Egotism and Music

About a month ago, the New York Times reported on a new academic study examining whether in recent years popular music has become more self-centered and egotistic. The study, by psychology professor DeWall at the University of Kentucky, examined lyrics from 1980 through 2007. The abstract described the object of the study:

"Tuning in to psychological change: Linguistic markers of psychological traits and emotions over time in popular U.S. song lyrics.

By DeWall, C. Nathan; Pond, Richard S., Jr.; Campbell, W. Keith; Twenge, Jean M.

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Mar 21, 2011, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

American culture is filled with cultural products. Yet few studies have investigated how changes in cultural products correspond to changes in psychological traits and emotions. The current research fills this gap by testing the hypothesis that one cultural product—word use in popular song lyrics—changes over time in harmony with cultural changes in individualistic traits. Linguistic analyses of the most popular songs from 1980–2007 demonstrated changes in word use that mirror psychological change. Over time, use of words related to self-focus and antisocial behavior increased, whereas words related to other-focus, social interactions, and positive emotion decreased. These findings offer novel evidence regarding the need to investigate how changes in the tangible artifacts of the sociocultural environment can provide a window into understanding cultural changes in psychological processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)"

I have noticed the same phenomenon in church hymns. Recent hymns seem more self-centered and far less centered on the deity.

Horoscope

I just discovered the web page for the Onion's horoscope.

My favorite is the horoscope for Aries. Too bad I missed being Aries by a day.

Left Behind

I gather from reading Doonesbury [should that be renamed "Doomsbury?"] that sometime tomorrow the rapture is supposed to happen. If I have the right idea, the faithful are supposed to be whisked away to paradise while the rest of us stay here.

I gather that two novelists, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, have written sixteen best-selling novels on this theme.

I have just one question.

Where did they put their money?

Election Rigging, Texas Style

In case you had any doubt that the nationwide Republican effort to pass restrictive voter ID laws is intended to obstruct voting by Democrats, take a look at this article in the Dallas Observer web site. And watch the You Tube video.

Debbie Georgatos, running for Chair of the Dallas County, TX Republican Party, makes it clear that the purpose of voter ID is to "prevent Dallas County from becoming a super-blue-hole," drawing an analogy to the black holes in space and implying that the only reason Democrats win is voter fraud.

By the way, I voted in Dallas County in 1992. The system in use then was vastly better than the one in use in Florida in 2000. Fraud is not a problem. Not in Dallas County nor anywhere else in Texas; not in North Carolina either or anywhere else in the United States.

Which doesn't mean there is no rigging of elections. One means of election rigging is selective voter suppression, which is what voter ID is all about. Another way is to redraw election districts in favor of the party with the pen. That is going on in North Carolina as we speak. Both parties do it. It is perfectly legal, so long as the new districts comply with US and North Carolina Supreme Court decisions and Department of Justice requirements. Another technique is to harass and intimidate voters and election officials.

If you want to steal an election, though, the least likely approach is to have individual voters impersonate some legally registered voter. Not only is it a felony if you get caught, it can't possibly be done on a scale great enough to affect an election. Voter suppression has a much greater chance of success. Republican movers and shakers know this. Voter ID is an expensive, disruptive effort to suppress votes.

Pamlico County Education Budget

At last night's meeting of the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners, Dr. Coon, Superintendent of Education, presented a report on next year's budget.

The report was not only grim, but also uncertain. The bottom line is that the county's education budget for the coming year will be down to what it was in 2005. There will be layoffs. Some programs will be terminated. Class sizes will increase and many teacher's aides will be laid off. For the fourth year in a row, teacher salaries will decrease. On top of that, teacher take-home pay will be reduced $2800 to $3200 for health insurance deductions. Other staffing positions will be eliminated.

There is no way these reductions can help but reduce the quality of education in the county.

The new North Carolina state legislature has decided to reduce funding for education at all levels well beyond the governor's recommendation.

Even so, the situation need not be so dire if the US Congress would reestablish the stimulus program, and this time set it at a sufficiently high level to do some good. Not that the ARRA stimulus didn't create jobs and prevent others from being lost - it just wasn't big enough to create adequate demand to counter the effects of the Great Recession. And monetary policy can't help, since the short term interest rate is at the zero bound. Can't go lower.

What is really going on here? Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, calls attention to a study by two Dartmouth economists and explains:

"This is hugely important for macro-policy debates because it suggests that more stimulus would provide a further boost to the economy and reduction in unemployment. This means that the only reason that we are sitting here with 25 million people unemployed and underemployed is that the politicians in Washington are too intimidated by the Wall Street deficit hawks.

The deficit hawks have used their enormous political power and control over the media to shut down any further discussion of stimulus. They have managed to completely dominate public debate with their brand of flat-earth economics. They are using the crisis that was created through their greed and incompetence to reduce hugely valued public benefits, like Social Security and Medicare. And, now they are using the crisis that they have created for state and local governments to destroy public sector unions.

This looks really awful because it is. Our nations' leaders are deliberately inflicting enormous pain on tens of millions of people to advance their political agenda. This new study helps to prove this fact."

The leaders he is referring to are overwhelmingly Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures and governors' mansions.

Where Do All These Bills Come From?

The newly elected North Carolina legislature has pursued a frantic pace of new legislation.

Some observers have charged that the new legislators have no idea what the effect of their proposed legislation will be. That may be true.

Normally, anyone taking a new job spends a little time getting to know the ropes. Not these legislators.

So where are all the bills coming from? Did you ever hear of ALEC? That is, the American Legislative Exchange Council. You thought you elected your local candidate to the state House of Representatives and the state Senate? Actually, you elected ALEC.

How do I know? I have been following the bills introduced in the legislature, and I have looked at the ALEC web site. Here is a link to ALEC's model legislation. Just read ALEC's models and compare them to the bills introduced by the new legislators. Most of them are ALEC bills.

So who is ALEC? The nationwide voice of corporate interests seeking to get their way through uniform acts by all of the state legislatures. Their aims have nothing to do with North Carolina. Do they have the public interest at heart? Not Likely.

Here is a good backgrounder.

Brown v. Board of Education

Fifty-seven years ago today, a unanimous Supreme Court of the United States ruled that "separate but equal" schools are inherently unequal and violate the equal protection of the laws provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Let us celebrate.

