Marsh Family: THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

 

We have Donald Trump and his Simpering Scoundrels; we have pandemics; we have mindless embrace of unexamined orthodoxy on the left and mindless derision of those orthodoxies on the right. So there is a case we live in the worst of times. (Although, I would say 1968 was worse.)

But it is also the best of times.

Because we also have youtube and this morning I stumbled upon the Marsh Family and after they blew me away with an understated little song, I was able to google them and find out more and be even more inspired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPfwtXulKS4

This may provide a model for resistance. If we could only mobilize a thousand Marsh families--a tough challenge, given the level of intelligence and talent in this group--we might just bring Trump down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYILYILPrXs

We have 330 million souls living in America. Do we have even a hundred folks who can do what these folks do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvT3aQjLxdE

Relics of Hypocrisy: Thumb On the Scales of Just Causes

 

The first time ever I went to vote at the March exercise called "The Warrant articles" and elections, in Hampton, I thought this must surely be some sort of elaborate joke, or a community performance ritual, like Oberammergau Passion Play in some Bavarian village.

Town Hall Debate: Real Democracy

There were two or three ballot sheets with choices for candidates for the School Board, Library Trustee, Zoning Board or the Budget Committee, which needed no explanation.

But then there were forty odd "warrant articles" with several paragraphs each, like the one asking the voters to authorize a $1,000 fine for people who did not pick up their dog's poop from the beach. That one, I voted against, thinking $1,000 sounded a bit harsh for that, admittedly uncouth, offense. But I thought maybe I was missing something. 

Mostly, however, the paragraphs were undecipherable to me--stuff like whether the town should spend $10,000 for a study of water damage abatement along Ocean Boulevard and its effects on undermining the seawall. No clue there. Is $10,000 a reasonable amount for such a study? Do we even need a study? What happens if we don't do the study?  So I skipped most of those.

Later, my neighbors explained I was supposed to go to the "Deliberative Sessions" held before the voting, where citizens could ask questions about each warrant article and get full explanations, and hear objections or support for each.

So, the next year, I did that, but they lasted for eight hours and most people seemed to drift and and out, so they could voice support or opposition to some particular article. There might have been 200 people at these meetings, and about 3,600 voters show up to vote on voting day, so it's a safe assumption, most of them have not taken the time to consider each of these articles.

Turns out: you really needn't have worried about people not showing up at the Deliberative Sessions, to deliberate, to consider the pros and cons of each article: Once the final articles are presented to the town, there is a helpful line printed beneath the paragraph presenting the article and directly above the boxes where you check your choice:

RECOMMENDED BY THE SCHOOL BOARD 6-0

RECOMENDED BY THE BUDGET COMMITTEE 5 YES-2 NO

Then you check:

YES:   ____

NO:     ____

So, there you have it. You might not know anything about the article, but the town officials on the various committees tell you how to vote. Presumably, they have debated or thought about these articles.

So, if they have done all the hard work, who am I to vote against what they recommend?  It's as if a jury has sat through a week of testimony, hearing the evidence of guilt or innocence and then voted, and then asked me for my opinion, as if I should even have an opinion.

One might ask: Why go through the whole charade that citizens are considering these questions, if you are going to tell them how to vote, in the end?

Well, it helps folks give a patina of legitimacy to whatever cause they support: "Well, the citizens of the town voted for it!"

This always came up when objections were raised to using taxpayer money to support a church school in town: "Well, the voters voted to do it!"

Alicia Preston X

Alicia Preston Xanthopolus pressed this argument in her editorial in the Seacoast News:

What is wonderful about our form of government in our small town, is that we actually vote directly on these funds. That is quite an empowerment and if “we the people" want our tax dollars to go to a religious organization, we do and should have the right to say so.

And there you have it: it's democracy in action!

When someone at one Deliberative Session observed that Sacred Heart School is the only non public school to ever get a special taxpayer account in town, the reply was: "Well, anyone can get it. All they have to do is get the voters to approve it."

When someone then put forward an article to do that, the same SHS advocate objected, saying if we made money available to just any school, then a school for the Church of Satan might move to town and claim that money, and the idea was voted down.

Voting her Heart

When a citizen complained that the School Board and the Budget Committee had always voted to recommend the slush fund to the taxpayers, and that's why it always passed, and it wasn't really something the voters wanted; it was simply something they did not understand, that objection was met with stony silence.

