Pardon the cartoon strip [Washington Post, 12/22.12], but it speaks a truth about news reporting and politics. Our cartoonist/commentator, however, misses a variant: Unasked questions. And another: Unavailable politicians. As found elsewhere in this blog, our First Amendment press freedom clause is meant to keep the federal government from stifling – or blocking – criticism of the government and its officials. But, unfortunately, some members of the Fourth Estate fail to exercise that right listed so high in our Bill of Rights. Unfortunate for citizens of this great land. A reader might expect that here would begin a listing of questions and answers that should have been asked (but were not), unanswered questions, and answers that were followed up with more questions. Listing any of those could reveal – or imply or lead to inferences of – partisan bias. The intent is to beg consideration of a basic need in a country such as the United States, which probably is the only country so far extent on the earth that has shown the potential of true greatness as far as governmental structure is concerned. That need is for a free press to do its duty under the system. The questions the press, in all its variations, asks and its persistence in demanding honest answers to those questions sum up the basic stuff of a government dependent upon the consent and the will of the people. Those reporting on what is happening in everyday as well as political life and then disseminating it (along with clearly labeled comment) are surrogates for citizens and all residents alike. Standing in for people who cannot witness in person what is going on is the purpose of the news business, regardless of how that news is delivered. Questions those people cannot ask, and answers they need to hear are the stuff of the news media. Government officials, under the U.S. system of self-government, need to answer those questions fully and truthfully (perhaps delaying only when national security is at stake) if the system is to work and to continue. Clients of the press who vastly outnumber their stand-ins must enforce the efficacy of this system. They do that by using the free market. Buy or refuse to buy the product, just as they make or break entrepreneurs. Readers, listeners, viewers should demand good questions, full answers and exposure of question-evaders by stopping subscriptions, turning knobs, flipping channels, closing Websites, cancelling apps. Conversely, good work by good news sources should be rewarded by usage and by buying products and services of advertisers.

DECREASE IN INCREASE

Cuts. That word appears in print and is heard on radio and television over and over when the subject is governmental spending or taxes.

Hikes. More. Increases. Those words should rather be used. They would be true. “Cuts” generally is a falsehood, sometimes an outright lie.

Politicians and the reporters who cover them, not to mention the editors who oversee the wordsmiths, seldom tell us the truth about “cuts” in spending. For actual reductions in governmental outlays almost never occur.

Those supposed reductions are actually smaller additions to much larger outlays of taxpayer dollars. The reason is that federal budgeting – when it actually occurs and is enacted into law – begins with baselines, which is governmentese for spending requests with inflation built in. Automatic increases, in other words.

And, one might notice, the talk about the Bush tax cuts, which were actual reductions in income tax rates that could only be agreed to by the political parties in Congress if they had an expiration date. The “cuts” in this instance are really current rates. There is, thankfully, a recent tendency in news and commentary to refer to them as the Bush tax rates. Those rates were actually extended the last time the problem of governmental expenditures and debt were at the forefront. If those Bush rates were kept in place there would be no reductions in taxes; if they were allow to expire at the end of the year, there indeed would be increases in tax rates for the next tax year.

So, the reader might ask here, what’s new about that? And the answer is nothing. Still, should not all of us – taxpayer and beneficiary of governmental largess – call an increase an increase? Maybe such truth-telling would result in some worthwhile public discourse, instead of political deception.

WAIT TO SEE

Today the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial spoke a truth that should be worked into every conversation – argument – about the fiscal cliff, sequestration and the general state of federal budgeting.

“Since 1974,”  it said, “Capitol Hill’s ‘baseline’ has automatically increased spending every year according to Congressional Budget Office projections, which mean before anyone has submitted a budget or cast a single vote. Tax and spending changes are then measured off that inflated baseline, not in absolute terms.”

In other words, cuts in proposed federal spending are no such things; cuts are smaller increases in spending.

With such “cuts” budgets can never, never shrink. Revenue can never be grown to catch up with the spending.

Whenever a politician utters the word “cut” he or she should be challenged.

Reporters and pundits never ask politicians about that truth. Certainly, never is the president asked to explain.

Roughly, in recent fiscal years, our governmental keepers (take that in any sense and it now seems to fit) the tax collectors take in something like 2 trillion dollars but the lawmakers spend 3 trillion. The total gross national product is roughly 15 trillion. Thirteen percent should be enough to buy whatever kind of government the nation needs, rather than 20 percent. Actually, the feds are now spending something like 23-25 percent of GDP rather than the 19-20 percent, which has been considered fairly normal in recent history. Add in state and local taxes as well as fees and other governmental extractions from the common pocketbook, and no wonder the burden is becoming unbearable.

And, of course, the national debt is more than 16.5 trillion dollars, which surpasses the GDP. That staggering debt that cannot be described in understandable terms except by astronomers talking with other astronomers about universal distances, so how can voters be made to understand that more spending is not the answer?

Warnings about the inevitable consequences seem of no avail. As Nancy Pelosi said about the Affordable Care Act before it became law: It will have to pass before you can know what’s in it. As ObamaCare is shaping up as it becomes effective, it ain’t affordable.

Thomas Paine, the Englishman who fomented the American Revolution, wrote in the introduction to his history-changing pamphlet Common Sense, “Time makes more converts than reason.”

Maybe the country will have to plunge over the cliff before its fate becomes clear. Politicians don’t learn without bruises.

ABSURD IS THE WORD

Consider the absurdity of the fiscal cliff and sequestration. Not to mention the unfathomable debt. A CEO, CFO and board that put a corporation in similar, complete jeopardy would have faced shareholder lawsuits and possible criminal prosecution.

But presidents and congresses over the years have politicked and produced such mismanagement that those now in power cannot even find a way to talk reasonably about a way out with an intentionally self-imposed crisis looming only days away. Citizen stakeholders can only wait and hope the people they put in charge of what has become a funny farm start acting like responsible, ahem, servants of the public trust rather than self-centered rulers.

The basic business of government has become a game for elected players who consider winning more important than the common welfare of the country. Why else would the president, constitutionally barred from a third term, continue campaigning for his way with taxation and spending? Why else would legislators trade barbs over pledges on tax limits? Why else would the senate wonder whether safeguards for minority views should be altered?

Won’t anyone get serious in Washington? What goes on there is so unreasonable as to be ridiculous. 

FREE THE FREE PRESS

Our federal government should not be able to stifle criticism of it and of its officials. That’s the only reason for Freedom of the press being included in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Also, that is the reason for freedom of speech. The other four freedoms in the amendment – religion, exercise of religion, assembly, petition for redress of grievances – are clearly established there to protect citizens from their governors.

Much to our endangerment, government somehow has become to be seen as the source of all good. Government under our system was designed to be a necessary restriction on selfishness. Some societal rules are required for people to live together in peace and justice. Freedom differs from unbridled liberty. Our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms must be protected. Those benefitted have the obligation to defend those freedoms.  

The government obviously will not. When it goes too far, it is the government, not our government.

One segment of the citizenry has a heightened obligation to defend our freedoms by criticizing government gone wrong. That is the press in all its modern iterations. Back when the Constitution was written the printing press was the only up-to-date method of communication, augmented by a postal service that also delivered letters and documents that were literally penned.