Freedom Riders Documentary

The documentary on the 1961 freedom riders shown last night on public television revealed to the current generation the heroism of an earlier generation who fought to make this a better country for all Americans.

The documentary also showed the level of organized violence by the Klan and others, in collusion with law enforcement officials in Alabama and Mississippi. It took intervention by the federal government to protect citizens against state governments in the south in those days.

Governor Patterson of Alabama and Governor Barnett of Mississippi, like Arkansas Governor Faubus before them, paid no attention to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justification of "states' rights" was nothing more than a defense of the right of states to oppress a significant percentage of their own citizens and to deny them the rights of all Americans. It was a deplorable time in our national history. North Carolina under Governor Terry Sanford was, by comparison to Alabama and Mississippi, an outpost of freedom.

Let us never forget.

Remember Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs?

In 1988, there was an open primary for presidential nomination in both parties.

Among democrats, the leading candidate at the outset was Gary Hart of Colorado, pursued by seven other democrats. The press began calling the field "Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs," the implication being that the other candidates were lightweights

Who were the other candidates? Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and eventually Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton; Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, currently Vice President of the United States; former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; Reverend Jesse Jackson of South Carolina (and Chicago); Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, later Vice President under President Clinton and winner of the popular vote in 2000; Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri; Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. Not a very lightweight field, after all.

Now we have the Republican field for 2011. Three more putative candidates withdrew over the weekend. So far, it looks like there may not be seven contenders for the Republican nomination this year.

Pundits keep seeking an explanation. I hope they succeed.

Freedom Riders

Fifty years ago, May 4, 1961, seven blacks and six whites left Washington, DC in two commercial buses enroute to the deep south. Their aim: to challenge segregation of facilities used in interstate transportation.

Monday night, May 16, 2011 at 9:00 pm, Public Television will broadcast a documentary about the event.

These young people showed remarkable courage and their peaceful, non-violent challenge transformed America.

We should all be grateful.

I strongly recommend everyone view the film.

Governing is Prediction

My last post called attention to W. Edwards Deming's observation that management is prediction.

This is true of government as well.

Ideally, both elected officials and civil servants would take into account during policy deliberations some prediction of the effects of the policies. But how can the public follow the issues and know what are the intended or probable outcomes of government measures?

We have prognosticators. Pundits. Professional explainers and predictors. Some write for newspapers and magazines and some talk on television. Surely the most influential of these pundits are the ones whose punditry is most accurate, right?

Not Exactly.

Recently a group of scholars in Public Policy at Hamilton University decided to examine the accuracy of prognostications by professional prognosticators, with interesting results.

This was not a ground breaking study. A more comprehensive twenty-year study of political and economic forecasting was summarized by Philip Tetlock in his book Expert Political Judgment. Tetlock's study was based on predictions by 284 experts on political and economic trends, and a subsequent analysis of the accuracy of the predictions. His findings:

-Extrapolation using mathematical models does better than human prediction
-Education and popularity increase the predictors' confidence but not their accuracy
-Prognosticators overpredict change and underpredict the status quo
-Extremists predict worse than moderates
-Some people predict better than others, even outside their area of expertise

The Hamilton study was more limited in time and scope, but focused on contemporary prognosticators. The most accurate prognosticator in their study was Paul Krugman of the New York Times. The least accurate was Cal Thomas. In general, they found that liberals were better prognosticators, especially if they had no law degree.

Management is Prediction

"The theory of knowledge helps us to understand that management in any form is prediction."

-W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics

Other Deming observations:

Knowledge is built on theory;

Use of Data requires prediction;

There is no true measurement without an operational definition;

Information is not knowledge.

Oh, That's Just a Theory!

It's often the case that people unfamiliar with or resistant to scientific undertakings dismiss peer-reviewed research by saying: "that's just a theory." As if it were an unsupported guess.

I have even said something like that myself: "I have a theory" about something. What I mean to say is, "I have a hypothesis."

A hypothesis is more than a guess. It is a supposition based on familiarity with the subject, experience, or deep thought. A proper hypothesis must be testable.

The point of testing a hypothesis is to disprove it. No hypothesis can be proven. It can only be disproven. If a proper test fails to disprove a hypothesis, the next step is to try another test. Collect more data. Give the problem more thought. Examine whether we have a case of coincidence or one of cause and effect.

Then take all the data collected, observations made, and develop a theory. The theory must be compatible with all the observed data. The theory should also be testable. If the tests fail to disprove the theory, then it may be adopted as the best explanation available, but no theory can ever be proven. It is the job of scientists to reexamine accepted theory in light of new knowledge, new methods of measurement and observation.

Theory is the best you get. There is never final certainty.

Silence on the Line Explained

Blogger has been down the last couple of days. I need to do a couple of new posts to catch up.

Interdependent World

Bad news for China?

Harold Meyerson in today's Washington Post writes about China's bad economic news and what it may mean for us and Europe. In brief, the answer isn't simple. Worth reading.

Economists

"An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's. "

Will Rogers

I think Will was too kind to the economists of his day. As of his death in 1936, none of the neoclassical economists had figured out how it came about that the economy had stabilized at a low utilization of economic resources. It took John Maynard Keynes to figure that out, and his General Theory wasn't published until after Rogers' fatal airplane crash at Point Barrow.

Here is what Keynes had to say about economists:

"But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

I'm not convinced that even Keynes got this right. The power of vested interests, when coupled with the writings of defunct economists, amplified by "voices in the air" heard only by madmen in authority, can be very powerful, indeed. Present concerns about the nonexistent "debt crisis" and the imagined specter of "inflation" and "bond ratings" are examples. It's like relying on Elwood P. Dowd's conversations with Harvey for economic advice.

Even in Keynes' day, the intellectual influence of defunct neoclassical economists on policy led the Roosevelt administration to prematurely attempt to balance the budget in 1937, setting off a second dip of the Great Depression.

I was there.

It took five more years and immense war spending to dig out of that hole. Let's not go there again.

On Cooperation

"Competition leads to loss. People pulling in opposite directions on a rope only exhaust themselves: they go nowhere. What we need is cooperation. Every example of cooperation is one of benefit and gains to them that cooperate. Cooperation is especially productive in a system well managed. It is easy to make a list of examples of cooperation, some of which are so natural that we may not have recognized them as cooperation. Everybody wins."

W. Edwards Deming

Don't Eat Our Seed Corn

Folks who didn't grow up on a farm may not get the allusion to seed corn. Let me explain.

