, and other base human emotions?  No one condones cannibalism, but the true story of Jamestown’s “starving time” tells us a lot more about how far people will go to survive in a desolate wilderness than whitewashed tales of prim colonists praying over tables groaning with food.

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Is Everything For Sale, And If So, Why?

Posted in America, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 28, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Is everything for sale in America?  Have we reached the point where the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar has become too all-consuming?

An article in MarketWatch, published by The Wall Street Journal, discusses the teaching of Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, author of the recent book What Money Can’t Buy:  The Moral Limits of Markets.  Sandel posits that at some point over the past 30 years America crossed the line from a market economy to a “market society” in which virtually everything, such as naming rights to public buildings, ad space in school cafeterias, and carbon offsets, is for sale to the highest bidder.  A market economy is a tool for organizing activity in the most productive way, but a market society is one in which market values — rather than morals, ethics, religion, or other non-money-oriented concepts or belief systems — intrudes upon and governs our relationships and our behavior generally.

I’m a big fan of capitalism as an economic system.  Human history has proven that it is the most fair and effective way of allowing people to control their own destinies and create wealth, and no other system even comes close.  But Sandel has a point — there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed.  When capitalism crosses those lines, the effect is corrupting and defeating of any selfless impulses that motivated the activity in the first place.  When public money is used to erect a public building and the structure is named after whichever large corporation or wealthy individual ponies up the most money for the naming rights, it detracts from the important public, communal element of the endeavor.  When a couple decides to have a child but pays a hefty price to a clinic to try to genetically engineer the perfect offspring, what are they really trying to accomplish?

I disagree with Sandel on one fundamental point.  He is quoted in the article as saying:  “We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us.”  I don’t buy that — no pun intended.  I think part of the witches’ brew of developments that is leading us down the road to perdition is the notion that the public is never to blame for anything, that we are trapped and buffeted by forces beyond our control.  I think people can make a difference and can act morally and ethically; the thousands of acts of kindness and human decency that occurred after the Boston Marathon bombing, where strangers acted purely out of concern for their fellow man rather than concern for the bottom line, prove it.  Our challenge is to bring more, much more, of that same sense of ethical behavior to the public arena and to our everyday lives.

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George Jones Starts The Grand Tour

Posted in America, Music, Music videos, tagged , , , , , , on April 26, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

George Jones died today, in Nashville, at age 81.  He was the greatest country singer of his generation, and perhaps the greatest country singer, ever.

Jones lived a rough-and-tumble life and was legendary for his unpredictable behavior, but his musical talent was unquestionable.  It was gigantic.  Jones had an authentic country voice, with a lilting twang and an ability to wring every ounce of emotion out of his songs.  He was a real person and real performer, not some phony, blow-dried, cowboy hat-wearing pop star masquerading as a country singer.  I loathe “modern” country, but I could listen to George Jones and Merle Haggard and Patsy Cline all night long – and just might do so tonight.

I’ve posted the YouTube video of Jones singing The Grand Tour (and being introduced by his one-time wife, Tammy Wynette) because the title seems apt, but also because the song is a good illustration of his awesome prowess as a singer.  It’s a simple song about a man who has been left by his wife, but Jones turns it into a poignant, deeply moving glimpse into the shards of a life.

I don’t often urge people to do this or buy that, but if you’ve never listened to country music, give George Jones a try.  He and his music were pieces of Americana, and we may not see their like again.

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Seemingly Passe Protest Songs

Posted in America, Music, Politics, Reflections, World, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 26, 2013 | 1 Comment »

Signs, by the Five Man Electrical Band, is a great song,  First released in 1970, it tells the story of a young man who questions authority in the form of signs that want to exclude “long-haired freaky people” and trespassers.  The song’s refrain is:  “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.  Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind.  Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?“

I don’t know many people who are disturbed by signs these days, even though there undoubtedly are many more signs now than there were in 1970.  If the young man from Signs were around today, would he still be angry about signs, or would he be more concerned by other issues of liberty and freedom — like drones, or widespread video surveillance, or the wide-ranging governmental regulations of conduct that are far more prevalent than they were four decades ago?  Or, because the young man would be in his 60s, would he be focused more on terrorists and public safety issues, and be grateful that the widespread use of security cameras by private businesses helped authorities to promptly identify and apprehend suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing?

Protest issues come, and protest issues go.  The world is a different, more complicated place than it was when signs, and Signs, seemed so important.

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The Tsarnaevs And The Immigration Debate

Posted in America, Politics, tagged , , , , , , on April 25, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

The Boston bombings came at an inconvenient time for the politicos who are working on an immigration reform bill — but that might be a good thing.

In our catch-phrase, talking-point era, the immigration issue has been reduced to mantras like “securing our borders” and fuzzy video images of people scaling flimsy walls in desert landscapes.  Of course, immigration involves a much more complex, multi-faceted set of concepts and questions.  We are a land of immigrants, built in large part through the hard work and aspirations of those who came to our shores in search of freedom.  We need immigrants to perform certain jobs in our economy, and we want immigrants who will be doctors and entrepreneurs.  We feel a more obligation to offer asylum to those seeking to escape persecution in their native lands.  Millions of people now working in America came here illegally; what are we realistically to do about them?

The Tsarnaev brothers accused of perpetrating the Boston bombings cast a different perspective on the immigration debate.  They didn’t come here smuggled in the hold of a ship or sneaking across the border in the dead of night.  “Securing our borders” through towering walls or armed forces in the southwest wouldn’t have stopped their arrival.  And what happened after they got here?  News reports indicate that various members of the Tsarnaev family received government assistance.  It’s not clear that the Tsarnaev brothers ever held a permanent job.  If they had had to find gainful employment, and didn’t have hours of free time to surf the internet for hateful messages and theories, would they have descended into apparent jihadist beliefs?  Tamerlan Tsarnaev eventually was targeted as a potential radical in comments from a foreign government, investigated by the FBI, and put on a CIA watchlist.  Should something more have been done about him?

The Tsarnaevs shouldn’t define the immigration debate, of course, but neither should we ignore lessons we might learn from them.  As immigration reform is debated in Congress, it’s entirely legitimate to ask whether our experience with the Tsarnaevs should cause us to revisit how we decide to allow people to come to America, what we should do, if anything, to monitor them after they arrive, and whether we should be able to take action if their conduct after their arrival indicates that they aren’t making positive contributions to society.

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