Influencer

That's the way we've always done it here.

Until this year, when the School Board and Budget Committee voted to not recommend taxpayer funds for the church school, and members of the congregation howled bloody murder over the nasty practice of those committees putting their thumbs on the scales of justice.

The Fire Next Time: Alicia Preston Xanthopoulus

 

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

--AMENDMENT ONE: RATIFIED 1791

Readers of this blog are understandably weary of the fight over the Sacred Heart School warrant article. The voting this year voted it down, but it will surely be resurrected (excuse the pun) next year. 

The Seacoast News, what passes for our local paper, carried this screed from a columnist for the paper in support of the warrant article slush fund for the church school and that it carried no rejoinder is all that we can expect from this amateurish journal. 

Alicia Preston Xanthopoulos 

So, knowing it will arise again, Mad Dog provides the rejoinder, for those not completely fed up with the whole debate.

Commentary: Here's why I support Hampton tax dollars going to Sacred Heart School

Alicia Preston Xanthopoulos

Sun, February 11, 2024 at 5:08 AM EST

5 min read

When I go to the polling location to vote in the Hampton town election on March 12, I will vote yes for $52,521 for non-religious costs (like a school nurse) for Sacred Heart School, as I do every year this question is posed to me. Which I think is every year I’ve been eligible to vote.

I am not Catholic. I have never attended a private school or religious one — unless Sunday School at the First Congregational Church counts. I am a product of the public schools in Hampton and feel I received a wonderful education and experience as a student. I'm still voting for that small amount of funding for Sacred Heart so students and parents who choose to attend can keep tuition reasonable and give them choice as to what is best for their child. I hope I am in the majority, but the opposition is getting louder.

 

I find the opposition, based on “separation of church and state” and “government shouldn’t be funding religious anything,” to be both constitutionally untrue and not in the best interest of our community and most importantly, our students.

First, on the constitutionality issue, quite simply the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect us “from” religion, it protects the freedom “of” it. It has been interpreted that way for generations.

 

No, actually, Alicia, this is not even close to being true. The First Amendment has two clauses: 1. The establishment clause (which is what the Sacred Heart School slush fund warrant article violates) and the 2. Free exercise clause, which is what you are talking about. The free exercise clause has not been predominate for generations; in fact, the opposite is true, although lately with the Trump Court, it has gained advocates. Of course, "Congress" is now accepted as meaning "government," state, city or town, and some have argued that making no law respecting establishment means no law for or against establishment, but that is such sophistry, nobody bothers to say that anymore.

More and more frequently, this issue of “government” money going to religious schools is being raised as a constitutional dilemma. I don’t find it to be. As a matter of fact neither does the U.S. Supreme Court as recently as 2022, when it ruled that our neighbors next door, Maine, cannot exclude families who send kids to religious schools from its tuition reimbursement program.

The Maine case had peculiarities which do not apply to Hampton and the SFS slush fund. In Maine, children sued the state for refusing to pay their tuition to a religious school, saying there simply was no other alternative school for them to attend within a hundred miles. In Hampton, there are four public schools within a mile of SHS.

In the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “A state need not subsidize private education. But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor asserted with Robert’s ruling the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) had virtually ruled that separation of church and state is unconstitutional. As the First Amendment is what embodies separation of church and state, SCOTUS had ruled, very peculiarly, that a part of the Constitution is unconstitutional. If we ever get a SCOTUS comprised of actual jurists, as opposed to the Alito/Thomas/Gorsuch/Barrett/Kavanagh cabal, this decision will be surely overturned.

While this is a very different case regarding state “voucher” programs, what it demonstrates is there is no absolute ban of taxpayer dollars funneling through a government to a religious school. In that respect, it is no different than Hampton taxpayer dollars simply funneling through Hampton to Sacred Heart.

Oh, no, Dear Alicia, there is a ban on state funds being granted to churches and church schools, and that is called the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and even more unambiguous, the New Hampshire state constitution which says: “No person shall ever be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination.”

What is wonderful about our form of government in our small town, is that we actually vote directly on these funds. That is quite an empowerment and if “we the people" want our tax dollars to go to a religious organization, we do and should have the right to say so.