Back in the olden days (before hybrid seeds and genetic engineering), farmers harvested their crops and set aside some of the harvest to use as seeds for the following year's planting. Even in hard times, they would never eat the grain set aside as seed. If they ate the seed corn, it would extend and intensify the famine into the next year.

Something like that is going on in Raleigh this year as the state legislature is pushing drastic cuts in education programs, layoffs of teachers and diversion of public school resources to charter schools and even private schools. That may even be worse than eating seed corn, because the effects may last for a lifetime of the students affected.

"Why should I care?" you may ask, "I have no children in school."

Such an attitude would be foolish in the extreme. All children in school are our children. They are the ones whose contributions to Social Security taxes and Medicare funds will be used to support us in our old age. Even for those who don't need Social Security to survive, retirement plans depend on future productivity increasing the value of factories and enterprises and expanding our national wealth and the value of our stocks and bonds. Who will labor to cause that increase?

These very schoolchildren.

One of the most pernicious ideas abroad in the land is that children and their parents are "customers" of our schools and that the school systems must compete for their favor. The truth is that we are all recipients of the value provided by effective school systems.

Good schools attract intelligent and capable parents to come here. They attract businesses to our state. Schools are a valuable economic multiplier. We let them languish at our collective peril.

Let's make our schools even better, instead of starving them for resources.

Candidate Filing

Overheard during and after last Tuesday's meeting of Oriental's Town Board of Commissioners were a number of negative comments about the board.

For those who were surprised, dismayed or annoyed, you should know that Tuesday, November 8, 2011 is the date of municipal elections. Oriental also has absentee voting (including one-stop) starting in October.

But to run, you need to file. Candidate filing begins at twelve noon July 25, 2011 and ends at twelve noon August 12. It is also possible to run as a write-in candidate.

For details, call the Pamlico County Director of Elections, Lisa Bennett, at 745-4821.

Power to the Powerful! Wealth to the Wealthy! Blame to the Blameless!

Writing for Slate magazine yesterday, Eliot Spitzer described what he calls the "Republican war against the weak."

It is a multi front war, led by many generals. Republican governors against unions. Legislators against consumers. Judges against individuals and for corporations.

The truth is that the struggle of the wealthy and powerful against what used to be called the common man has been a feature of American politics from the beginning. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, though, it looked for a long time like the New Deal and its subsequent enhancements had permanently evened the tables. Well into the 1970's, Republican efforts to undo the New Deal and its regulatory and safety net features failed.

In the past thirty years, however, as memories of the depression faded and claims were made that we are now so smart we no longer need regulation, Republicans began to make serious inroads into the protections that had worked so well for so long.

"The unifying theme," Spitzer says, "is an assault on the weak. The power of individuals, each of us feeble in isolation, to act collectively and hence stand up to the powerful is being eviscerated. Those who already begin behind are finding the few legal protections afforded them under attack. A critical element of the Republican agenda has become increasing the legal power of those who already have power, and diminishing the power of the weak."

But Spitzer misses the boat on at least one matter. When he tries to explain why these efforts are wrong, he says: "if we are upset at the outcome of an election, we don't take away the right to vote of those who defeated us..." Yet all across the country Republican legislatures and governors are doing just that. They are introducing changes to election law clearly intended to discourage poor, elderly, handicapped, African American, Hispanic and first time voters from voting.

There are currently 41 bills in the North Carolina legislature that will, if adopted, modify election law and practice. The majority of the proposals would impede both voters and candidates. The bills appear to be part of an attempt to rig elections in favor of Republican candidates.

There are at least a half dozen proposed amendments to the North Carolina Constitution with the same apparent aim.

And we don't yet know what will be attempted with legislative redistricting.

It should be an interesting legislative session.

Amending Oriental's Zoning Law

Of all of Oriental's ordinances, the most consequential by far is the Growth Management Ordinance (GMO). The GMO has the greatest effect on the look and feel of the town, the value of real estate, the possibilities of real estate development, and the opportunities for the town's growth.

North Carolina General Statutes rightly provide explicit rules for initial adoption of a zoning ordinance and its subsequent amendment. The goal of these rules is to foster an open process and provide members of the public meaningful opportunities to make their views and wishes known.

In discussions about zoning, we hear frequent admonitions that we must be friendly to business - after all, businessmen and real estate developers invest a lot of money in their projects.

It is worth remembering that, for most of our residents, their home represents the largest investment they will ever make. Maintaining the value of that investment as well as the look and feel of their neighborhoods is often of supreme importance to them.

The town's planning board, made up of volunteers, has significant responsibilities to advise the town's board of commissioners on zoning matters. They are, in effect, the substitute for what, in a larger municipality would be the town's planning department. But they are an advisory board. Both NCGS and our GMO make it clear that the board of commissioners is not bound by the planning board's recommendations.

The Town Board is, after all, the governing body.

Last Tuesday night's kerfuffle between the planning board and the town board shouldn't have happened. In one case, the town board rejected the request for a public hearing on a proposed new section 88. In another case, the town board tabled a motion to schedule a public hearing for a seven-page (single-spaced) complete rewrite of Article XV of the GMO, so that board members would have time to compare the proposed draft with what exists now.

There is a widespread misconception that "tabling" a motion is a back door means of killing it. Not so. Properly used, tabling a motion is appropriate whenever the proposal is seen as not quite ready for a vote (as in not being understood by the board members) or it may even provide an opportunity to build stronger support for the measure. In any event, I believe it is inappropriate (except in case of a quasi-judicial proceeding) to schedule a public hearing on a draft ordinance unless a majority of the board has reviewed the draft and is comfortable putting it before the public. Those conditions did not exist last Tuesday.

I have a number of problems with the draft amendments, including the form of the amendments as put before the town board. I will have more to say about that later.

In the meantime, anyone with an interest in Oriental's GMO, including anyone for whom an amendment might at some time in the future jeopardize any provision of the GMO of personal importance should read the proposed amendments here.

All interested citizens should be sure to attend the public hearing now scheduled June 7.

It isn't clear to me why the planning board is in such an all-fired hurry, or what the actual problems are to which these five drafts are the purported solution.

Redistricting

We attended a meeting last night on redistricting in North Carolina. This is required after every decennial US census, to insure that each legislative district (and some other districts) represent the same number of citizens.

