A Republic, M'am, If You Can Keep It

"What sort of government have you given us, sir?" a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, outside the Constitutional convention. 
"A Republic, ma'm, if you can keep it," he replied.

One of the problem with a government which is supposed to represent its people, which is supposed to respond to what they are thinking,  is determining exactly what it is "the American people" are thinking. Mostly, what we hear is inchoate noise.

When you hear a politician or a pundit tell you what "the American people" are thinking it's what he thinks. "The American people" think we need this or we should do that is pretty much what the speaker thinks we need or should do.

But how do opinions get formed? How does conventional wisdom get made?  It's often a case of, "If you say it often enough, it's true." Shakespeare had the line, "In speech, there is logic," which Mad Dog found opaque as a youth, but he now understand translates as, "It doesn't matter how absurd, illogical, bizarre what you say is; if you say it, it will carry a certain patina of truth, simply because it has been said. The reality of existence (of a thought) validates the truth of that thought."  So, "if you teach children they are descended fro animals, they will act like animals," may be manifestly untrue and not logical, but if you say it, the very fact that the thought exists means it is a thought, a reality of sorts.

 What you hear, as public thought comes, typically, from those who have the time, the energy, the anger to take the actions necessary to be heard. Or, you hear from those people who can afford to pay others to speak for them.

So, we have the best Congress money can buy.
And we have, if not mob rule, then wacko rule.

Political parties try to "energize" their base.

What Mad Dog is seeing, as he tries to mobilize the voices of light against the forces of darkness, is it is hard going.  People with jobs, lives, families, careers, talents for music and drama and high tech, tend to be busy with those things.

One thing you could say for the 60's was that people with voices used those voices to batter the "Silent Majority" and to make the things the Silent Majority was said to believe look ridiculous: America is fighting for freedom in Vietnam; premarital sex is a sin against God; my country right or wrong; opposing your government's official policies is unpatriotic; Blacks ought to know their place and stop causing trouble.  Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, a whole group of performers raised their voices and devoted their time to change the narrative in America.

But now, people who really have nothing better to do than to sit at home and watch Fox News, eat Nachos, tend to be the ones who are angry enough to go to rallies and conventions and to steer the big boat of state in a direction they want to see. They are the Tea Party people, the gun owning, NASCAR loving, resentful, Bible thumping, creationist crowd. And they make sure they are heard.

The American Civil Liberties Union never does so well in contributions as it does when some Rush Limbaugh, Rick Perry bombast gets aired.  The righteous, raucous right is the best fund raiser the left has got. But the problem is, the right shapes the narrative in this country; the left just donates money.

Mad Dog is finding that, on the Seacoast, people who might be able to help, with some very stellar exceptions, simply find other things to do. Well meaning, thoughtful liberals have simply dropped out.  They are at the beach, doing gigs at cafes, doing the New York Times crossword puzzles, reading novels, sailing, eating dinner out. They are, in short, enjoying the things which enrich life.  But where is their call to service? 

Are they asking what they can do for their country?

And the Right shall inherit the earth.

Teenage Contraception in Colorado

Teen Age Sex with Immigrants!

This morning, on the BBC, the story hit the airways about teen age pregnancy having dropped by 40% in Colorado.
First there was the interview with the woman who oversaw the project: An anonymous private "billionaire" had offered to pay for free contraception for teenage girls in Colorado. Thousands of IUD's were implanted, and free birth control pills were handed out and, Lo, and behold! Pregnancy rates actually dropped!

What a surprise.

Actually, it was something of a surprise. The Colorado state demographers said they have never seen such a dramatic result from any program in any arena. 

Because no government was involved, there could not be the usual roadblocks to the use of IUD's. No government money was involved. And you know about IUD's, the devil's work--"They are really just implanted abortion machines." (They prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in some cases; in others they simply  prevent fertilization.)

The BBC managed to find a person they described as head of some Colorado right to life organization,  who decried this program saying, "When young girls of 13, 14 and 15 are told they are descended from apes and other animals, it's small wonder they start behaving like animals. This is awful. They get depressed. They get STD's. They get HIV. This is an offense against nature."

So, there you have it.  Real Americans speaking on the BBC. 
It took the Brits to show us ourselves.

Mr. Gohmert Instructs: A Page from the Republican Primer

Do you think this man may have a problem?

"And they’ve committed at least 7,695 sexual assaults.  You want to talk about a war on women? This administration will not defend the women of America from criminal aliens! By the thousands, and hundreds of thousands!

Well, we know thousands.And we know people are coming in by the hundreds of thousands illegally. And this administration wants to talk about other people having a war on women when they will not defend the women that are being sexually assaulted by illegally aliens in this country!"