The thing about the Constitution of the United States is that it applies all across the nation, from every mountain top to every hamlet, and it tells you what you cannot vote on. For example, you cannot vote to segregate your local schools on the basis of race, even if the local voters want that. We have nullified the Constitution in Hampton for 50 years, just as the governor of Alabama tried to nullify the Constitution, but we got away with it, and ultimately, he didn’t.  

Besides, we already do it all the time. We approve funding to St. Vincent de Paul to support its amazing efforts to assist low income families with needed food, clothing and even home medical supplies. We support money to assist with the “Christmas Parade," one of my favorite days of the year.

This is what is called the “common good” thing. It is accepted that government cannot do everything, and some charities which happen to be religious run soup kitchens and may ask for government money for this charitable purpose. But the distinction is they do not teach religion in a soup kitchen and you can have your soup and not sign up to be converted or taught a particular gospel. But, as Justice Robert O. Jackson noted in his Everson decision, a church would give up everything before it gives up its church school, because without church schools every church would be doomed to extinction with the next generation. The difference between SHS and St. Vincent de Paul and all the other examples of Catholic charities is that schools teach religion; charities do not.

We give tens of thousands of dollars to maintain our cemetery, a place that hosts more religious services than anywhere but a church itself.

This is an embarrassingly inept analogy: Our Hampton cemeteries have interred people of all faiths and government funds to maintain these or, for that matter parks, do not violate the separation of church and state. 

You might have cited other examples of violation of government establishing religion which would be more problematic: The “In God We Trust” on our coinage; the “one nation under God,” in our pledge of allegiance, the opening of Congressional events with a chaplain and a prayer. Yes, all of these mix state with religion, and the only thing one can say about all that is, "wish it weren’t true," but these erosions of separation do not make us a theocracy.

We’ve given, through our ballots, to Waypoint, who doesn't seem as religious now but was founded “as the Manchester City Missionary Society, a collaborative of several Protestant churches in the areas, whose purpose was to ‘save the unclaimed souls of the city.’ Primarily, it tried to church the ‘unchurched.’”

Should we look at the founding of an organization to see if it meets the criteria of “no religious connection anywhere”? Of course not. That’s absurd. Let’s remember, these funds we’re talking about do not go to any religious activities, so a religious connection is simply irrelevent. The only questions that matter to me when I decide whether to vote on one of these “donation” articles is, 1. Does it do good work for the community? 2. Is the amount requested fair and reasonable? When it comes to Sacred Heart, it checks both boxes so I will check mine “yes” in a few weeks.

Oh, Alicia, you haven’t been listening to the Deliberative Sessions. It is very clear from public statements (available on Channel 22) that the money given to SHS is not separable into money spent on religious things (like crucifixes) and money spent on non religious stuff. To try to separate monies is like telling the person who is allergic to peanuts it’s just fine to eat the stew because you can eat the carrots and the peas and use your spoon to separate out the peanuts.  The Treasurer who wrote the check for the SHS computers testified that she had no idea if those computers were used to stream services from St. Patrick’s cathedral. And even the principal of the school never denied that only 25% of the students at SHS come from families in Hampton; the other 75% of students at SHS come from families who are paying taxes in other towns, not Hampton. So what the taxpayers of Hampton are being asked to do is to fund a Catholic education for anyone who wants one, no matter what town they come from.

Some often say — not just regarding Sacred Heart but these types of issues in communities across the state and country — “if you want to donate, donate, but use your own money!” Whose money do you think we're talking about? The magic money tree in Depot Square, or our money, in the form of taxpayer dollars, that go to where we vote it to go to, after it just passes through the town on the way to its intended target?

I also don't understand the argument that is noted on this matter, as well as regarding our state Education Trust Fund Program, that money spent on a religious or private schools comes directly out of the coffers for public schools. How? If they don't have to educate that kid, aren’t they saving money? And these voucher programs and the non-religious funding for Sacred Heart is far less than the allotted "per pupil spending” local schools get. They're actually making out on this deal.

This is the old, “it’s cheaper to send kids to SHS than to the expensive public schools." Fact is, we have empty seats in our public schools, so paying again to send kids to SHS is like going to the cafeteria, where the meals are all set out to feed all the kids, and then saying, “Well, but for those of you who want to go eat at McDonald’s, here’s some cash to do that.” We are paying twice for these kids.