Honestly, the press of post-colonial times had no fair and balanced reputation. It was highly partisan and called names that were dirtier than today, albeit sometimes quite literary. Yet apparently, despite the cost of printing, sufficient voices were heard to communicate what was happening in government without undue secrecy.

Skipping ahead to now, newspapers are partisan still but with less vitriol. Unfortunately the partisanship is practiced by underplaying or even ignoring some important governmental indiscretions or malfeasance. Television and radio are divided in the same way, but perhaps with more intensity because of their nature. Print and broadcast and cable are all held back in news coverage by the very cost of news gathering. Internet is coming to the fore and to a great extent is not edited as well as it might be. The latter does benefit from individual initiative, but sometimes with too much exuberance; and it has an inherent advantage of being capable of combing print, sound and moving images. All in all, the cacophony of voices may be too much. Information is difficult to assimilate.  

Regardless of party affiliation or inclination, a citizen and voter has to admit our national government has real and immediate problems in sustaining itself fiscally and in scope.

Washington is bankrupt. Washington has reached into nearly every nook and corner of human experience. Its operatives wish to fix all problems, which it cannot, and its attempts to do so can’t be paid for despite its power to collect money.l

Something has to give. Government has run amuck.

All channels of communication deal with exposition of the problems within and without government. Few citizens are satisfied with what they are hearing and witnessing. Politicians are loath to do anything but talk.

Any solutions proffered, regardless of the source, are attacked even if only tentative or offered as starting points for debate.

News gathering and its dissemination in the halcyon days of journalism – the 1950s, it could be argued – meant that the editorial content was kept separate from the editorial pages and the advertising. That was the ideal; an ideal not always met. Yet, it was the aim. Reporters and news editors gave more than mere recognition to that goal. An argument can be pretty well backed up that in this still young century such an ideal is rarely defended much less accomplished.

As with life itself, in the news business ideals are preached but rarely achieved. A little more effort, a little more dedication, a little more appreciation of the real necessity of a free press might do some good in uncovering and explaining the sins of government and – where they exist – its virtues.

First principles of a free country exist. We must insist they be used. The press in its multiple forms must watch government, the would-be master. Information that is gathered should then be marshaled so that constituents can vote intelligently.

If the people, to whom their government is to answer and to serve, do their job their servants will do theirs.

TWO PLUS TWO EQUALS ASTRONOMICAL PROBLEMS

According to the radio, the Affordable Care Act (that’s ObamaCare to the uninitiated) will cost each employer of more than 50 people $1.79 per hour for each employee next year. That explains why major employers are planning on laying off or reducing the hours of workers to make them part-timers. Doing so will keep some of those companies in business.

Do a little simple arithmetic and the enormity of the entrepreneur’s quandary emerges.

Multiplying 40 hours by 52 weeks of work and vacation and the product is 2,080 hours of paid work. Assign an extra $1.79 per hour and the boss has to lay out an additional $3,723.20 a year to overhead for each employee. For each 50 employees, the additional cost of business is $186,160 per year.

That’s 186 thousand dollars that reduces profits. For each 50 employees.

So it does not take a Bill Gates to figure out that a small businessman cutting back one employee to 49 makes a lot of sense. Or cutting the wager earner’s hours to make him or her part time. For the employer with hundreds in his workforce, the problem is just as big. For national firms, the problem is a major expense and concern, maybe even a game changer when competing with rival corporations.

To a government that can’t balance a budget, that can’t pay for its obligations even though it takes in some two and a third trillion dollars a year such problems for those responsible for producing an economy that is supposed to pay for government seem miniscule. The federal government is a multitrillion dollar affair; does a trillion dollar private enterprise even exist?

And isn’t that the summation of the burden our nation must face?

Federal spending was more than three and half trillion in 2011. The deficit was just under one trillion, 300 million dollars.

Our – and that means for each and every man, woman and child in these United States of America – debt is approaching sixteen and a half trillion dollars.

Whoa!

How much is that? All kinds of illustrations are available from people who care. Just look at one way of looking at the enormity of just one trillion. Convert that into time.

Someone has calculated that one trillion seconds – that’s one sixtieth of a minute, 3,600^th of an hour, 86,400^th of a day – equal 31,546 years.

To pay off our national debt at one dollar per second would take more than a half million years (504,736 years for an even $16 trillion).

That can hardly be imagined.

It’s something like trying to fix one’s mind on how close is the nearest star? That star is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.3 light years from the sun, which is 93 million miles from the earth. A light year equals 5.88 million miles, so that star is some 25.2 million miles beyond the sun. Thus, the star is 118.2 million miles from earth. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. Well, home calculators don’t have enough display space to do the math. Nonetheless, since a trillion is one million millions it would take more than a trillion seconds to travel that distance at the speed of light, or more than 32 thousand years.

Look at it another way. Total gross national product for the United States in 2011 was just over 15 trillion dollars, which is less than our growing national debt. Each year, the government is adding one-fifteenth of GDP to the debt with such deficits exceeding a trillion dollars.

If the enforcement of ObamaCare is going to convince employers they need to cut back on employees, then they seemed destined to reduce profits. Profits mean taxes. Taxes mean federal and state and local revenue. Less revenue means either more debt or, heaven forfend, less government.

Ruining the economy is not the way to shrink government.

But shrinking government may be the only way to improve the economy.

That is easy to say. But the cost in money and in effort is huge. Huge doesn’t really convey just how immense, enormous, gigantic, gargantuan, humongous a problem lies before the country, its citizens, its seemingly incapable government, the one that got us into this chasm in the first place. Even if policies are adopted that grow the economy can they be good enough to generate enough hope for eventual governmental solvency?

Hope won’t do that. And change has yet to be demonstrated.

ANCIENT TRUTHS BE DAMNED

David Gregory on Meet the Press [11/11/12] had a clip from the new Lincoln movie in which the Lincoln character quotes ancient wisdom about things being equal to other things are equal to each other. The scene depicted the Great Emancipator talking to aides about garnering votes on an anti-slavery issue. Lincoln’s point was that truths – mathematical in this instance – don’t change over time.

Must of the program’s discussion was on the recent election and how Republicans are too hidebound in their conservative beliefs. Panel members, nearly unanimously, agreed that the GOP had to change and embrace the social beliefs of the time. Those currently mean same-sex “marriage,” and by inference contraception and all that go with that, and Latino immigrants and their votes.

No one, including Gregory, noted that the values they want Republicans to abandon are ancient truths, such as the intrinsic value of the family that is based upon the marriage bond between one man and one woman. To the host and panel, conservative Republicans would never again gain enough votes to win without bowing to current mores.

ATTACK EASIER THAN EXPLAINING

Which political ads are more effective, those that attack or those that explain?

Our 2012 presidential campaign provided the answer: attack, attack, attack.

Trouble is, explanation is more helpful to prospective voters; attack ads have but a grain of truth wrapped in a crust of spin and baked in an oven of hot air. But explanation can’t be accomplished in sound bite length or on pithy bumper stickers.

A recent Thomas Sowell column listed a number of issues he says flaunt the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution and the rights of a self-governing people. Among those he cited:

·        The president disregarding the 14^th Amendment and its provision of equal protection under law by waiving the Affordable Care Act for chosen unions and enterprises.

·        Laws passed too quickly to be read by lawmakers much less citizens.

·        Delegation of powers over vast sections of the executive branch to czars not subject to senate confirmation.