The process is highly political (meaning partisan). It is also subject to complex legal constraints. The Research Division of the N.C. General Assembly has prepared a very helpful pamphlet: "Legislator's Guide to North Carolina Legislative and Congressional Redistricting." The pamphlet makes it very clear how difficult it is just to comply with the legal requirements. Once you overlay the legal requirements with the natural desire of each political party to maximize its vote and minimize that of the other parties, the challenge becomes mind-boggling.

The reasons we have so much difficulty with redistricting are:
1. Representation is by geography rather than by social, cultural or economic affinities;
2. We have single-member districts with representation decided on a winner-take-all vote;
3. By comparison with other countries, we have few legislators;
4. We have only two viable political parties.

The truth is, the reason we have only two parties is because of the first three characteristics of our system.

Is there a better way?

I think there is. For legislative elections, I favor multi-member districts and proportional representation. It is not as complicated as it sounds. Such an approach would almost certainly introduce new political parties into the system and require parties to cooperate. It would be less likely that a single party would control any house of a legislature, thus leading to coalition building. And redistricting would become much less complex.

Based on the past couple of decades of polling by Times Mirror and the Pew Trust, it seems that our population would shake out into perhaps nine or ten opinion groupings and perhaps that many parties.

Would such a change lead to better outcomes? Who knows? But such a system works pretty well elsewhere.

I predict we will adopt such a system as soon as we can persuade pigs to fly.

Management that Works

I'm reading through The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming. That his methods get results is demonstrated by the postwar success of the Japanese automobile industry after he trained them in his system. More recently, his methods have contributed to the current success of the Ford motor company.

Every page of his book has one or more gems. Here's one:

"Reward for good performance may be the same as reward to the weather man for a pleasant day."

Oriental Zoning Controversy

There were fireworks at last Tuesday night's meeting of Oriental's Town Board even before the vote on a proposed town dock.

At the beginning of the meeting, the board considered whether to schedule public hearings on five separate amendments to the town's Growth Management Ordinance (GMO), the town's zoning ordinance. When the proposal to schedule a hearing on changes to Article VI of the ordinance failed due to lack of a motion and the motion to schedule a hearing on changes to Article XV was tabled because some commissioners wanted to read it before voting on it, one member of the planning board stormed out of the meeting and the other members present expressed displeasure in other ways.

In view of the board's actions on the two most controversial GMO amendments, the subsequent public comment period was devoted entirely to the town dock issue (previous post).


At least one member of the public, who had come to the meeting for the specific purpose of speaking out against the change to Article VI, did not speak on that subject, since the board did not act. She left, thinking that business was over.

Apparently intimidated by the planning board reaction, though, the town board reconsidered its vote to table Article XV and voted to schedule a public hearing for Article XV and Article VI as well, except for a new Section 88 exempting religious institutions from the maximum footprint limits of Section 77.

That didn't make the planning board happy either. The next day the mayor scheduled a special meeting for Friday to address Article VI again. This morning the town board scheduled a public hearing for all of the changes to Article VI, including the new Section 88.

(According to some townspeople, the new Section 88 is solely designed to alleviate a concern of the church attended by the mayor and his wife I have no idea if that is true). The truth is, it is impossible for a member of the public, by reading the five draft amendments to the GMO or by attending last Tuesday's town board meeting, to have any idea why the proposed changes were drafted, what problems they were designed to solve, or what justification exists for the solutions recommended by the planning board.

Regrettably, the emotions expressed, the misunderstanding of proper legislative procedure and the failure to have effective and transparent communication between the Town Board and the Planning Board has made a situation far worse than it needed to be. Neither did it build confidence among the public that this isn't a scheme to railroad the changes through the system.

I have some ideas about how to improve procedures that I think could go far to prevent this kind of thing in the future. I just looked at the clock, though, and decided to save my ideas for the next post.

Town Budget

I've been thinking about the budget and some of the priorities reflected therein. But let's get to first principles.

What is a town for?

To provide services to the citizens. If there were no services, there would be no need for the town.

How are the services provided? The town's employees deliver the services. The water plant doesn't operate itself. Neither does it repair itself. The water meters don't read themselves and the bills don't get in the mail by themselves. The streets and sidewalks aren't self repairing.

No employees - no services. It's as simple as that.

Last year the town board decided to balance the budget on the backs of our employees by establishing and gradually increasing a monetary contribution by each employee to purchase his or her health insurance. The scheme was to reduce the town's contribution to health insurance, but to compensate somewhat by increasing wages and salaries. Even if this modification to the pay structure resulted in a dollar for dollar compensation (one dollar increase in pay for each dollar of decrease in the town's contribution to health insurance), the burden on the employee would be greater. We would replace an untaxed benefit (health) with a taxed benefit (wages).

We're talking about employees making as little as $11.00 an hour, who are having difficulty buying enough gas to get to work and we want to place another burden on them? These are people for the most part who can't afford to live in Oriental and walk or bicycle to work. And they don't buy Priuses.

So where might the town get the money to continue paying employee health insurance as before and still balance the budget? A good place to start would have been to not spend the $22,000 the board spent to hire a lawyer to investigate the previous town manager in hopes of finding a cause to fire him that would save spending the $25,000 termination pay in the contract the town negotiated and signed.

A second place to look for how to balance the budget without passing the hat to the employees is to tap into the money the water system should have been paying to the general fund (recently recalculated) but hasn't. That's on the order of another $25,000 for the coming fiscal year.

I think there are better options than taking up a collection from the workers.

Problems in Civics Education

The nation's report card in civics is just in. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in civics education has just been released. The news is not good.

We are not doing a good job of educating our students for their role as citizens. And the scores are not getting better.

Take a look at the report card and the sample questions, and you'll see what I mean. We need to do much better.

New Town Dock Project

It was a good turnout last night at the town board meeting. Standing room only. Almost every attendee spoke during the public comment period. All but one were in favor of the project and that one wasn't vehemently opposed. The Board voted unanimously to go forward.

Protect Polluters

Monday night's County Commissioners meeting addressed, among other things, a request by Commissioner Mele for the board to pass resolutions of support for three bills now before the legislature concerning environmental regulations. The bills, attributed to drafting efforts of local real estate mogul Missy Baskerville and introduced by Senator Preston, were as follows:

Senate Bill 323, An act to create an exemption to the riparian buffer requirements for certain private properties in the Neuse River and Tar-Pamlico River Basins.