Across society and multiple topics, there’s a lot of “just because it’s always been done, doesn't mean it still should be.” Well, it also doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be either. For four decades we’ve assisted this school, and more importantly our fellow community members who are students, families and neighbors, I see no constitutional, fiscal or political reason to stop now.

Oh, back to the “we’ve always done it this way” thing. That argument is so worn and corrupted (as it was in the Jim Crow South) it hardly is worth mentioning.

"But we've always had Negro children going to Negro schools and White children going to White schools!" 

This is the old "hasn't done no harm," thing. We have nullified the Constitution here in Hampton and nothing bad has happened argument. "We haven't done no harm having the school teacher lead the students in the Lord's Prayer every morning. What's all the fuss about?"  

What you are really saying, dear Alicia, is that we have done it this way, offended principles this way, for years and you haven't felt harmed by it. That does not mean other people have not felt offended, belittled or outraged.

On March 12, this Protestant, public school product will be voting for funding Sacred Heart’s non-religious costs, and I hope the majority joins me.

The famous "Everson" decision:

"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State

David Remnick and the Anointed Pundit

 

Mad Dog admits it, right at the starting line: He reads the New Yorker regularly, and listens to The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. Mad Dog is a fan. Sort of. Well, mostly. Well, not really.

Discoverers of Insulin: How Much Good

Remnick begins his interview with Atul Gawande with the sentence: "It's hard to calculate all the good Atul Gawande has done in the world."

And therein is contained a bias to which Mr. Remnick is assuredly blind:  Dr. Gawande may have done good in the world, and it may be incalculable, but if Dr. Gawande had been a graduate of Cornell University Medical College, at least until the advent of the 21st century, faculty there would have looked at his career and you would have seen a lot of heads shaking in disappointment.  

Gawande trained as a surgeon, and he once did some  surgery. 

And he told a wonderful story about being called to the Emergency Room for a woman with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which he thought would surely kill her, but she refused surgical intervention, and he sadly watched her son take her home to certain death, only to learn, a year later she was still alive, which taught him a valuable lesson, and he used it to great effect with his audiences, that doctors are not always correct.  Of course, ask a vascular surgeon and he will look at you quizzically, and say, "Rupture of any large abdominal aortic aneurysm, and the decision to try to fix it is always a risk versus benefit thing--there is a certain percentage of aneurysms which do not rupture. You are always talking about risk, not certainty."

Paul Offit, MD

Dr. Gawande gave up surgery for a job with Amazon medicine, with much fanfare about how he would change the medical care delivery system for the entire country, and when that didn't work out,  he took a government job with the Agency for International Development. 

And he wrote two books, one of which extolled the virtues of surgeons stopping before beginning a procedure to run through a check list, as airline pilots do, which was a reasonable suggestion, if not revolutionary, but he got a book out of it.

And he wrote a famous New Yorker article which got a lot of attention in the Obama White House, about how doctors often change their practice to skew toward more profit, gaming the insurance system.  And he wrote about how nice it is when doctors can directly communicate with each other, the way doctors at the Mayo Clinic can do,  because they are all in the same building. 

And he wrote about a famous doctor who ran a famous clinic for cystic fibrosis patients, with a little vignette about a doctor who asks a patient, "What have you done this week to make this the best C.F. Clinic in the world?"-- as if the most important thing to this patients ought to be the  clinic's success rating. 

Of course, this famous clinic could offer nothing to really help these patients. Pulmonary toilet in CF is just a band aide on a wound. It may get a patient 5 more years of life. You can really appreciate how inept a therapy is only when a truly effective therapy emerges:  in CF, that is gene therapy and CRISPER technology which may promise patients a normal lifespan and a normal life. This clinic, though famous, had nothing more to offer its patients than Elliot Joslin, who was treating type 1 diabetes with a diet of dubious benefit, before the discovery of Insulin. 

Famous, but useless. That's a thing in medicine. Sort of the Dr. Oz phenomenon. 

Gawande was not, in Cornell speak, a "real surgeon."  A real surgeon, on a gorgeous Spring day would want to be in the operating room, doing a lovely dissection. 