           Louie Gohmert, U.S. Congressman, First Congressional District, Texas (Where else?)

I'll protect you. Just move a little closer. 

No, that is not Rush Limbaugh. That's a United States Congressman. Granted, he's from Texas, but still.

If he had just thrown in that one word--"White"--it would have been a complete throwback to the 1950's.  We have to defend the White women of our country from the sexual depravities these dark skinned aliens who want to ravage them.  

Oh, Deacon Gohmert, please protect me! I need you, so big and strong, to protect me against these sexually avaricious adolescents from Honduras, who are stalking me, hiding behind every cactus, every pick up truck, just pulsing with sexual intent!

Don't you love the specificity:  down to the final 5? 7695 sexual assaults by illegal alien men on white Texas women. I've investigated each and every one, my very own  self, and kept a log. And, Lawdie, Lawdie, some of those women were hot!

The problem for Mr. Gohmert and his fellow Tea Party Republicans is the images of these refugee kids are just so ...cute. Trying to ship off  those kids off is something akin to bludgeoning  fur seal pups over the head with truncheons.  

So let's put on our thinking caps, Republicans: How do we transform these kids into something threatening?   Why, they look innocent and all, but they carry disease!

No, wait, disease is too...invisible and the Democrats might bring on some lefty doctors saying they've examined the kids and no disease.  

This guy might be from Honduras!

Ah, but let's say, I'm just saying, that some of these kids are randy adolescents. Dark skinned, randy adolescents with eyes for white women as these women pull up in their vans at the super market. Ohhhh...yeah.  

Why they haven't hit upon the zombie angle, I do not know. After all, you cannot kill these kids,  and they just keep coming back.  But that may be a fall back. For now, we just need a simple, straightforward, specific warning. 

Thanks Louie, for your concern. We know where it's coming from.

Scott Brown Defends Our Borders

Adam, Kwasman, Fine Upstanding Republican Defender of our Border

 Scott Brown has joined hands with Adam Kwasman, that crusading Republican candidate for Congress (with the license plate LMTDGOV) who confronted a school bus full of children rumored to be pulling into the Arizona town of Oracle (great name for this story) headed for a youth home refuge. Kwasman was there with other adult patriots, determined to turn back that bus. And this he did, and he saw "fear in their eyes," which, he implied, would motivate them to run screaming back across the border to tell all their friends not to come to America.

Scott Brown's new state also has an international border (with Canada, near Pittsburg, New Hampshire) and he is equally determined to show any kids contemplating jumping the gate what's right.  He has a new ad out, blaming those kids on President Obama and his nefarious sidekick, Jeanne Shaheen, who practically invited all those kids to come stay up here.

Standing before a TSA security line at the airport,  former (and future) Senator Brown jerks a thumb over his shoulder at all those Americans wending their tedious way through the security check point, saying that real Americans have to wait in line for security's sake every day, 

"But folks who come here illegally, they just walk across the border. That's just wrong."

Then, once he's got us nodding in agreement, he launches into the next step:

“Thanks to the pro-amnesty policies of President Obama and Sen. Shaheen, we have an immigration crisis on our hands.We respond with compassion, but it’s time for us to secure the border once and for all.”

Which left Mad Dog wondering, just how do we "secure the border, once and for all?"
Mad Dog knows that President Obama knows exactly how to secure the border once and for all--he just doesn't want to do it. And he knows Scott Brown knows how to secure the border once and for all, but he's not telling, because, well,  you can't run a campaign without a tantalizing secret.

Richard Nixon once told voters he had a "secret plan" to end the war in Viet Nam, but he wasn't telling until after the election.  Turned out, it was evacuation of all American troops, which was something we did not need any cooperation from anybody other than the American military to accomplish. Remember that scene of the helicopter on the roof of the American embassy?  

But this secure the border Final Solution thing could not be evacuation of all American troops--the National Guard just only got there. 

So what do you do with people who simply refuse to leave?  Well, you need a Final Solution. A once and for all thing. 

Thing about final solutions is, they are rarely final and most usually, no solution at all.

Funny: Our kids look a lot like their kids

Which brings me back to that school bus:  They weren't illegal immigrants. They just looked Hispanic. They were American kids trying to find their YMCA.  That is YMCA, as in young men's CHRISTIAN association. You remember...the One who told us to take the shirt off our back and give it to our brother, and all like that. But that was a different time and a different place. 

Scott Brown really does look sharp, though, doesn't he? He was Cosmopolitan's Sexiest Man Alive once. Did you know that?

What happened to his barn coat? 

