Elections Matter

Elections are a necessary condition for a thriving democracy. But elections aren't enough. Democracy needs citizen involvement.

Our ongoing controversy over ferry tolls illustrates that elections matter.

We are beginning this year's election season. Nationally, the focus is on the election of a president. That is clearly important. But let's not let the election of a president suck all of the political oxygen out of the air. Local and state elections are where the rubber meets the road. Or tolls the ferry, as the case may be.

This is also an Olympic year.

Just keep in mind that if politics were an Olympic event, it would be a team sport, not an individual event.

Modern Republican Economics

Bruce Bartlett, senior policy advisor in the Reagan and Bush I administrations and staffer for Jack Kemp and Ron Paul, describes the origin of modern Republican fiscal policy in the Economix section of today's New York Times.

Bartlett makes it pretty clear what former Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." That comment didn't refer to the economic effect of deficits, but the political effect. Bartlett's article provides detailed background to the "two Santa's" theory of Republican politics.

Irving Kristol, who was well-connected in Republican circles, immediately embraced the "two Santas" idea - that the GOP needed to be the "tax-cut" Santa. "I was not certain of its economic merits," he later confessed, "but quickly saw its political possibilities."

Bartlett's article doesn't address the related "starve the beast" policy. I look forward to future revelations on that score.

Lynch Law

Trayvon Martin was lynched last month in Sanford, Florida. He was 17.

Trayvon's offense: he was in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, yes, he was black.

Trayvon's killer claimed he was acting in self defense. That might have ordinarily been hard to claim, since Trayvon Martin was unarmed, was walking on foot and George Zimmerman, Trayvon's killer, stalked him first in an SUV and later on foot, armed with a 9-mm pistol.

Zimmerman is apparently claiming self-defense under Florida's "stand your ground" law, passed in 2005. The New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal excuses Florida's lawmakers. "I doubt the legislators who passed Stand Your Ground," Rosenthal observed,  "had this scenario in mind, or at least I hope not." He quotes Florida state Senator Oscar Brayon, now demanding hearings into the law, who said: “I don’t think they planned for people who would go out and become vigilantes or be like some weird Batman who would go out and kill little kids like Trayvon.”

Excuse me? That's exactly what they had in mind. And it's been working. In the first five years of the law,  according to the Tampa Bay Times, "justifiable homicide" has tripled, and was invoked in 93 cases, involving 65 deaths.

It was the obvious intent of the law (though maybe not of everyone who voted for it) to empower private citizens to arm themselves and act as policeman, judge, juror and executioner with impunity. We should call such laws by their proper name: Lynch Law.

What's unusual in this case is that there is a recorded conversation between Zimmerman and Martin, heard over a cell phone, as well as recorded conversations over the 911 system. Still, it may be hard to get a conviction.

By the way, the code words surrounding this issue don't fool me. I grew up in the South. My grandparents' home in Holmes County, MS was a regular armory, with a loaded firearm behind every door. My grandfathers, at least one of them a KKK member, both took part in lynchings and race riots in the 1920's.

We need to get beyond our tribalism, our fears and insecurities, and be Americans.

I don't doubt that Zimmerman had worked himself into a state of apprehension, fear and anger. All the more reason to rely on professionals instead of vigilantes.

Three Weeks' Training For Thirty Second Attack

Seventy years ago, while my father's outfit was being organized in Mobile to be shipped overseas, a smaller group was preparing at Eglin Field Florida (about a hundred miles to the east) for a different overseas movement.

Under command of LCol Jimmy Doolittle, a small group of US Army aviators was learning how to take off from an aircraft carrier. Twenty-five B-25 medium bombers, each with a crew of five, were put through their paces by a Navy lieutenant. The task: launch fully-loaded B-25's with a 2,000 lb bomb load on a 2,400 mile mission.

Details to be disclosed later.

All of the aviators were volunteers. The training began three months after Pearl Harbor.

DOT Ferry Toll Hearing Footnote

Tonight's DOT public hearing on ferry tolls is the second such public hearing in Pamlico County.

We almost didn't have any.

Until Town Dock intervened.

Melinda Penkava, who can be very insistent, called DOT to get an explanation as to why DOT was holding no public hearing in the county most directly affected.

"There's no place in Pamlico County large enough for a crowd of 200," she was told. "Oh, yes, there is," she replied.

So DOT, whose planners developed Pamlico County's Comprehensive Transportation Plan, including addressing public transportation requirements associated with Pamlico County Community College, apparently knew nothing about the college's Delamar Center.

What else don't they know about Pamlico County?