Semmelweiss

But that world of dedicated physicians and surgeons has receded into the mist: the world of doctors for whom medicine was a calling, the highest and most rewarding pursuit in the world.

Dr. Gawande, those ancient physicians would say, "Went Hollywood." That is, he sought personal fame and fortune, doing stuff that was not really surgery or medicine. But for Mr. Remnick, the fame was the thing. 

If you want to talk about doctors who did incalculable good in the world, you might consider Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best, his graduate student, who discovered the molecule insulin one hot Toronto summer, sweltering in a lab, dissecting dogs. They sold the patent rights to their discovery for $1. They had wards filled with children dying from type 1 diabetes. They did not want any delay over patent rights to delay treatment. Those are real heroes. Not famous. Not a single student at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton can tell you who Frederick Banting or Charles Best are. But these doctors did incalculable good for the world. They just don't make the pages of school textbooks, or popular magazines.

Before Insulin

Giving up bedside medicine does not mean you have lost the faith.  Tony Fauci was a Cornell product and he left bedside medicine, for the most part, for a job in the  government which was mostly administrative, although he did cleave to bedside medicine for may years after most of his colleagues had stopped making rounds on real patients. 

Of course now, even at the Cornell Medical College reunions, the alumni who are  celebrated are those who got famous: a guy who became famous as the orthopedic surgeon for the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks. 

Did that famous orthopedic surgeon do more good in the world than some other orthopedist who labored away in obscurity for 40 years, fixing up high school students in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, or the guy replacing hips in Portsmouth, New Hampshire? Did he affect medicine as broadly as the Cornell graduate who became the chief of radiology at Duke for 35 years, who trained hundreds of radiologists, whose textbooks of radiology trained thousands others? 

Lynching: American South Berserkdom

David Remnick is a man whose career has to do with mass communications, and he has drunk the Kool Aide that the celebrated, the famous, the folks at places like the Hoover Institution, or the Harvard faculty, are the people who are important, who know more, and who have more impact in the world.

So, when he interviews some guy from the Hoover Institution, whose critical insight into our current fix with the Trump mob is that America has always been "berserk," Remnick finds that notion profound, important and something which, if only he could get out there, might save the world, or will, at least, make millions feel much relief.

And yet...anyone who reads enough American history has known, America is berserk and has been since its inception. Read "The Guarded Gate," by Daniel Okrent, or "A Peoples History of the United States" by Howard Zinn or "The Untold History of the United States," by Oliver Stone or "White Trash"  or "Fallen Founder" by Nancy Isenberg or "The Best and the Brightest," by David Halberstam, anyone who has drunk from these founts of knowledge knows just how vile, wonderful, nasty, superlative, corrupt, pure, and checkered the USA has always been.

Or, you could simply read Huckleberry Finn.

Journalism 101

 

There was voting in Hampton yesterday, and about 10,000 ballots were cast, although with the ballot running into what felt like 100 pages, not all voters voted on every warrant article. Mad Dog typically skips the warrant article yes/no vote on allowing Mrs. Moneypenny to plant petunias across the sidewalk on the grassy strip by the road which technically belongs to the town, for which she needs voter permission to plant. Live Free or Die, New Hampshire.

Among the warrant articles to go down to defeat was the article awarding $52,000 to the Sacred Heart School of the Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal.   During the Deliberative Session on this article the woman who writes the checks to cover the invoices presented her from the school for computers admitted she had no idea whether those computers were used to stream services from St. Patrick's cathedral. 

That question arose because the argument has always been that none of this taxpayer money ever goes to buy crucifixes or Bibles, but is only used for "non religious purposes," as if you can separate the peanuts in the stew from the tomatoes, so it's safe to dip in your spoon, even if you're allergic to peanuts.

But what is really fun is to see is how the reporter for the Seacoast News, Max Sullivan, who has reported on this warrant article for years, wrote about this defeat.

 Sullivan's previous stories about this warrant articles featured quotes from the principal of Sacred Heart, along with a photograph of her standing in front of some poster with an inspirational message, like "It's All About the Kids!" Nowhere in his paragraph are responses from any of the opponents of the article. Well, saying "any of the opponents" may be a bit of a reach, as there has only ever been one opponent to speak against the warrant article, (until this year when a public school teacher expressed doubts, without fully opposing it.) But Sullivan has never interviewed this rowdy opponent, which prompted the malcontent to question the owner of Seacoast News whether Sullivan was a member of the congregation, which the owner heatedly denied.