·        Military actions referred to the U.N. and the Arab League but not to the Congress.

·        Formation of a consumer agency by the Federal Reserve that can create its own money.

·        Waive or refuse enforcement of laws passed in the past despite an oath of faithfully execute them.

·        Have international treaties under the U.N. govern American citizens without senate approval.

Each of those bullets would take a white paper to explain and to refute, much less convince voters they are cause to support one candidate and reject the one espousing those positions. Take those items and dozens of similar situations and then convert them into short, cogent advertisements that could convert voters to a candidate’s arguments . . . well, there is probably not a political consultant alive who could do that.

So much easier to put into pictures and sound a candidate who is cruel to animals, a bully to his fellow prep schoolmates, wants to see grandmothers die rather than get treatment, halt social security, and is a capitalist pirate to boot. That’s easier than defending the expenditure of trillions in new debt and instituting restraints on liberty.

What is true for political advertising is pretty much true for debates, too. Squeezing in background necessary to make a point within two minutes or so is nearly as difficult. Speeches could be the medium for convincing voters, but in this day of short attention spans only zealots and faithful backers will listen, and absorb.

Candidates, particularly non-incumbents, and their consultants must find appealing and salient digests of their arguments to combat outright, fallacious attacks. In this covetous world, someone who can do that will make millions . . . and help millions of citizens to make wiser choices in the voting booths.

THE ELECTION IS OVER  . . . OR IS IT?

President Obama won reelection by attacking Gov. Romney and ignoring his own record. Somehow, voters went along with that strategy.

Maybe voters acquiesced because they, albeit in smaller numbers, were from the same societal segments as four year previous. Flirting with over-generalization, those voters were liberal, unmarried, young, labor unionists, members of minority groups. Some million or so fewer voters that supported the Republican were married, older and Caucasian. In short, the United States electorate is divided, now more clearly than in the past. Another factor in that division is cultural. The bigger slice tends toward hedonism and the smaller more traditional. Such description might be stark, probably more so than in reality, but nonetheless in the ballpark.

Americans, as is unusual in many parts of the world, accept the election outcome. Now comes the hard part: dealing with the country’s problems, both monetarily and materially.

Deficits and debt remain astronomical and continue to grow. Sandy, the destructive super-storm, has demonstrated how vulnerable is civilization without its bare necessities of food, power, housing, transportation.

Money and life’s basics are intrinsically intertwined. That is just as true for nations as it is for individuals.

We have already seen what the housing bubble did to the national economy when it burst. Without being exhaustive, failure in the energy sector could maim transportation, commerce and manufacturing; failure in banking could cause widespread bartering and eventually hunger. Granted, such extremes are not likely to happen. Yet, policies that weaken elemental business structures can only lead to extremes, if only gradually. Something like the fate of the proverbial frog in a pan of water slowly being brought to boil.  

The just completed 2012 elections can bring more of the same. Or – is this too optimistic? – trigger a sense of urgency in finding a way out of current messes.

January 1 will begin automatic higher taxes and draconian federal spending cuts, especially in the military, that could bring nearly immediate financial calamity. Politicians on both sides are already talking up preventative action on these possibilities. We can only hope.

As for the cultural divide that reared to some visibility as a result on the polling, there is little hope. Those espousing the modern proclivity toward self-satisfaction certainly wish no change. Examples are passage in Maine and Maryland of same-sex marriage referenda. (In California, believe it or not, voters approved health standards for pornographic movie making, thus condoms for actors.) Those trying to keep more traditional norms nearly despair.

Some of the issues are in the courts, such as preservation of religious freedom as is seen under attack from HHS mandates on insurance provision by religion-backed health, charity and educational institutions. But the courts seem to be leaning toward politics more than toward juridical rectitude. Some matters, such as co-habitation, are now generally acceptable. Only older people remember movie star Ingrid Bergman having to leave the country because of an extramarital affair with an Italian director, Roberto Rossellini, or the homosexuality of Rock Hudson revealed after his death. Affairs and “coming out” are topics, not scandals, nowadays.

In sum, this election probably will change little in American life unless politicians stumble into a disaster, accidental or (could it be?) predict

CIVIC DUTY

Poor Mitt Romney. He seems to have a good idea of how to simplify income taxes by lowering rates while closing loopholes. One of the ways of doing that would be to put a dollar limit on deductions. But he dare not specify any itemized deductions lest special interest groups devoted to particular items, such as mortgage interest, for fear of inviting attack instead of illuminating debate. The Wall Street Journal recently editorialized on this subject.

Reporters, pundits and political opponents always call for specifics from candidates. They, as intelligent people, know that candidates must avoid fulfilling such demands at all costs. To answer specifically is to ask for challenges that cannot cause anything but diversions. The candidate’s main point cannot be made with clarity and without changing the subject. In short, a candid candidate puts himself on the defensive rather than getting the opportunity to explain his position so as to garner support.

Example: Stating that charitable contributions should be eliminated would spring such criticism as the candidate was against research to find a cure for cancer. “He wants my aged granddad to suffer from prostate cancer and die.” No, the candidate says, he only wants lower effective tax rates on a wider base of taxable income. Voters can picture a dying grandfather; they cannot easily visualize a two-axes chart with red and blue lines zigzagging on the vertical values scale and the horizontal time line.

Romney has to resort to saying that he wants a certain figure – he usually picks $25,000, just as an example, he quickly interjects –for allowable deductions, with lower figures for taxpayers with smaller incomes and higher figures for those with big incomes. That helps, but as an explanation that is not specific enough for critics, and maybe even for supporters.

Not defending Romney or his opponent¸ the incumbent president, can it not be said that, oh, if only candidates could be outspoken and say what they really mean? Would such frank speech not help voters?  Sure, such an approach would give opponents fodder, yet counter arguments would necessarily provide better and more informative material on which voters could make decisions. Sound bites are good for ads, but not for enlightenment.

But can that ever be as modern American politics go? The press – meaning the news media -- won’t let that happen. Opponents won’t let happen. Do voters have a say? Theoretically, yes. To do so, they must be attentive, study records, ignore the spin, work their will. The first politician or political scientist to figure out how to bend the current system to something that informs the electorate more precisely shall have earned a Nobel (OK, maybe not such a skewed prize).

However, the reality of the current campaign (too close to call at this writing) is that President Obama is running against a straw man he and his managers are trying to convince voters Romney is. Dog on car roof, teen-age bully, hater of Big Bird, requesting a “binder of women,” wanting to tax the poor and help the rich, having a car elevator in his vacation garage, shipping jobs overseas as a venture capitalist --- that’s the presidential campaign for reelection, not nearly four years of decisions in office. The press goes along, for the most part with stories, but seemed uninterested in similar back-grounding on President Obama. Essentially, the president is not running a campaign touting his term.

Leadership of the most important country in the world would seem to demand more serious attention. How was the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) foisted on the American people? How much will it cost, not only in dollars but in jobs and overhead? Why is not a 15-member, unelected committee for keeping medical costs down not rhetorically a “death” panel?

Many voters may not like Romney, which is their right. But Romney, as a candidate, is more obligated to explain and to defend his proposals for dealing with the country’s problems than to be backed into fending personal attacks that actually have little to do with character or integrity.

American political campaigning falls short of the perfection most citizens would like. But until something else comes along, voters and the more of the citizenry had best educate themselves in their civic duties.

