As valedictorian of his class at Bell County High School, Ben Bowling was invited to speak at the graduation ceremony. He looked for some inspirational quotes to share with his classmates and included this one, “Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.’ – Donald J. Trump.” The audience applauded. Then Bowling added, “Just kidding, that was Barack Obama.” The crowd went silent except for a few adult boos. Bowling explained it this way, “I just thought it was a really good quote. Most people wouldn’t like it if I used it, so I thought I’d use Donald Trump’s name. It is Southeastern Kentucky after all.” Bowling was unsurprised by the crowd’s reaction. He will soon be moving to the University of Kentucky for pre-med and medical school. Continue reading WHO CENSORS OR BOOS VALEDICTORIANS?
Category Archives: All Posts
Legislators should learn from Ed
Would you encourage family members to study to become teachers or other government employees? Unless we can answer “yes”, government is failing as an employer.
Can you hear the voices of elected officials berating and blaming their employees for government performance problems, laziness, and being “thugs”? Employees are tired of it. They want respect and fair treatment. Continue reading Legislators should learn from Ed
THE ECONOMY MUST SERVE PEOPLE
“The economy must serve people, not the other way around.” That is the opening sentence of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers“. Regardless of your religious beliefs, I encourage readers to look it up on the internet. It’s easy to understand the values being taught but challenging to apply them in our lives, businesses and government. Continue reading THE ECONOMY MUST SERVE PEOPLE
PREVENTING SCHOOL VIOLENCE
Let’s take a deep breath, calm ourselves, and then look at violence in American schools. The facts are likely to surprise most readers. The in-school homicide rate is not rising and our schools are relatively safe places. Continue reading PREVENTING SCHOOL VIOLENCE
Let’s start winning
Sister Jean-Delores Schmidt is a 98 year old nun who serves as a chaplain for the Loyola University basketball team and travels with them. Defying odds and expectations, the team earned a spot in the final four of the men’s basketball tournament. During the celebration, a reporter asked Sister Jean, “What did you give up for lent?” “Losing” she replied with a smile. Think about that for a moment. Continue reading Let’s start winning
IS THE FINANCIAL END NEAR?
The cartoon made me laugh. Maybe it’s funny because it’s based in truth. Although I hope that our national litany of mini-crises and scandals will end soon, I don’t expect it. These stormy times are distracting us from more important issues, particularly our national financial situation. Continue reading IS THE FINANCIAL END NEAR?
THE HIGH SCHOOL SURVIVORS ARE RIGHT
The high school students who survived our most recent mass killing are right that it’s time for action. Now. We should begin with what we know will work and continue improving gradually. But we’re unprepared to unite behind any course of action because we remain woefully uninformed about gun violence. Let’s focus on it and begin fixing the problem. Continue reading THE HIGH SCHOOL SURVIVORS ARE RIGHT
LET’S MAKE RACISM UNACCEPTABLE
The Washington Post recently published a story (READ IT HERE) that took place where I live , Randolph County, North Carolina. It features local people but it is actually about President Donald Trump’s support of racism. Similar stories can be found in towns, cities and rural areas
all across America. For reasons unknown to me, the writer picked the story of the Trogdon family and our community to make her point: overt racist activities are on the rise; and the President of the United States has encouraged it. Continue reading LET’S MAKE RACISM UNACCEPTABLE
REREADING THE CONSTITUTION
When I’m confused and disappointed by the actions of our elected leaders, I sometimes get the urge to reread our Constitution. Here are thoughts from a recent rereading.
From Article 1 Section 4: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…” Our Congress has the authority to standardize how and when we elect its members. It seems reasonable to conclude that Congress could prohibit partisan gerrymandering.
From Amendment 14 Section 1: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” Legislative districts are created by state law. Here in North Carolina, the Legislature’s stated purpose in gerrymandering the districts was to elect Republicans to 10 of the 13 seats even though nearly half of voters actually vote for Democrats. They achieved that goal. The law that created gerrymandered districts seems to deny equal protection to citizens who disagree with Republicans.
From Article 2 Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Bribery would apply if a President accepted a bribe. Would it also be bribery if a Presidential candidate or his team agreed to not implement sanctions on Russia in exchange for information useful to their campaign?
The US Supreme Court has received gerrymandering cases from Wisconsin, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The lower courts are so politicized that news reports generally include whether the judges were appointed by Democrats or Republicans. The implication is that a judge is likely to rule in favor of the party that appointed her or him. That is an awful but sadly credible assumption to make about our supposedly independent judiciary.
If the court rules against gerrymandering, that is likely to result in Democrats gaining seats in the House of Representatives. In addition to being the body that originates federal budgets, the House is the body with authority to impeach a President – an action which a Republican led House might be more reluctant to consider.