Here is Mr. Sullivan's rendition:

"Voters have supported funding under RSA 198:49 to the Catholic school each year since 1975. The state law was created to allow non-public schools the means of attaining education resources normally provide to public schools by the state. None of the funds are used for religious purposes and are directly used to benefit the students of Hampton who attend the school. The article which was not recommended by the School Board or the Budget Committee was defeated by a vote of 1,345 to 1,961."

Of course there are things to unpack here:

1/ None of the funds are used for religious purposes we've covered: school funds are not fungible, i.e. if you pay for paving the parking lot, the church school has more money to spend on the altar.

2/ The article was not recommend by the School Board or the Budget Committee: In previous years the School Board was stacked with members of the congregation of the Church, and so they were voting taxpayer funds to support their own church. This year, the Board is not so overwhelmed by church people, and at the Deliberative Session there was much ire coming from congregants about the Board's change of heart. For years, the congregants thought it was just fine to have the recommendations of the School Board printed on the ballot; this year there was prolonged objection.

3/ The RSA is the law which has been used to circumvent the state constitution which clearly states no citizen's taxes can ever be allocated to any church or religious organization, a provision which has suffered local nullification since 1975. Here's the actual constitutional passage: "No money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination." That passage is so clear that efforts have been made to expunge it in the legislature. Not a problem in Hampton, where we simply ignore it.

 

4/ The $52,000 is used to benefit the students from Hampton who attend the school, but only 25% of the students are from homes in Hampton, which means 75% of the students benefited are from households where the parents are paying taxes in another town. As was noted at the Deliberative Session, what this article has guaranteed is not equal treatment for all Hampton kids, it has guaranteed that anyone from neighboring towns who want their kids to have a Catholic education can send there kids to Hampton, where the taxpayers will pay for it. Mr. Sullivan echoes the words of the Sacred Heart principal who frequently uses that phrase: funds "are directly used to benefit students of Hampton who attend the school." True enough, but there are precious few of those attending the school and the funds are Hampton taxes supporting kids from towns which are not Hampton.

And, oh, Mr. Sullivan has never addressed the question about  the woman who has  written those checks to cover Sacred Heart invoices for so many years: Is she herself a graduate of Sacred Heart?  Is  this town official, who has been writing checks from taxpayer funds all these years, never having refused to pay an invoice from the school, actually writing taxpayer checks to her own alma mater?

So, some significant points have been missed by Mr. Sullivan. 

When he was challenged about why he never interviewed the rowdy article opponent, Mr. Sullivan replied he had tried to call that man but never got an answer, and he was writing under deadline. The opponent asserted his phone showed no such phone  call, and no message was left. 

There you have the essence of journalism along the Seacoast. 

Some have decried the death of local newspapers. 

Mad Dog wonders whether we are better off without them.

Washington Posting

When I was seven  years old, my brother, who was five years older, got a newspaper route delivering the "Evening Star," and I became his employee. I was not old enough to get a paper route, but he paid me $3 a month for delivering half the route, and it was my first introduction to newspapers and the idea of their importance. 

In those days, most people in our neighborhood got a morning paper (The Washington Post) and an evening paper, the Evening Star. 

I read both papers, although selectively, beginning with Dick Tracey and the other comics, and scanning the headlines about stories I did not fully understand, like those about a Senator named Joseph McCarthy who said  communists were infiltrating the government.

Years later, when I moved back to Washington, D.C., we had friends who wrote for the Wall Street Journal and were in the journalist crowd.  There were lots of dinner parties in those days--that's what you did in Washington-- and I found myself sitting next to Annie Garrels, the NPR correspondent who covered Moscow, who asked me what I did and when I told her I was a doctor, she said, "Oh, don't say you regret that, that medicine is all a sordid trade now, and that medicine in America is cooked."

"Actually," I told her. "I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do."

"Good then," she said, "You'll do."

She engaged in a brief exchange in Russian with Tim Sebastian, across the table, who was a BBC correspondent in Washington, but he had lived for years in Moscow and spoke fluent Russian. 

Tim and I became friends and he was constantly remarking at something I had said, "Oh, God. That is just so American."