In brief, the proposed act "grandfathers" any parcel platted and recorded prior to August 1, 2000 from current riparian buffer requirements;

Senate Bill 324, An act to require greater notification of and ability to attend hearings for rule making.

In brief, the act amends present law to require the rule-making agency to notify the governing unit in each county and publish notice in a newspaper in each county that will be impacted by the proposed rule and to schedule public hearings within 60 miles of each county affected by a proposed rule;

Senate Bill 325, An act to provide additional requirements to apply to the adoption and implementation of any proposed administrative rule that is an environmental rule.

The most significant requirement is that at least 80% of any "stakeholder" committee created to consider a proposed rule be made up of persons employed in the private sector, residing in the city or county affected and essentially be in the industry regulated by the rule.

In a nutshell, these three bills are intended to obstruct agencies responsible for developing regulations to implement public law and delay or outright prevent them from doing their job.

Who in all this is going to represent the interest of the public?

A New Town Dock

Last Thursday's agenda meeting of Oriental's Board of Commissioners revealed that Tuesday's meeting will discuss building an additional Town Dock at the end of South Avenue.

This parcel, to which the town won the rights in a case decided by the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2009, gives the public direct access to the harbor. One appropriate use of the parcel is to build a simple pier extending about 100 feet from shore, for use by transient vessels.

A recurring complaint in some circles is that Oriental isn't sufficiently friendly to business. Otherwise, some contend, we would have more businesses and they wouldn't keep failing.

I wonder how many businesses a population of 875 (latest census) can support. Even the "greater Oriental" population of 2,000 can't support many. We are at the end of the highway.

On the other hand, from 14,000 to 20,000 (estimates vary) boats cruising the East Coast via the ICW each year pass less than two miles away. That represents more than 40,000 potential customers. The best thing we can do for Oriental businesses is to attract more boats to stop here. That would be good for every business.

Last Thursday, one commissioner opposed additional free dockage, on the grounds it may compete with nearby commercial marinas.

This misses the point. Cruising sailors select where to stop based on the reputation a town has as a hospitable place. Availability of transient docks and free anchorage space is among the factors affecting this reputation. The goal is to improve Oriental's brand. The better the brand, the more boats stop. The more boats that stop, the more will come back. Some even stay.
As I contended almost two years ago, the question of what to do about South Avenue is about the future, not the past.

Those of you who support the new town dock project and the effort for Oriental to become even more welcoming and hospitable to cruising sailors, please come to the meeting of the Town Board at 7:00 pm Tuesday, May 3 at Town Hall. And bring other supporters.

The important competition is between Oriental and other towns along the waterway.

The Wicked Witch is Dead

The television scene of a wildly enthusiastic crowd dancing and waving flags in Lafayette Square last night across from the White House reminded me of nothing so much as the dance of the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy's house fell on the wicked witch. The enthusiasm was understandable, but at the same time, there is something unseemly about it.

So I was relieved to learn that the military force that killed Osama bin Laden and retrieved his body treated his remains with respect. That is in keeping with an older military tradition.

An example of this older tradition occurred during the Battle of Santiago during the Spanish American War. The Spanish fleet, which had been bottled up by the US Navy, attempted a break out. They had not gone far when the battleship USS New York engaged the ships in a withering fire from her big guns. Spanish ships burned and sank, to the cheers of New York's sailors.

"Don't cheer boys, the poor devils are dying" New York's skipper, Captain John W. Philip, a Civil War veteran, chided his seamen.

Ninety years later, in July 1988, USS Vincennes, an Aegis cruiser, shot down Iranian Air flight 655, killing 290 passengers and crew. The aircraft was in Iranian airspace in an international civilian air corridor. A television crew on board to film the ship in action recorded the crew on the ship's bridge cheering the shoot-down. I'm sure those crew members later regretted their cheers.

War is a solemn business, not like a football game. Save the cheering for later.

At this writing, it appears our Seals successfully limited collateral damage to civilians. We should be very thankful for that.

On Helmsmanship

The first ship I ever steered was USS Iowa (BB-61) a 45,000 ton behemoth as long as three football fields, propelled by more than 200,000 horsepower.

The boatswain's mate who taught me to steer emphasized that I shouldn't use too much rudder. If I did, I would be constantly chasing the course back and forth across the compass binnacle and never get it right. Even worse, the constant corrections would slow the ship down and waste fuel. If I just used a light touch, natural wave action would usually bring the ship back on course.

As it turns out, the same principal applies to the economy and inflation.

There are two kinds of inflation. There is "headline" inflation, which includes highly volatile prices like food and gasoline. This kind of inflation is notoriously seasonal and subject to temporary influences (bad weather, for example).

The other kind of inflation is referred to by economists as "core" inflation. That is the underlying inflation rather than day to day price fluctuations.

When the Fed manages monetary policy, they have found through experience that they should limit their measures to those affecting core inflation.

Core inflation right now is less than two percent. Furthermore, it is not increasing and there is no sign it will increase anytime soon.

The problem for most of us is that we spend money at the grocery store and gas station in response to "headline" inflation.

Nonetheless, it would be bad for all of us if the Fed started responding to headline inflation with a heavy hand on the helm. That would be another way to kill economic recovery. Goodness knows, the House of Representatives is doing enough on its own to accomplish that. They don't need the Fed's help.

NC Unemployment Benefits

Forbes.com reported on a confrontation today in Raleigh between Republican legislators and workers losing their unemployment benefits.

"The jobless workers." Forbes.com reported, "are caught in a partisan rift over the seemingly straightforward move to change a formula for calculating unemployment benefits, allowing the federally funded program to continue for people out of work for up to 99 weeks."

Some may call it a "partisan rift," but real people are at risk. The dispute, at bottom, is over whose vision for the future of America will prevail. The issues are certainly not trivial.

Americans are increasingly reliant on government programs to meet their most basic requirements. Last year, more than 18 percent of the nation's total personal income came from entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs, according to an analysis by USA Today. Wages were only about fifty percent of total personal income, the lowest share since government tracking began in 1929.

National Public Radio asked members of the public receiving government benefits to call in with their stories. The transcript of their calls is heart wrenching.