If the Senate had approved President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, there would be a 5-4 split of Democrat vs Republican judges. Instead, the Republican controlled Senate refused to even consider the nomination for months – in hopes of winning the presidency and getting a Republican nominee. They succeeded in that; and with the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch there is a 5-4 split favoring Republicans. What will it say about our Supreme Court if a Gerrymandering decision is decided by that margin?
The Presidential election of 2000 may well have been swung from Al Gore to George W. Bush by a party-line 5-4 Supreme Court decision that stopped the Florida vote recount. We’ll never know. Nor will we know whether the US would have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after 9-11 under President Gore. Such decisions change our history in profound ways.
Underlying many of the suspicions, malfunctions and failures of our government is the increasingly bitter partisan divide. Note however, that political parties are not even mentioned in our constitution. Only individuals, not political parties, have a constitutional right to be on a ballot. To protect their power (and the President), Republicans are now attacking the credibility of important institutions including our FBI, CIA and Justice Department. Russian agents have effectively used social media to discredit those same agencies. How ironic is it to find Republican leadership and Russian espionage agents on the same side?
President Washington warned, in his farewell address, that political parties, “…are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” It’s an apt description of current events.
Nations succeed and become great when most of the people support them and feel fairly treated. When a large proportion feel mistrust and mistreated, nations fail. Rather than “becoming great again”, our nation is in jeopardy due to citizen mistrust of elected officials. My conclusion is that it’s up to voters to save the union. No one else can do it.
Follow Dr King out of Trump’s shithole
President Trump’s remarks about “Shithole” nations and his desire for more immigration from (white) Northern Europe are a perfect contrast to our January 15 national day of recognition for Dr. Martin Luther King Junior – born January 15, 1929. Except for an assassin’s bullet, he might have celebrated his 89th birthday today. Instead he was killed before reaching the age of forty.
Click below to hear singer-songwriter Patty Griffin’s reflection on Dr King’s final speech and what his final prayer might have been before he died
Dr. King is rightly remembered as a principal leader of the civil rights movement that brought legal equality for Americans of African descent, at least on paper. The struggle to fully achieve the promise of equality under the law continues to this day.
Today, I think it is important to remember that in his final years, Dr King had expanded his mission and ministry to encompass two additional concerns: He supported and expanded the peace movement that sought to bring American troops home from our military incursions into the affairs of other nations, principally Vietnam. The second new subject was economic justice. He saw, even in the 1960s, the concentration of extreme wealth among a few privileged Americans while laborers were unable to support families. On the day that he was killed, he was in Memphis to support the demands of sanitation workers for improved wages and working conditions.
Dr King was not abandoning his civil rights mission. He was expanding it. The war affected everyone, regardless of race, through unnecessary killing and through the waste of economic resources that could have been used to improve American lives. Economic inequality and injustice to working Americans affected minorities disproportionately but it was abundantly clear that a permanent, generation-spanning economic underclass existed in every race. Insulting labels from that era such as “poor white trash” and “nigger” have not lost or changed their meaning in the half century since Dr King’s death. They still refer to people who have had few opportunities for economic and educational advancement. They are the victims of an economy and a nation that has no need for their limited skills and little motivation help them find opportunities. How different, really, are the problems of the white Appalachian coal miner, the rural southern black, and the small town and urban workers of all races who lost jobs to automation?
Dr King saw clearly that we can all succeed together by creating opportunities for personal and economic growth through education and social safety net programs. How ironic is it that Norway (the nation from which President Trump would like to have more immigration) has done what Dr King suggested? Proponents of creating those programs here in the US are often derisively called “socialists”. It is precisely because of those socialist programs that very few people want to leave Norway. People like it there. Not only do they share their wealth, they have more to share. In Norway, the average economic output per person is $70, 392 compared to $57,436 for Americans. What a surprise! A nation that strives to provide opportunities for everyone is more productive than one which ignores the needs of its poorest citizens.
Americans have responded to our problems by forming a circular firing squad – shooting (sometimes literally) at each other rather than lifting each other up, as Dr King would have taught. Now we have elected a President and a Republican congressional majority who have cut taxes on corporations at a time when corporate profits are at record highs; cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans at a time when they already own a greater share of our national wealth than at any time on record; and will borrow money that we all have to repay in order to fund their gifts to the wealthy. They also plan to drastically increase military spending for the longest and arguably least justified wars in American history.
Unfortunately, I must agree with President Trump that there is indeed a “shithole”. He and the Republican congress are pushing us into it. We’ll have to climb out using the remaining resources that they haven’t wasted. We can do that if we will quit blaming the victims of poverty for their condition and begin focusing our efforts on creating opportunity for every American to achieve her or his full potential. Success in that endeavor will be the measure of a great nation.