I used to run a lot--sixty miles a week--and Tim said, "Oh, you Americans! You think death is optional."

"What?"

"You think if you exercise enough and eat right, you'll live forever. Brits know we are all cooked."

"Oh, well," I told him, "Brits, I'm sure, are all cooked. But I'm going to live forever."

The journalists were fun, and this group was bright. 

But I met plenty of newspaper reporters in Washington who were, simply put, not very bright. Magazine editors, too. Just this side of really dim. But, there were a score of fun, bright journalists who were good at asking the right questions.

But somehow, something about them bothered me, as a group, a culture.

Their knowledge was, as a rule, superficial. They could get into a story and learn a lot by asking questions, but they were only as good as their sources. If you guided them to the right people, they might get deep into a story, close to the truth, but they were just as likely to get deflected in the wrong direction, and they did not know their subject well enough to know when they were talking to the wrong people. They were like the proverbial medical intern. The old saying: "It's not the intern who doesn't know stuff you have to worry about. It's the intern who doesn't know he doesn't know. That's the guy who ought to terrify you."

I could see this in the stories they did about medicine, and I realized they were just operating in a different world.  I would go to conferences and listen to people argue about minutiae for hours, but out of that crawled the truth and you knew how tentative that truth was. For the journalists, who wrote on a deadline, this was simply not what they did. They were always in a hurry. They were always certain. They had their stories and they were sticking to them.

On the other hand, they could surprise you. At lunch with an editor of the Washingtonian magazine, I asked him who he liked for President. This was in 2007. This editor was from Mississippi, a graduate of Princeton. He was one of those men who knew what people thought of Mississippi and he knew what people thought of guys from Mississippi who went to Princeton. He was self aware, and self effacing and I liked him and he was one of the smarter journalists I knew. He knew the world is not a perfect place. Anyone who grew up in Mississippi knew that. And he said, "I kinda like the chances of this fellow  Obama."

I nearly fell out of my chair.  I had seen Obama on T.V. I had seen him schmoozing at the Iowa pig roast, and I had stopped channel surfing to watch him and I said, "I'll change the channel the instant he gets boring." I listened to him for half an hour. 

"I'm talking about someone who has a snowball's chance," I said. "Someone who does not come out of the gate already down by ten Southern states." 

"Well," he said, "Every Democrat is in that position. Obama's no worse off in the South than any Democrat. Ain't nobody going to win in Richard Nixon's Southern tier. But, I think Obama can do better in the toss up states. He's the genuine article."

Later, I thought back on that conversation and I thought, maybe these journalists, if they talk to enough people, they actually learn something I don't know.

Now, however, I hear Mr. Bezos wants his editorial page to embrace personal liberties and free markets, whatever that means. Well, I know at least partly what it means. The owner wants his paper to embrace his own values, and to not offend the current Republican mob in Washington.

Which is not to say there hasn't been a prescribed formula at the Post when it was run by people who believed deeply in diversity, inclusiveness and equity.

And one might ask, why does any paper feel it is the place of a newspaper to endorse any candidate for President of the United States?  Where did that imperative come from?

Jefferson said if he had to choose between a state which had government but no newspapers, or a country with no government but had newspapers, he would choose the newspaper state. 

William Randolph Hearst gave us the Spanish American War, manifest destiny and the American Empire. He sent his man to Havana and he told him to get him some photos showing that the Spanish had sunk the Maine and did it to provoke war. The reporter said he might get some photos, but he wasn't sure he could find the connection to war, and Hearst replied: You give me the photos; I'll give you the war.

And he did.

Now we have a President who wants to sue newspapers into oblivion. Freedom of speech is just another thing to sue into oblivion. Newspapers are the enemy of the people.

At their best, journalists allow us to Aude Alteram Partum: Hear the other side. 

Obadiah Youngblood, Lock 8, C&O Canal

Currently, there is so much coming at them, I'm not sure journalists can keep up. 

Tariffs beget consequences and the stock market crashes and it's all Biden's fault, although it's just a transition to a new free market economy which will make everyone  rich. Ukraine started the war. Good tariffs make good neighbors. Putin loves you, and Zelensky is a dictator.

So, there you have it: There's still a place for speaking truth to power--until power sues you out of existence.