The Matinee - Waiting for Hopalong

In the late forties, kids flocked to the matinees. It was always a raucous crowd of children ranging from about five years old to twelve or so. When the cartoon started up, the crowd cheered and then watched in rapt attention as the previews of coming attractions, the next episode of an exciting serial and the newsreels all flashed on the screen.

Then came the main attraction, usually a cowboy movie but sometimes a detective story like Boston Blackie.

Cowboys were the favorite and it was from those movies that we received the most influential instruction about proper conduct. Cowboy movies were far more influential than Sunday School.

The plots were always the same. The villain, a greedy, cowardly bully who sent his hired hands to do the dirty work, had devised a way to take over the town and leave the good, hardworking and honest townspeople, farmers and ranchers without an effective voice.

Then the hero rode into town. It might be Hopalong Cassidy or the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Lash Larue or Wild Bill Hickock. It might even be Roy Rogers or Gene Autry, though they sang entirely too much.

The hero quickly sized up the situation, possibly spying on the villain. Then he organized thetownspeople, pumped up their courage and led them in the effort to undo the villain's plan. There was always a fist fight, and often a gun fight, though the hero never killed anyone. He would just shoot the gun out of the bad guys' hand and "bring him to justice," which meant turn him over to the Sheriff.

It was all good fun, even though we knew it was unlikely that a real world hero could shoot a gun out of someone's hand without otherwise harming him.

Other moral lessons from these movies: greed is bad and greedy people are usually evil; people have to stick together to fight evil; honest workers who do an honest days' work for an honest days' wages are the good guys; if a deal isn't fair, it isn't right.

And altruism is good.

Not bad life lessons.

In the real world, though, it might not work to just wait for Hopalong. Sometimes we have to set things right ourselves.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

Eighteen years ago, the Clinton administration focused its efforts intently on improving economic conditions for ordinary Americans. As a result, during President Clinton's two terms from 1993 to 2001, employment in this country increased by 23 million jobs, far surpassing the rate of growth of the population.

During President George W. Bush's first term, there was zero job growth, while the population grew, resulting in a lower percentage of Americans employed than in 2001. By the end of President Bush's second term, the total of job increases during his eight years was 4.8 million. The Bush job increases fell significantly below the increase in population.

As soon as he became president, George W. Bush insisted that tax cuts would lead to more prosperity for Americans.

It didn't work then and it won't work now.

Why do we keep repeating failed experiments?

British Austerity

The Cameron government in the UK is busy testing the hypothesis that the way to economic recovery from a severe recession is to drastically reduce government spending.

How is that working out? Not so well, according to the latest information from the Financial Times. While the government is touting GDP growth in the first quarter of this year, it is only 0.5%. That offsets the previous quarter's decline of 0.5% and shows the British economy essentially treading water.

Britain's opposition finds the performance unimpressive. Mr. Balls, the chancellor of the shadow (opposition) government in waiting, observed that Chancellor Osborne “doesn’t seem to understand that without jobs and growth you can’t get the deficit down. The slower growth, higher unemployment and higher inflation we now see under George Osborne means he is now set to borrow £46bn more than he was planning to. That’s a vicious circle and makes no economic sense at all.”

Regrettably, our own deficit hawks seem bent on leading us down the same path.

By the way, the "austerity will get us out of recession" hypothesis has been tested before. We tested it in 1929. Japan tested it in the 1990's. It doesn't work.

Ford Ascendant

Ford Motor Company today reported its first quarter net income was $2.6 billion, or 61 cents per share, a $466 million increase from first quarter 2010. Pre-tax operating profit was $2.8 billion, or 62 cents per share, an increase of $827 million from first quarter 2010. Ford also reported it had posted a pre-tax operating profit for seven consecutive quarters.

This is not just good news for Ford. It is good news for a particularly effective style of management, advocated by one of America's great innovators.

After a bad experience with an automobile built by one of Ford's domestic competitors, I read that Ford had hired W. Edwards Deming as a consultant on quality. Not long afterward, I bought a 1987 Taurus and have purchased Ford products ever since.

It wasn't that I thought Deming could magically and immediately bring Ford up to the quality of the Japanese auto makers to whom he gave advice not long after WWII. It was rather that I thought his hiring told me that Ford was now taking quality seriously. That meant a lot.

It turns out, Deming paid no attention to the details of Ford's quality control procedures. He examined Ford's management. It is management, he insisted, that is responsible for 85 percent of a company's problems with quality.

Problems don't lie to any significant degree with the workers, and cannot be corrected by the workers. Slogans and exhortations don't work, he insisted. Instead, he concentrated on changing the culture of management.

Good for Ford.

I'll have more to say later about some of Deming's ideas and how they might help address some of our problems in government and politics.

Momentous Events

This Friday, April 29, 2011, two momentous events taking place an ocean apart will probably dominate television.

Early that morning east coast time, the world will be treated to the spectacle of the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

That afternoon, we will see the final launch of space shuttle Endeavor, commanded by Captain Mark Kelly, husband of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head last January by an attempted assassin. Congresswoman Giffords is expected to attend the launching. Oh, by the way, so will President Obama.

By far the most momentous of those events will be the presence of Congresswoman Giffords at the launch of Endeavor.

My guess is that the largest TV audience will be that of the wedding.

A question for the bean counters among us: which event cost their nations the most - the wedding or the space launch?

I have no idea.

Church and State II

In the late 1940's, I attended Star School, a rural grade school about eight or ten miles east of Oklahoma City.

In addition to reciting the Lord's Prayer every morning, we had other religious instruction.

The most memorable was the annual visit by an itinerant preacher, who addressed the student body on the importance of religion, the evils of smoking, and related subjects.

At one point in his presentation, the preacher asked if any student could recite the golden rule. He offered a quarter to anyone who could do so. Hands shot up, usually hands of eager boys anxious to win the quarter. The preacher would call on the boys in turn. None ever won the quarter.

The only way to win, it turned out, was to recite the King James translation of Matthew 7:12 - "whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." No variations allowed.

I don't recall that he required the rest of the verse, where Jesus is quoted as saying: "for this is the law and the prophets." That is, this is the essence of Judaism, and by implication, the essence of Christianity.

Sounds like altruism to me. Maybe those who claim to be Christians and also followers of Ayn Rand should reexamine their position.

Church and State

Today's Washington Post addresses the history of church and state in America, as one of their "Five Myths" series. Today it was "Five Myths about Church and State."