George Packer: The Dark Side of American Democracy

Beach reading for Mad Dog, with one eye on the pelicans, was rewarding this weekend. 
It was an odd confluence, vacationing down South, among the upper 1% of the upper 1%, and hearing off hand stories about people who worked for organizations which are not Goldman Sacks or Morgan, but "non profit" corporations in healthcare, who were given going away presents by boards of directors--a million dollars a year for life. 
Hey, you did a great job, here's a million a year for life. Open ended. Nice retirement plan, don't you think? Of course, nobody else in the organization even has a retirement plan. But you do. Nice pat on the back. I know you'll do the same for me some day, when you sit on the board of my corporation. 

Not my money.  Corporate money. Enjoy.

In an organization with a budget north of half a billion a year, this may not seem like a break the bank proposition, but the idea that idea would even occur to anyone on the board of directors, much less be approved,  floored Mad Dog. 

What that says about the sense of entitlement of the very rich speaks volumes--and these are the very people who would be quick to speak in deprecating tones about welfare queens with a "sense of entitlement."

Against this backdrop was George Packer's odd Jackson Pollack style book--in which he splatters a bunch of stories against the wall and something more or less coherent emerges about the unraveling of the "American dream,"  whatever that is--mostly the sense that if you work hard and "play by the rules" you will prosper in this country. 

Among the people whose stories he tells are a longtime Democratic party yeoman who works for Joseph Biden off and on, who witnesses the criminal greed of big wall street operatives go unpunished, and who is disappointed in President Obama for having no appetite for going after these miscreants who would have brought the entire economy down in the process of getting their own pots of gold.  Mr. Obama is painted, likely accurately, as someone acutely aware of his own lack of economic experience, and he does not have enough of a moral compass or deep seeded confidence in his own outrage to spurn the Larry Summers, the Timothy Geithners, the Robert Rubins, the guys who in some measure got us into the mess of 2008. So Mr. Obama simply does not have the balls  to go after the men on Wall Street who should have been thrown in jail.

Or maybe Mr. Obama made the simple calculation if he went after Wall Street scions, he would be a one term President.

But really, these guys make Bernie Madoff look like a piker. 

Packer tells the tale of a Florida lawyer who uncovers the depths of the incompetence, gross negligence, unconscionable indifference of Florida judges, prosecutors and sheriffs who foreclose on people who were more innocent victim than intemperate borrower. If anyone had listened and believed this lawyer in 2006, 2007, when he was screaming his Jeremiads, the crisis might have been averted and a lot of deserving billionaires at Goldman, Lehman, Morgan and Citibank might now be in jail. 

The whole  zoo of wheelers/dealers who packaged rotten mortgage backed securities were guilty of enough malpractice to transform the word "malpractice"  into a euphemism --we would really have to invent a new phrase--"criminal negligence" does not begin to describe what these rich men did because it does not include the aspect of how these guys sold snake oil they knew was worthless and should have known would eventually be poisonous. 

Not that this is anything new in American history--Huckleberry Finn depicts snake oil salesmen--but those were small time grifters who only poisoned a townsman or two--these 21st century Wall Street hucksters poisoned the entire economy and the body politic to boot.

And still the rich pay 15% income tax while the 99% pay more than twice that.

It's a bracing read. It even has a part on Elizabeth Warren--one of the best hopes for a brighter American future.

Make Way For the Ducklings New Hampshire Version or Tone Deaf Police

Wood Ducks

This morning the Portsmouth Herald carried a story about a woman, Hallie Bibeau,  who stopped on the median strip of Route 101 in an attempt to rescue wood duck ducklings whose mother had been killed crossing the highway and the ducklings were still trying to cross.  Ahead of her, she saw a car swerving to avoid something and she realized it was ducklings. Two were killed before her eyes. She was able to rescue two others. How many were left behind is not reported. WMUR says these were the only two survivors. 

The woman was accosted by a New Hampshire Highway Patrol detective and given a ticket and summons for reasons which are not entirely clear, but apparently it had to do with some law which says you can only stop on the median for "emergencies."

The tone deaf New Hampshire state police spokeswoman is heard on WMUR saying this was not an "emergency."

The woman later delivered the two ducklings to a rescue organization--in Maine.

The facts of the case are unintelligible (a frequent problem with the Herald) but  from the WMUR report, it appears the ducks tried to cross from the right hand side of the East bound road toward the West bound side of the road, across a broad median strip of grass, but the mother was killed on the right hand shoulder and some of the ducklings (number unknown) were killed crossing the road but two made it to the median strip where Ms. Bibeau rescued them. Why she was there for more than few minutes is not clear. Was she looking for others?  The median strip is no "strip" at that point of Route 101 but is at least 30 yards of grassy knoll. 