I’LL HAVE F.R.I.E.S. WITH THAT

Fast food empires usually begin with a mom/pop sandwich shop in some modest town in a rust-belt state. So it was somewhat unusual for a lodge-hall culinary delight to catch fire and lead to the Sally­-forth award of F.R.I.E.S. --- the Franchise Regulars International Enterprises Society. That prestigious prize seldom goes to a winner in such a short time; more unusual, it went to a fraternal organization, the Knights of Fluffy Feathered Finch. Council No. 7-3/8 of the KFFF pioneered the featured sandwich that spurred the spectacular development of the honored restaurant chain.

The exciting sandwich was invented one slow BINGO night when the game manager wanted something different from the council hall’s snack bar. Larry Mitchell [incidentally, a distant relative of Gen. Billy Mitchell who was scorned in military circles for advocating aerial bombing of warships] had become bored with the snack bar’s usual fare. Hamburgers, hot dogs, tuna melts, Philly cheese-steaks, potato soup and such appeared nearly every BINGO night on the snack bar’s menu board. Larry regularly asked for grilled cheese on Texas toast. Such a diet twice a week can soon become (how can it be said?) unappetizing. Larry sought variety. He asked snack bar manager and Past Exalted Aviary Tender Tom “Big Chef” Fahey if a special order could be arranged. Big Chef’s affirmation caught Larry unprepared for the alacrity of that response. Larry had expected some dodge and was ready to accept another grilled cheese. But, he felt he should not let the opportunity slip by. With no time to think, he blurted: “Put two split hog dogs on the grilled cheese --- and maybe some tomato.”

“That sounds like fun food,” Tom alliterated.

Astonished, Larry found his concoction pleasing to his palate. For the next few weeks he continued to order his innovative sandwich.

His minions, seeing Larry’s happy countenance upon consuming his novel gastronomical achievement, sought the same delectable viand. Envious BINGO patrons, then, could not be denied.

As was their wont, the patrons always seeking opportunities to play, spread the news to other BINGO venues. Being a smart businessman, Larry was quick to patent the sandwich and copyright its name, Larry’s Fun Food.

Soon Larry had his own restaurant a few blocks from the lodge hall on Route 1. Folks streamed in. Larry’s sandwich garnered fans – gourmets but more particularly gourmands – throughout the neighborhood. Within months the sandwich became cult food throughout Fairfax and surrounding counties. Even the starring glutton from the Travel Channel’s Man vs. Food showed up with a film crew. Tourists from around the country made it a point to stop in when visiting Mount Vernon and other attractions.

Meanwhile, Big Chef saw Larry’s success in two lights --- the business potential, and a possible lawsuit to share the bonanza. Some judge might understand Larry’s good fortune could not have become reality without Big Chef’s cooperation. The board of KFFF agreed.

The legal challenge was nearly simultaneous with Larry’s launch of the Larry’s Fun Food franchise operation. Thanks to the Travel Channel’s free publicity, business people from around the fruited plain were storming the new LFF general offices in Crystal City.

Big Chef’s litigation became a federal case. The Hon. George Wimpy, whose great uncle had contributed to the unbridled popularity of the hamburger, was assigned the case. Despite rumors of bribery, which were unfounded, he dismissed the case.

A renowned architectural partnership founded by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright got the commission to design a standard store building for LFF franchisees that would be distinctive. F. Fulton Frieze, a man without conscience, lifted a basic idea from McDonald’s and sketched a façade featuring golden bicarbonate cups.  Surprisingly, Larry enjoyed the humor in the idea. The late Ray Kroc might not have appreciated the riff on his iconic Golden Arches, but it was no crock to Larry.

When Larry and his family moved into their 100 room chateau overlooking the cascades in the Potomac, Big Chef was invited. Tom, a gourmet in his own right, expected elaborate canapés accompanied by countless flutes of Dom Perignon, but the butler and his staff from silver salvers offer tapas shaped like Larry’s Fun Food and unlimited Arnold Palmers poured from Waterford pitchers.

Contemporaneous with the reception was the presentation of the Sally-forth trophy, a gold-plated paper tray of french-fries by the F.R.I.E.S. president. She asked the butler if he could possibly rustle up a Big Mac.

_______

JOB DID SHOW HIS PATIENCE, AFTER ALL THAT

It’s the future. Catholic hierarchy failed to convince secular authorities that religious freedom under the First Amendment meant the government could not force church-backed organizations to buy insurance that gave its employees free contraceptives and paid abortions, and the other sexual passes.

Now (it is still the future) Catholic hospitals, schools and colleges, charities and other eleemosynary organizations must pay the government stiff fines for failing to provide their employees such insurance coverage. For Catholics, it has always been God and country. Now they must choose. The University of Notre Dame [I hope as a ’51 grad] chooses God. Its accountants tell it that the university will go broke in matter of a year or two by defying the government. It will have to dig into its massive endowment of several billion dollars to say alive. Meanwhile, many of its Protestant and Jewish professors decamp along with a Catholic or two.

Elsewhere in the Catholic community of health-givers, educators and charities, many groups hang tough. Some, especially hospitals, have to close because of the onset of federal regulation overseen by bureaucrats whose hubris braces the overarching power of regulation.

People – Catholic and non-Catholics – who had jobs are now unemployed. Patients and impoverished clients are now without the help they were getting. Public institutions performing similar tasks are now flooded with imperiled people seeking help. Some what-have-we-wrought?-politicians emerge with the closures.

But what of the Church and its loyal members who have upheld doctrine over material wellbeing? They are beginning to understand the minds of countless Catholics who suffered persecution in the past, whether that be the “mild” type encountered by immigrant Irish and Italians in the early part of the 20^th century or that of the priests and nuns tortured and sometimes executed by the Nazis or the Christians killed by gnawing lions in the Coliseum of ancient Rome.

These, perhaps, soon to be persecuted Catholic leaders and church members will feel more like the Christians who manage to exist in countries ruled by Sharia law. Or like the Chinese Catholics that refuse to follow the state-imposed church.

But, what of the rank- and-file Catholic? Even before the ham-handed government lowered the boom, fallen- away Catholics undoubtedly outnumbered the practicing Catholic. What about the nominal Catholics who attend Mass most Sundays but believe contraception is okay? Are they standing with the brave and loyal Catholic hospital administrators and university presidents and charity executives who pay fines or close shop rather than violate their consciences?

So, let’s suppose all this bad stuff happens. The Church will suffer. More brickbats will be tossed. News purveyors will pile on, portraying practicing Catholics as dupes of the papist Vatican. Neighbors will become naysayers of Catholic teaching. Churchgoer numbers will probably fall precipitously.

And God will let it happen.

Historically, persecution has weakened the Church before it grows stronger. Like immunization, a little bit of the bug grows resistance to the disease.   

Job was beset with deaths in his family, boils and other painful afflictions. This Old Testament figure still cited when someone is said to have “the patience of Job,” is meant to be the consolation for sufferers. His misfortune is not a sign of hatred, says the Catholic Encyclopedia, but the proof of Divine love.

Could it be that God will permit the United States mandate-behemoth to force a pillow over the mouth and nostrils of the Church to encourage it to struggle for life, life more vigorous for the effort?

Job came out all right. He’s in Heaven.

His – ours? – was a struggle. We must continue to struggle.