It is worth reading.

When I was in grade school in rural Oklahoma, we routinely recited the Lord's Prayer. This never raised any opposition, because so far as I know, all of the students came from white, anglo-saxon protestant families.

I never noticed that reciting the prayer had any beneficial effect on student conduct, but neither did it seem to do any harm in that setting.

I learned one thing from the exercise - Methodists prayed for forgiveness of their trespasses, and Presbyterians prayed for forgiveness of debts. Maybe that's why, at least in our community, the Presbyterians seemed more prosperous.

US Behind in Percentage of Small Business-Who Knew?

Everyone seems to agree that the US is a beacon to the rest of the world when it comes to encouraging small business. Everybody seems to be wrong.

A report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research comparing major industrial countries shows we are way behind.

Why are there so many more small businesses in other countries?

The center speculates that the reason is that the other countries all have some form of universal health care, which removes an important economic obstacle to businesses.

National Strategy

This morning on CNN, Fareed Zakaria disclosed and discussed a new strategic vision for the United States contained in an article by "Y," the pseudonym used by two military officers on the JCS staff.

The article is intended to be a twenty-first century replacement for George Frost Kennan's "X" article published in 1947 in Foreign Affairs. Kennan's article proposed the strategy of "containment," which dominated US strategic thinking for the next four decades. (Kennan himself objected to what he described as the "militarization" of containment).

The newly proposed Strategic Narrative suggests replacing "containment" with "sustainment." The authors describe it as follows: "The primary approach this Strategic Narrative advocates to achieve sustainable prosperity and security, is through the application of credible influence and strength, the pursuit of fair competition, acknowledgement of interdependencies and converging interests, and adaptation to complex, dynamic systems all bounded by our national values."

I'm skeptical that this new article will prove to provide adequate strategic direction for America's future, but I agree that we need to broaden our vision concerning national security beyond military power and punitive measures. I'll have more to say later.

Earth Day

Today, April 22, is Earth Day 2011.

A week ago, while I was watching Dr. Strangelove at the Old Theater in Oriental, the scene where General Jack D. Ripper described the commie plot to threaten our precious bodily fluids reminded me of an event during the first Earth Day in 1970. I remembered being told by my destroyer squadron commander that the event was a "commie plot." It was obviously a communist plot, he explained, because Vladimir Lenin was born on April 22, the day of the Earth Day celebration. Even more significantly, he emphasized, Lenin was born April 22, 1870, so the first Earth Day was in celebration of Lenin's centenary.

Not exactly.

In fact, the first Earth Day was organized by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a long-time environmental activist. April 22 was selected because that spring it came on a Wednesday, and wouldn't be a day taken off just to have a long weekend.

As for Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, April 22 1970 wasn't exactly his birthday, either. He was born in Russia, which used the old style Julian Calendar until after the 1917 Russian Revolution. In England and America, which used the Gregorian calendar since 1752, Lenin was born on May 4, 1870. The calendar discrepancy is why the Soviet Union always celebrated the October 1917 revolution in November.

Anyhow, Earth Day never had anything to do with Lenin.

Political Order

Based on a recent review in the New York Times, I have added a new book by Francis Fukuyama to my reading list.

The book, The Origins of Political Order, is said to reflect an evolution of his thinking earlier expressed in an essay, The End of History. Although I had problems with the thesis of his earlier book, I am intrigued by the new one, in which he takes issue not only with his earlier neoconservative colleagues, but also with the individualist views of libertarians.

Fukuyama views politics as a product of history and evolution, and rejects the absolutism of Lockean natural rights theory and market fundamentalism. In contrast to libertarians like Friedrich Hayek, who try to explain society in terms of Homo economicus, Fukuyama emphasizes that a strong and capable state has always been a precondition for a flourishing capitalist economy.

“Human beings never existed," he observes, "in a pre­social state. The idea that human beings at one time existed as isolated individuals, who interacted either through anarchic violence (Hobbes) or in pacific ignorance of one another (Rousseau), is not correct.”

Town Manager

At today's special meeting of Oriental's Board of Commissioners, the Board announced its appointment of Bob Maxbauer as town manager.

Bob has been the town's interim manager for about six months, and will now serve as the permanent manager.

Water and Taxes

Two years ago, I explained that the Town of Oriental had a problem with water rates. I pointed out, as I had at Town Board meetings, that the Town had been losing money on water. Not only that, the water system had been subsidized by the general taxpayers.

This meant, among other things, that taxpayers had paid for reduced water rates for the Town's biggest water users.

Our interim town manager has recently done a more thorough examination of costs properly chargeable to the water system. His review revealed that the general taxpayer's subsidy to the water system was even higher than I had thought.

An inevitable consequence of this subsidy is that it reduced tax resources available for other town priorities. Many times over the past few years, Board members have avoided expenditures for projects that residents desired, claiming we don't have the resources. The money ($150 - $250 thousand) unknowingly spent over the past decade subsidizing the water system could have gone a long way toward meeting those needs.

White Smoke over Town Hall

Oriental residents claim to have seen white smoke from the chimneys at Town Hall. Could it signal the election of a permanent Town Manager?

It has been about six weeks shy of a year since the Town last had a permanent manager. During much of that time, some commissioners even disputed that the town had a council-manager form of government. It does.

The firing, last July 1, was not Oriental's finest hour. No item on the agenda that night suggested that the manager's removal would be considered. The Town had previously spent more than $20,000 for an employment attorney to "investigate," in apparent hopes that she would find some legal cause to fire the manager. Apparently she didn't.

The motion to terminate the manager's employment was made at the end of a long meeting, as a "non-agenda item," simply introduced by the commissioner who had been fetched to the meeting earlier by the Chief of Police at the direction of one of the Town's part time secretarial employees.

To say that this was an improper exercise of the Town Board's legislative and investigative powers is an understatement. The lack of proper notice was a clear violation of North Carolina's open meetings act.

The account of the proceedings that appeared on a local web site here accurately describes what I saw that night, with some additional details that the reporter witnessed personally.

Without arguing the merits of the board's decision that evening or whether the board had the power to take the action (the Commissioner who made the motion accurately asserted that the Board has the power to terminate the manager without any reason), it is also true that the Board never gave the manager the opportunity, either in closed session or open session, to confront his accusers, to be given any information as to the board's views of what he might need to correct.