The woman apparently remained long enough for a passing ambulance to stop and inquire after her and leave. She was still there when the policeman arrived and apparently ordered her to move on. 

Trying to imagine why the policeman would give her a ticket rather than try to help, one can think he might have said to himself, this woman can get killed out here trying to save a bunch of ducks and cause an accident in the process. 

The woman claims cars were swerving trying to avoid hitting ducklings and that collecting the ducks was probably better for public safety.  Where the ducks were exactly, where they were headed, how many were out there are not stated.

What did strike Mad Dog, as he drove along Route 101 East bound this morning, was that police cars are often parked in that grassy dividing strip, talking to each other and sometimes they park at the turn off to Route 95, between Exit 12 and Exit 13 and they pull cars over to the shoulder or the dividing strip because the speed limit drops, for no discernible reason, from 65 to 55 at that point and many motorists continue blithely on and are easy pickings. 

So when the police stop their cars or stop "speeders" that is not a safety risk to the public. When the police sit in their cars in the same strip, that does not put anyone at risk, but when a citizen stops her car on that strip, well...

Was this a matter of control or a matter of concern for safety?

All we can be sure of is Hallie Bibeau will not have be out  that $44 fine--actually WMUR says it's $100.  She will likely get lots of dollars from the public to do that. 

Hallie Bibeau

Clearly, we don't want citizens lolling along the median strip. Highway 101 is not a place to dawdle. But one has to ask who was minding the Public Relations office at the New Hampshire State Police when they responded like so many mindless robots, both at the scene and in the police station later, when they were questioned about this story, which has been played as police against mothers, mindless, ruthless, heartless police indifferent to life and death, bureaucrats mouthing empty bromides about, "our concern is always for safety," or better yet, "we did not want this new mother to make her new child motherless." As if this mother was such a complete moron or so emotionally overwrought (as women are apt to be, we must infer from the policeman) that she was about to run out in front of a car, attempting to save ducklings. 

Boston Commons

Of course, there is a statue in the Boston Commons based on the book which shows with a kindly policeman holding up traffic so a mother duck and her ducklings can cross the road.  Here in New Hampshire the statue would likely show the policeman with his hunting rifle, picking them off. 

Three Ducklings 

The bigger questions are who controls the median strip and who controls the police?

Atlanta Teacher Test "Cheats": Trying to Find Humanity in Bureaucracy

Mad Dog has been thinking more about those teachers at Atlanta's Parks Middle School, who tried to save their school, cynics might say, tried to save their own jobs, by changing wrong answers to right answers after the students had handed in the answer sheets.

Yesterday, Mad Dog compared the teachers to Schindler, who rescued children from death in the concentration camps by cheating the system. The system in that case was so manifestly horrific any undermining of its implacable process seemed heroic--so why not see these Atlanta teachers as heroes?

On the other hand, the system of schools in Atlanta, which attempts to teach math and writing to students who are in no way prepared to learn is not a system designed to destroy the students. It is simply designed to help them in a very limited way.

What the teachers were saying is you can't teach these kids algebra if they are living in shattered homes, hungry, up all night slinging drugs on the corners, escaping abusive parents, dodging bullets on the street and unable to see what you are teaching them has any relevance in their lives. They simply do not have the faith in the adult who stands before them, at the head of the class.

What the teachers tried, at least what some of the teachers tried, was doing the laundry, literally, of their students, tried to build relationships, trust, tried to be surrogate parents, tried to do all the things parent should have been doing.  

The school system, unconsciously was saying, "We don't care about all those warm and fuzzy things. We care only about the test result numbers. We don't care whether or not those kids are abused at home or on the streets. We care only about what happens in the classroom. That is our job. All the other stuff belongs to social services. There is a fracture. I must fix it. If the school cannot function as a learning factory, it should be closed down and the kids sent to a school which does function as a learning factory.

The teachers say, then No Child Left Behind, is an oxymoron--it means that all these children will be left behind. Not in school, because they will, none of them, continue to go to school. 

Of course, there was more venality there--careers were built on phony "success" as test scores soared, when any fool could see there is no way those improved test scores could have been honest. 

At Parks Middle School, a teacher  pointed out a vicious teenager in the hallway, who was a chronic truant, in and out of jail, disruptive in class, dangerous to teachers and students alike. That teenager's test scores were exemplary, really high. "Some kids just test well," the administrator shrugged.  That, or somebody made sure that kid tested well. Hear no evil; see no evil.

None of the administrators whose job it was to measure success or failure wanted to see failure. 

When a system is broke, can you blame the people on the front line from choosing to do the job the way they think the job ought to be done?  

No system tolerates a Jimmy McNulty, but many systems depend on people like him.