CHANGE PARTIES, AND DANCE

Representatives and senators have left Washington to campaign for reelection. President Obama – the one who has said he should act in their stead by executive order if they won’t – used the occasion to criticize them for not staying and doing their jobs.

True, as a body the Congress has done little in the last two years. In some ways that is good for the country; most times the “accomplishments” of Congress do more harm than good. But, the total lack of meaningful legislating is due more to partisanship than anything else. Let the blame fall where it may.

Not a new idea, but certainly not a commonly discussed one, for getting meaningful work out of our national legislators would be to “turn the rascals out.” Set aside for a moment that the voters in the 50 states would need do that, and then both parties would be overturned. The houses of Congress would flip control, but the legislative branch would still be split.

First, stipulate that all 535 seats in the two houses will not flip. But they need not. Good results for the electorate and thus the country would follow if only fractions of a total overturn of the incumbents and so the parties occurred.

In 2010 the midterm elections brought in a slew of new Republicans and changed the House of Representatives from Democratic to Republican. That was grist for the punditry mills for months and months. That change brought a distinct change in the legislative branch’s output. In short, the House passed budget and appropriation bills while the Senate settled for continuing resolutions. The status quo brought increased spending because of built-in up-ticks in expenditures. Republicans could complain and point to their dutifulness; Democrats could smile because the government kept growing. That may be oversimplified, but still true.

What if on Nov. 6 a mere 10 percent of House and Senate incumbents lost? The political chatter would pick up considerably. Reelected and newly elected members of the Congress would take notice. That would be a sizeable turnover historically.

In a 2011 blog article on Sabato’s Crystal Ball (from Prof. Larry L. Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics) columnist Alan I. Abramowitz makes some pertinent points. Never in history have both houses flipped party control, and never in recent history has there been a true anti-incumbent election. Fifty two of the 54 representatives losing their seats in 2010 were Democrats, as were all three losing senators.

A chart with that article indicates that since 1954 the greatest number of the 435 House seats to turn over was fewer than 100.

That means that if a quarter, one in four, of the incumbents in the lower chamber were thrown out by the voters, an historic event would be witnessed. What would be the effect on the 435 representatives and 32 or 33 senators sworn in with the beginning of the 113^th Congress in January 2013?

Wow! They would be very attentive to the wishes of their constituents back home. That would be a change.

And if a third were replaced? Profuse sweat on legislative brows would ensue.

Half? Those wont to feed at the public trough would get the message and start buying lunches themselves. The new influence of the voters would be astounding to politicians and pundits alike.

No more seat-warmers of congressional chairs. Their new occupants would be up on their feet, working to satisfy their citizen-masters.

Okay, so most rascals will still be in place come January. Congress has always been a favorite target of taxpayers, who seem to like the individuals they have elected.

But, just knowing that power does exist at the polls should be of some help.

Would somebody – please -- organize a campaign to make those 535 people in Washington true representatives of the people back home and not 535 egocentric self-servers intent on making elective office careers?

Or, maybe we could each give a little more thought to what we are doing when we cast our secret ballot.

Which is more important, party loyalty or responsible representation? 

KEEP UP THE FIGHT FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Catholics fear for their religious freedom supposedly guaranteed under the world’s oldest written constitution. They have not crawled under the rock from which progressives believe they emerged. Rather, many Catholics, including in the hierarchy, are praying and readying the weapon of the ballot against an administration wishing to silence their protests.

President Obama and his self-professed Catholic secretary of health and welfare struck in February with proposed rules to force Catholic institutions – and similarly disposed religious organizations of other denominations – to act contrary to part of their doctrine and consciences.

Sure, say the rules now put into effect without change, dioceses and parishes can have insurance that does not cover abortion, abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization services for their employees. But religious hospitals, universities, schools, charitable institutions and the like better cover their employees for such abominations against human life or face crushing fines.

Parishioners of St. Louis church in northern Virginia (and probably most attending Masses in the Arlington Diocese) now recite a prayer from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They pray “God our Creator” who provided “our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . . to bless us in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty.” The prayer asks for strength of mind and heart readily to “defend our freedom when threatened.” It further asks for “courage in making our voices heard on behalf of the rights of your Church and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.”

Further, the prayer asks God, in this historic “decisive hour” to withstand every trial and overcome every danger so that “this great land will always be ‘one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’”

Another prayer card, from the Arlington bishop, prays the Sacred Heart of Jesus to convert “hearts to protect religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of marriage.”

In addition, parishioners the last two Sundays have supplied those attending Mass at St.Louis with small handouts that encourage readers to “imagine” a government “founded on the right of religious freedom . . . that coerces its citizens to violate their consciences.” Hardly imaginable, until HHS rules come along.

Another asks to image, favorably, signers of the Declaration of Independence “affirming the necessity of forming a new country stating that: ‘all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.’” It reminds that unalienable means those rights “cannot be taken away: they are not granted by the government, but rather precede it.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, in his similar closing prayers at the Republican and Democratic national conventions citied liberty and life as sacred to our nation that derived its rights from God.

Catholic pastors and their parochial vicars are careful, of course, not to mention a candidate’s name from the pulpit. (The IRS obviously overlooks appearances of candidates at African-American services.)  But Catholics are still free of think of those candidates that would nullify their rights and the rights of the faithful of other religions. A few Protestant institutions have joined Catholic lawsuits against the HHS regulations.

Fighting those administration rules could either come as outright disobedience or just ending services to clients that often include non-Catholics or even outnumber Catholics being served. In Boston, Catholic Charities some time ago quit arranging adoptions rather than place children in the homes of homosexual couples, which government mandates.

It is difficult imaging the University of Notre Dame closing down rather than supplying insurance coverage for birth control pills for female students. But let’s hope the good Holy Cross fathers have the guts to shut the doors if necessary.  

Catholics, locally and nationally, must not give up fighting for their rights. When leaders of other religions come to realize they too are vulnerable, the fight may take on some steam. Currently, the main stream media look at Catholics as second­- or even lower-class citizens, if citizens at all. The longer those rules remain in force, the hotter the issue will grow.

Catholics dare not let it cool off.

 And let no one forget: religious freedom is the first God-given right recognized by the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

TIME WARP

My sermon today is about Methuselah.

Footnote, if there can be a footnote in a talk. This will be in straight English .No dialect, Irish or Italian, so I can avoid attack from the political correctors.

Methuselah is famous because he lived for some 900 years. He was mentioned in a song by the Gershwin brothers because of his longevity. As a Biblical character, Methuselah gets but a few verses. Hardly fitting for someone who lived so long. Genesis comes at the beginning of the Bible. So it could cover a time before the invention of fire and the wheel. In their various forms, fire and wheels account for just about every kind of machine that now keeps our civilization moving. Think about it.

Footnote two. Why no the before fire and a the before wheel? Well, if it were the fire, it would mean a particular campfire or conflagration. The wheel means the first wheel, which continues to roll after all these eons.

Footnote three. Pretty unusual to have another footnote so soon. This one is to note that I just checked out the Bible before continuing to write.

It turns out Methuselah is mentioned only in verses 21, 22, 25 and 26 of the fifth chapter of Genesis. And there is not one single quotation from him. All that fame, and not one word out of his mouth. But we learn from our perusal of chapter 5 that Methuselah was 187 years old when he fathered Lemech. Then he lived another 782 years and died at the age of 969.