Thank Goodness for Melinda Penkava.

DOT Ferry Hearing March 19, 2012

Do you know what a "Senior Public Involvement Officer" is? I tried to find out this evening on the NC DOT web site, to no avail.

Why do I want to know? Mr. Jamille A. Robbins, who chaired tonight's DOT public hearing on "NCDOT Proposed Temporary Rules Changes for Ferry Tolling" is one.

I was unsuccessful in finding a job description or explanation of Mr. Robbins' title.

But he must be powerfully influential. When the last questioner of the evening asked Mr. Robbins what DOT had done to carry out the governor's direction to seek economies within the DOT budget to equal the legislature's directed $5 million in revenue and then directed the question to the four DOT "suits" in the front row, Mr. Robbins explained they (the "suits") were present only as "observers" and couldn't speak. The four remained silent as Mr. Robbins attempted to explain the difficulties in figuring such things out while disgruntled attendees headed for the exits.

It reminded me of a mobile that a colonel of my acquaintance hung over his desk. The mobile consisted of a collection of fingers pointing in various directions, shifting with the wind. It looked something like this:

What was the hearing for? "To solicit comments regarding the request to amend, adopt or repeal portions of the NC Administrative Code per the temporary rules process."

What next? "Following the hearing and comment period, the NCDOT must adopt the proposed temporary rule change." In other words, nothing said tonight will have any effect whatsoever on the rule.

After the temporary rules are adopted, then the Rules Review Commission (RRC) will review the proposed changes. The RRC can either approve or object (not reject). If the RRC objects, NCDOT can either rewrite or not rewrite. If they do not rewrite and resubmit the rule, it will not become effective.

More importantly, if the RRC approves the rule, people opposing the rule may file an action for declaratory judgment in Wake County Superior Court.

I hope someone has started drafting such an action. Several of tonight's public comments included observations pertinent to a request for declaratory judgment, including an interesting account by Jim Barton of the legislative history of NC 306.

Representatives of other affected counties, including Beaufort, Craven and Hyde counties, provided very powerful inputs to the hearing.

A number of speakers pointed out that this ferry tax was enacted by Republican state legislators. The consensus seemed strong that Republican legislators had thrown Eastern North Carolina under the bus. The entire region east of I-95 knows what has happened and from what was said, they intend to remember that in November.

Is It Enough To Follow The Money?

A few days ago, I suggested that following the money is a good way to determine what is really going on in the political process. The key question, I suggested is "who benefits and who pays?"

Yesterday's New York Times offered a different analysis. In his article, "Forget The Money, Follow The Sacredness," Jonathan Haidt offers an alternate explanation of the American political process. He explains politics as a "competition among coalitions of tribes."

"The key to understanding tribal behavior," Haidt explains, "is not money, it’s sacredness. The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is the ability to circle around a tree, rock, ancestor, flag, book or god, and then treat that thing as sacred. People who worship the same idol can trust one another, work as a team and prevail over less cohesive groups. So if you want to understand politics, and especially our divisive culture wars, you must follow the sacredness."

I don't deny that Haidt has a good point regarding voter behavior. On the other hand, how does it come about that a particular person, place or thing becomes viewed as sacred?

Sacred things don't necessarily become that way by growing organically from grass roots. The idea of sacredness is usually planted, watered, fertilized and nurtured by forces with a lot of money and power.

The mechanics of how this is done are examined in today's New York Times  in an opinion piece, "The Uses Of Polarization."

The central question seems to be whether our admittedly flawed political process can be improved. I am reminded of Winston Churchill's observation that Democracy is the "worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

So what is to be done?

Once again Churchill has a suggestion: "What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?"

Preparation For Overseas Movement - Spring 1942

Here is a picture of my dad during the organization of the 27th Air Depot Group, US Army Air Corps at Mobile, Alabama, spring of 1942. This picture was framed and sat on the mantel over my grandmother's fireplace during the war.

Look closely and see the backward writing. The photographer flipped the negative when he printed the photo, so it was backward when Daddy signed it. I flipped it back in photoshop.

Of course, I had to have my own uniform, complete with rolled-up sleeves.

Just a few weeks earlier, we had moved on the base at Tallahassee. Here is a photo of me and my then six or seven month old brother, John.

This is the house we moved into in Greenwood, Mississippi, in February of 1942 before Daddy went on to Mobile. No dependents were allowed once preparation for overseas movement began. These are my grandparents, parents, me and my little brother (sitting in Mother's lap). We wouldn't see my dad again until the summer of 1945.

This was seventy years ago.