In short, it was an irregular, illegal (from the standpoint of public notice), underhanded and less than courageous procedure.

It would be good in the future if the board would remove the "non - agenda item" category from the monthly agenda and follow a procedure similar to that used by the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners. The chair of that body asks the commissioners at the beginning of the meeting whether any commissioner has an item to remove or add to the agenda. If the commissioners agree unanimously, the chair then formally modifies the agenda. This procedure is used sparingly, but gives the board some flexibility to deal with last minute emerging issues.

The issue of the town manager's employment was not a last-minute emerging issue.

I hope the members who went along with this kangaroo court procedure have reflected on their actions and resolved to do better in the future.

I understand an announcement will be made at a Town Board meeting at 5:00 pm April 21.

Vote for the Candidate, Not for the Party

Balderdash!

Remember: if politics were an Olympic event, it would be a team sport, not an individual competition.

The most important fact to know about a candidate for public office is the candidate's political party.

Why is that?

Since the dawn of the American republic, we have had at least two political parties - one that pursued the interests of the wealthy and another that pursued the interests of the common man. (At the beginning, only men could vote, so it was accurate to speak of the "common man," which meant, of course, white men.)

Just try to imagine how the people's business could ever get done if our representatives in Congress consisted of 435 supremely confident egotists in the House of Representatives with no underlying organization. Suppose they had to form coalitions from scratch for every bill. Nothing would get done. Voters need to know what the parties stand for, because they are essential to the process.

Over the past two centuries, party labels have changed, and we occasionally had one or more additional parties, but they always shake down to two. Sometimes a candidate tries to hide the identity of his party. Two years ago, the Republican party candidate for the state house had a float in Oriental's annual Croaker Fest parade. Nowhere on the float did it identify his political party. Only that he was a conservative (whatever that means).

So when a candidate is elected and voters say, "I didn't know he was going to support..." - for example, measures to reduce funding for public schools - it shouldn't be a surprise, but it often is. Pay attention to the party and the program of the party's movers and shakers.

Just ask the voters in Wisconsin.

US Pays Low Taxes

The idea constantly hammered into our heads by Republicans is that we pay high taxes, which must be reduced. Not so.

In fact, of all the advanced western-style market economies and democracies (what we used to call the free world), only Australia has lower taxes than the United States.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has published this helpful series of charts showing how we compare.

Sarkozy v. de Gaulle

Yesterday's New York Times printed an op-ed piece by Roger Cohen, generally complimentary about Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and asserting that Sarkozy has departed from de Gaulle's vision:

"Only in recent weeks has the distance traveled come into focus: France, reintegrated in 2009 into the command structure of NATO, spearheading the United Nations-backed NATO military operation in Libya; providing armed muscle to the U.N. forces in Ivory Coast; and giving its pacifist-trending ally Germany a lesson in 21st-century Atlanticism.

Adenauer and de Gaulle must be turning in their graves. Here was Germany standing wobbly with Brazil, Russia, India and China — and against its closest allies, France and the United States — in the U.N. vote on Libyan military action. And here was France providing America’s most vigorous NATO support.

This was a dramatic inversion of postwar roles. It revealed the drift of a navel-gazing Germany unprepared to lead despite its power and impatient with Adenauer’s Western anchoring. It also demonstrated France’s break under Sarkozy from the posturing Gaullist notion of a French “counterweight” to America. These are seismic European shifts."

I believe it more accurate to say that Sarkozy has come closest of any French leader to fulfilling and completing the vision of Charles de Gaulle.

From the outset of de Gaulle's efforts to defeat Germany by establishing a Free French government in England, de Gaulle sought equal status with England in the alliance with the United States. He understandably resented being excluded from the US-UK "special relationship." Beyond his personal pique, it is fair to say he doggedly pursued membership in this club because it was in the interest of France.

On D-Day, he succeeded in having French forces under a French general land at Normandy, and French bombers supporting the invasion. He succeeded against great odds in persuading the allies to have a French sector in the occupation of Germany, Berlin, Austria and Vienna.

When NATO was created, the US was given the position of Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and England received Deputy SACEUR. In fact, England received the deputy positions all the way down the chain of command. It is a well-understood principal of military organization that it is the deputy commander who actually runs things.

De Gaulle didn't give up. In September, 1958, de Gaulle proposed to President Eisenhower and to Prime Minister MacMillan that the three countries band together in defense of the free world, coordinating efforts on a global basis under an expanded NATO focus to include the Middle East, Africa, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, as well as Europe. Eisenhower and MacMillan rejected the idea.

Only after his concept was rejected and after the new Kennedy administration in December 1962 offered to sell Polaris missiles to Great Britain, did de Gaulle move ahead with plans to withdraw from the NATO integrated military structure and develop an independent French nuclear capability, the so-called "force de frappe.".

Now, with French reentry into the NATO integrated military structure, expansion of the NATO area, NATO operations in the Balkans in the 1990's (including French aircraft), participation by French forces in NATO operations in Afghanistan, and NATO operations in Libya, we are finally seeing the fruition of de Gaulle's 1958 vision.

Friday Flick

Last night at the Old Theater in Oriental, we had a showing of the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

It's among my favorite movies, but I had never seen it on the big screen. When the movie came out in 1964, I was too busy learning how to be a department head on a destroyer to see movies. That spring, I spent some weeks in Norfolk, Virginia learning about nuclear weapons and their control and use.

The previous fall, at 1:00 pm November 22, 1963, I had joined my fellow students in the US Naval Destroyer School at a command performance - a speech by the US Navy's Chief of Naval Personnel. As the Admiral stepped up to the podium, we muttered among ourselves wondering if he knew the president had been shot. He showed no sign of awareness. The speech turned out to be an attack on the defense policies of the Kennedy administration and, in particular, those of Defense Secretary MacNamara and his "whiz kids."

About half way through the speech, the admiral's aid approached the podium and handed the admiral a note. The admiral read it and said, "I regret to inform you that the president has died." He then completed his speech.

After that, I would have to say that nothing in the dialogue of General Jack D. Ripper, General Turgidson, Colonel Bat Guano, or any of the other outrageous characters in the movie seemed impossible. In particular, Major Kong as played by Slim Pickens, was spot on.

There was much about our national obsession with and fear of the Soviet Union and Soviet Communism in those years that was irrational. A movie like this does a great service by revealing absurdities instead of taking them too seriously.