But, and here might be a surprise for all you who are not familiar with the Bible, there were some other long-lived people in that early Biblical age. To avoid a lengthy quotation, let me just run down those listed in chapter 5.

Adam, the first man, the husband of Eve, lived 930 years and fathered Seth when he was 130. Seth, who lived to be 815 years old, fathered Enosh at 105. And Enosh lived to be 905. There were some pretty old fathers that followed, but let’s just mention how old they were when they died. Kenan, 804; Mahalalel, 830; Jared, 800; Enoch – not to be confused with Enosh – a measly 365; then and only then Methuselah; Lemech, 777, then Noah who was 500 years old when he fathered Shem, Ham and Japeth.

Passing through those days, led to months and months and months, and years and years and years, and decades and decades and decades, not to mention centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries and centuries. I think that is nine centuries. That’s a long time!

If there was no overlap, those long lives add up to some six thousand two hundred years before Noah. Obviously, many of those fathers and sons were alive at the same time, so we don’t really know from the Bible how long a time elapsed from Adam to Noah.

We do learn, however, that Methuselah lived the longest. That must account for why even today people still refer to him. Okay, some people refer to him. It has been a while, I confess, since I heard Methuselah mentioned.

Footnote four. Some folks might find it hard to believe that people lived that long back then. I’ll get to that later.

Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It was written a long time after Adam and his descendants just enumerated. So those early figures must have lived boring lives until some of them invented things to make life a bit easier, as did fire and the wheel. Hacking scars in the ground to plant seeds and herding animals left a lot of time for thinking. Thought, of course, must be reason those early people found out what seeds were. Maybe meat as food was discovered when, after killing that charging bull, something had to be done with the carcass.

Footnote five. I digress.

Living so long must have had one common accomplishment. And that was wisdom. Wisdom meant people could figure out what was going on around them.

But time means a lot of idle time, and idle time plays into the Devil’s hands. We’ve all heard that. Chapter 6 of Genesis pretty well explains what happened.

“When men had begun to be plentiful on earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God, looking at the daughters of men, saw they were pleasing, so they married as many as they chose.”

Footnote six. This is a nice way of saying that there was too much fooling around.

Yahweh – which is the Hebrew name for the Lord – said he would not be disgraced by the behavior of the men he had created. So He said man’s “life shall last no more than a hundred and twenty years.”

Besides that, Yahweh brought the Flood. That was the big one. Noah saved mankind and the animal kingdom by building the ark, at the Lord’s suggestion. And the rest is history, as we are wont to say.

Now, before I have to get to another footnote, let it be noted that the Old Testament goes way, way back. And from that time on it would seem that the Lord’s limit on human life holds true. Officially, according to that sage we call the Internet, the oldest person ever in recent times lived 122 years and 164 days. She was a French woman who died in 1997. The next was 119 years and 97 days. Several managed 116 years. All were women.

What does that tell you, men?

The next time you hear someone mention Methuselah, just remember his name has endured, only because he lived a few years longer than many others. Of course, one point or one run or whatever measure, means some athlete or team becomes famous.

Footnote seven. The rest are also-rans.

HOME, HOME ON THE HOBO RANGE

He was obviously homeless. He walked slowly, pack and bedroll on his back, his long hair in tangles, on a path that seemed to lead to ground-level water tanks, hidden by trees, that stand only a few paces from Route 1. There must be a campsite used by the homeless there. Until shut down, such a camp was in a wooded area about a quarter-mile north. The sheltering undergrowth was removed there, and a small green space emerged. That was good for the neighborhood, bad for those who’d rather not go to shelters. Those refuges are shunned by some derelicts for fear of other derelicts.

Okay, so it is politically incorrect to refer that way to the unfortunate human beings who can claim no shelter similar to those fortunate people with incomes. Speculation about the living conditions of that man, called a hobo back in the thirties when men wandered the country looking for work may be fruitless. Back then, those men, usually wearing suit coats and beat-up fedoras, would knock on the back doors of middle class houses and asked for a bite to eat, sometime offering to do chores in return for the sustenance. Housewives, alone and doing their own housekeeping, would often not hesitate to give the poor souls some of the soup being prepared for supper. Some would pour boiling water on the plates and utensils the hobo used. But there was sympathy for the guy who, “there for the grace of God go I.” Some of the homeless families found community (a progressive usage now) in slapped-together shacks collectively termed “Hoovervilles” (a term coined for the habitats erected by World War I who marched on Washington to demand pensions.)

Despite the high unemployment rate today, the homeless differ from those that rode the rails and gathered at “hobo jungles” and ate slumgullion. Today most unemployed get federal money. Actual homeless folks do not appear “down and out” as did those itinerant unemployed during the Great Depression seen in stark, black and white photos of bread lines taken by WPA workers. Now, their dishevelment bespeaks more of mental disability, with which some are burdened, or drug and alcohol addiction.

Our contemporary example of homelessness may have discovered the haven he was approaching from others like him. He may have met them high up the slope of riprap under some viaduct or bridge. New structures, such as one carrying I-95, barricade sleeping spots. Also, strings of lights illuminate the roadway for traffic and disrupt rest for anyone foolish enough to seek sanctuary beneath viaducts.

Back in the eighties during a spate of unemployment, churches of various faiths in a Virginia suburban area, worked together in providing a moving shelter week by week. The U.S. Army loaned cots and churchgoers staffed the shelters overnight and supplied breakfast and take-out sandwiches for lunch. County health officials were not happy, but saw the need and so increased the supply of governmental beds.

Clients of the church-run shelters back then could not be tagged with a single description. Few even came close to resembling the man strolling down the path toward the water tanks, or the so-called bag ladies. There were single mothers with a child or two, an underemployed woman who dressed well and had some sort of sales job in a department store, men who did look like street people. Having seen those homeless, one can only imagine the day-to-day existence of the contemporary guy with the bedroll.

Perhaps it would be unfair for someone who has not walked in his moccasins to guess how he manages to keep living, not to mention trying to get into his head. Recalling over and over, perhaps, the mistakes, or the misfortune, that put him in this fix might be his cross. Might it be the economic downturn with job loss, or unrestrained spending, or gambling, or divorce, or depression, or mental illness, or just plain orneriness? Being a school dropout? Maybe his life is just looking for his next meal, like some stray animal. Maybe it’s a continuous stewing over fate. Hard to know.

How can concerned citizens help homeless people like our guy? A lot of us might say, let the government handle him and others like him. Some of us say it is up to the churches and other charities. Others say that little can be done for those who appear to have dropped out of society voluntarily, or because of mental illness. Asylums (isn’t strange that such a caring word has become a PC bugaboo?) don’t exist in the numbers seen before the time when state governments discovered that mood-changing drugs were cheaper than big, brick buildings with locked wards.

There may be but little hope for our modern hobo. But for the great mass of homeless, perhaps more jobs would turn the trick.

FACT CHECKING BEFORE THE FACT

In this day of political speech being fact checked in print and on air and over the internet, the time might be right to advocate for a new kind of newspaper. A newspaper dedicated to just the facts, the truth as it can be discovered.

Sure, most newspapers claim they already do that. Readers know that is not true. News people are wont to declare that objectivity is impossible. Is all news gathering and reporting subjective? Need it be?

Back in the 1950s when your humble writer first entered the news business, it was generally accepted that the people who reported the news were not to take sides; that was for the editorial writers and columnists. We might have our private partisan thoughts and opinions – and indeed, we did – but we were to keep those out of our reporting. That’s why the phrases “he said” and “she said” appeared ad nauseam.

New reporters at the old United Press were instructed in company policy to write down the middle because client papers had different political slants. Fair and balanced was not mentioned, but that was the policy. That was carried out pretty well. Reporters back then, even those of many newspapers, found they could talk with and interview Democrats and Republicans without being labeled friendly or unfriendly. One could even interview a Communist and write a straight story.

Still, some readers and some politicians were ready to label newspapers. In Wisconsin, Republicans attending party functions would, on occasion, tell Milwaukee Journal reporters that they worked for Pravda or Izvestia or Tass. On the editorial pages, the Journal was Democratic but not on the news side. In Madison, the Capital Times tended to slant its news-side toward that party and its editorial positions were clearly Progressive, even though that party founded by Robert “Fighting Bob” or “Old Bob” La Follette Sr. had folded before the death of “Young Bob.” In other parts of the country, such feelings probably still prevail. Similar feelings might be heard in the D.C. region regarding the Washington Post and the Washington Times or Examiner.

Newspapers are failing or cutting back, because of diminishing advertising. Their on-line operations are not producing as much ad revenue as needed to maintain healthy operations. Some are cutting back from daily publishing, such as the parent company of the Times­-Picayune in New Orleans. Their papers are printed three days a week, following tests in other markets where the firm operates.

Even the country’s national newspapers are having financial problems. The New York Times has been selling off most of the papers it owns to right the listing flagship. The Washington Post has folded its business section into section A, folded some Sunday sections and squeezed daily sections.

Could revamping newspapers’ news-holes to recognize how readers have either switched to TV news entirely or how they use television improve the financial outlook for print journalism? That might be worth a try.

How?

More exposition and less opinion would help. Exposition means explanation. A writer, it seems, could explain without opining. Government news now means reporting the bloviating of politicians more than explaining the substance of government. The news bite broadcast news developed because of time restraints was quickly adapted by savvy politicians. Print reporters were ever awaiting colorful language for quotation, so it cannot be blamed solely on television. Nonetheless, television’s demands have intensified the public’s taste for confrontation between pols, even in newspapers. Theodore White’s “The Making of a President,” the trend-setting book on the behind-the-scenes 1960 presidential election, was full of incidental scene descriptions –details of clothes John Kennedy was wearing when he did such and such – spurred political reporters to write more colorfully. An example of what could happen at the time of transition: A political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal wrote about the scotch a gubernatorial candidate poured while being interviewed in a hotel room; the candidate was not happy. A detail such as that would be commonplace now, with no complaints.

What if the space needed to write about such trivia (albeit, such detail could be revelatory sometimes) were devoted to factual reporting of the issue at hand? That should be of more value to citizens as voters than whether the president sneaks a smoke when no one is around to take a photo.

What if breaking news was left to TV, radio and the internet? Daily newspaper editors know that is way things are, so why don’t they just edit their papers with that reality in mind and forget about the old days of street sales and deadlines every minute? In the thirties, the Indianapolis Star would put out extras during the 500 race at the Speedway, especially had there been a fatal crash. (The last extra the writer remembers is the one he ordered at a now-defunct small town paper when Robert Kennedy was shot.)  Extras are of the past, but newspapering has not fully adapted to the 21^st century.

When papers of record, such as the old Milwaukee Journal and other dailies in Wisconsin, would have reporters covering every minute the two houses of the legislature were in session and nearly all of the public hearings on bills (where, incidentally, any person registering could get a few minutes to present his or her opinion). Pertinent detail would be reported without spin. Reporters knew not every subscriber was reading their stuff, but they did know that opinion leaders around the state were. Those who cared to know what was happening in Madison could find out. And that coverage included such meetings of boards and commissions that handled welfare, insurance, building, conservation, and the university regents. And the state supreme court, of course. That reportage (to use a contemporary term) was pretty inclusive and pretty unbiased. Reporters then called themselves newsmen and not journalists. Unfortunately, there were only a few women covering general news, but there were some, who could be tough.

Reporters asking questions did not give speeches. They tried to keep questions short and pointed. They sought information. Gotcha queries were few, though they did exist. For the most part they followed the spirit of the disclaimer Lawrence E. Spivak used at the beginning of the old radio Meet the Press --- the views of the reporter are not necessarily reflected by their questions.

Reporters considered themselves as journeymen craftsmen who were surrogates for the readers who could not be there. They placed themselves in the place of interested parties who wanted to know what happened and how and why. The old three W’s ---what, where and when -- plus how and why were the questions to be answered as fully and as tersely as possible. They were not supposed to care about the fallout of their reporting as long as they could back it up. Corrections were frowned upon, but printed if necessary. (There was one blemish on corrections in the old days of newspapers: they were buried in short, little stories and were called row-backs. Now, thankfully, corrections are clearly labeled and put in one place.)

Today, journalists are considered professionals and treated as elitists. And they are paid well. That is well and good, but their product is not held in high esteem. It may not have been held high in the old days either, but somehow it seemed to be more respected than today.

So, perhaps newspaper could gain some respect and more readers if they delivered a product that provided news that was of more value to those who need it, and, more important, a product that could be acquired nowhere else? That could be the case if at the core of that product was news and information readers came to believe in as true and unbiased. News that provided detail from original sources rather than parroting opinion from those who could benefit at the polling places. News that tried more to be pertinent than merely timely. There are enough people who need such news to support the high costs of gathering that news, or it seems there should be. Those people can be found in all walks of life, in business, education, professions from health to science and engineering, entertainment. People in commerce and industry and professions need to know what is happening. They need to know current events in detail, not in fleeting bursts.

Newspaper publishers and editors always have thought they were providing essential information, but the state of the industry shows otherwise. A new approach is needed.

Advertisers need such audiences and surely would reward those publishers providing such readers.

And, of course, there would still be printed entertainments broadcasters and cablecasters cannot provide, such as comics, crossword puzzles, and, naturally, the real skinny on sports.

Professionals could be found to report and write without bias if that was demanded and enforced by well- meaning publishers. Pros in the news business would be happy to supply a product that really fulfills a need.

The yellow press of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries faded away, just as today’s version of daily newspapering is on the brink of slipping into oblivion. The old days of newspapering were not perfect. There was, however, a sense that the news pages and the editorial page were discrete.

Why not a newspaper, or many newspapers, that live by and thrive on that division? Editors would not need a staff of Clark Kents to put out the Daily Verity. Only some upright people who wished to practice high standards.

Fact checkers would do their work before the fact of publishing.

SPORTS SHORT TAKES

Sports entail things that intrigue a fan who knows little of the fine points of the various games.

In no particular order:

Why does a trainer shield his lips as he speaks to a fallen college footballer? Is someone on the opposing bench assigned to watching TV to discern what may be wrong with injured players on the other team? Maybe. Pitcher mound conferences are notorious for covered mouths.

Why were quite a few season-opening college football games played in neutral cities, such as Dallas, Atlanta, Dublin? Participants were big time schools, not Sleepy Hollow State and the like. Money probably answers the question.

Velcro on the batting gloves of Major League Baseball players must be lousy. Batters seem to readjust those wrist bands almost after every swing or called ball. The other day, one player loosed and tightened just before stepping into the box. It seems that as late as the fifties, ball players batted bareheaded and did not put helmets on their heads. Safety from bean balls, that’s understandable. But do gloves really give better grips? No more do batters stoop and rub dirt on their hands and handle.

Are tattoos and facial hair on pro and amateur athletes more prevalent this year than in the past? Clean cut is no longer the look for our heroes.

How come college quarterbacks must operate with hand signals from the sidelines and pros can just listen to the radio receiver in his helmet? Rules, sure, but more and more seem to be taken from the player and put into the hands of the coaches. And what about those assistant coaches (only now and then a head coach) up high in the warm seats behind glass, running algorithms or whatever on their computers and relaying important tactics to the bench and the field.

Noticed for the first time the other day when in a big league ball yard that the umpires have to be fast on their feet, just like the players. The base umps run to get into position when flies and grounders and Texas leaguers (is that term still used?) come off the bat. No more out-of-shape officials. Suppose the plate umpire, the crew chief, has to be agile, too, for the umps do move around from game to game. Oh yes, does the plate umpire still carry a little whisk broom to keep home plate clean? And how bad do the lines marking the batter’s boxes have to get before they are re-chalked (or is some space­-age paint used)?

Why are the profiles of golfers seen in TV long shots so easily identifiable to fans? Got to be that body language speaks pretty loudly. Swings certainly are recognizable.

People who can’t stand sticky hands shouldn’t be pitchers. Those resin bags have got to feel like honey.

Ball players must have a choice between long pants and stockings. Suppose it makes no difference if uniforms are not uniform. Can’t remember whether players have a long-pants option when teams wear retro gear.

Basketball – can players maneuver just as well in those long shorts and loose fitting jerseys as they could in the short shorts era? Is the longer version just for style? B-ball players don’t seem to have a choice in uniform styles as do baseball players. 

GOP CONVENTION PLANNERS TIE UP A CAMPAIGN PACKAGE

A few themes ran through the GOP national convention speeches that could be divined by listening to the C-Span cablecasts.

And, those themes tied in nicely with Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech.

Convention organizers probably coordinated the show, meant to counter the argument against Romney being laid down by ads backing President Obama.

Family (often stemming from immigrant parents or grandparents), tough times, founding of small businesses, near failure and then success flowing from hard work, hiring and keeping employees. Folded into the series of speeches were the political achievements of women and ethnic groups, sometimes represented in the same person.

Romney’s speech closing the convention touched on all those topics. His story, as he told it, echoed the content of the appearances of politicians and entrepreneurs and women and the candidate’s business partners and friends, who summarized their relevant experiences.

Did all this stagecraft intended to tie together the candidate’s story and his campaign strategy reach enough voters to matter? Only the vote counting starting with the polls closing on November 6 will give the answer.

Slimmed down even further, the speakers as a group offered this argument for Romney’s election: Nice people who shine often come from hard-working immigrant families that embrace the American ideal of freedom to pursue happiness, and that their small business success is shared by providing jobs for others.

Speakers encapsulated parts of that campaign argument with lines that could become talking points or bumper stickers. But the beauty of the convention program overall may be lost to those who did not watch enough of the choreography without the interruptions and interpretations of pundits.

Agree or disagree with this political production, it seemed different from the political conventions of old. Voice-over introductions with the name and title of the speaker, short enough presentations to hold attention, and a pace that warded off boredom.

Clint Eastwood’s “surprise” appearance cannot go without comment. The convention could have gone swimmingly without him. Like him or not, his piece had some entertainment value. He did prove, however, a truism of political advertising. Ideas and even exact phrases can be conveyed clearly without using explicit words. He minced no words when he distilled elections, saying that officeholders are employees of the people and if they fail at the job, they can be let go. Conventioneers gave him a fist bump on that.

KILL THE UMPIRE; WELL, NOT REALLY

Well, the Washington Nationals just dropped a four-game series at the Phillies ball yard.  Still in front of Atlanta by five games the morning after; the Nats are still a disappointment.  Sometimes it is difficult to watch on TV when those exceptionally good ballplayers are about to blow one.

Near despair arises (or does it fall?) when Phil Mickelson is on the verge of missing a cut.  Somehow he makes it by a stroke, shows signs of surging on moving day, and then bogeys away his gain and then some on Sunday.

Then there’s Notre Dame: about to take on Navy in Ireland, a game opening the seasons for both teams.  Can a fan, much less a nervous grad, watch?

Obviously, whether the anxious fan can influence the play of the athletes, as he fears, is nonsense. His nerves are completely and geographically separated from those competing for fame and treasure. What kind of fool would even feel, much less admit, trepidation over televised entertainment, sport intended for public consumption and the enrichment of owners and sponsoring institutions and compensation for professionals and future compensation for collegiate stars?  Of course, the fool does watch, even while squirming in his chair or walking up and down in frenzied worry.

Some other fans elsewhere may act the same, but probably fewer than one might suspect.  But millions of non-athletes, some of whom guzzle more beer than at other times, watch with fascination and elevated pulses influenced by heightened desire for victory.  Vicarious victory.

How many fans can face the reality that whether their team or player scores and soars or sinks and stinks changes the fans’ lives by not a single iota?  Well, okay, a lot of life-changing money could be riding on the outcome. Still, rabid fandom has little to do with compulsive gambling.  The overheated fanatic need not have filthy or pristine lucre in play over an important or unimportant game.

Game  \’gam\ n 1a AMUSEMENT, DIVERSION b: FUN, SPORT

So goes the definition of “game” in the Webster’s New Deal Dictionary.

Americans (and maybe to a greater degree soccer fans in other countries) can get pretty emotional about sports.  Those feelings may have been true in earlier times, such as when elders were in high school. As a failed athlete who turned to cheer leading to travel with the school’s teams, this old mind of a would-be athlete recalls plenty of excitement about victory and deep sorrow over defeat. Hoopla has grown in intensity over the years. Expression comes in many more boisterous vulgar ways than when a San Francisco staffer for the Examiner, Ernest Lawrence Thayer, wrote poetically in the paper in 1888 of ill-fated Casey at the Bat.  A clipping of that poem was given to a comedian in a New York theater who used it when some pro ball players were in the audience. So back some 120 years ago, there was proof behind the footlights of amusement, diversion, fun and sport all wrapped together.

So why do fans treat sports as more important than amusement, diversion and fun?

Maybe, to identify themselves with success.  Thus, failure – a loss – is devastating mentally.  My team, my hero, my heroine (women are big fans now, too) is no better than I am.

Most of us fanatics can come back to reality pretty quickly.  Oh sure, it’s only a game. It doesn’t make any different in my life.  But . . .

How many cars will be overturned and burned should the Nat win the Word Series?

(Oh, O! Just jinxed ‘em.)

SPEAK CAREFULLY AND DUCK THE BIG STICK

Consider politicians choosing words in the midst of an interview, especially when being questioned by a local-market Cronkite wannabe. Or even a grizzled officeholder speaking off the cuff. Some mistakes will be made.

Todd Akin, GOP senatorial candidate in Missouri, put his foot in it in a radio interview, speaking of “legitimate rape.” Forget cogent arguments about the substance of the spoken error. No judgment here regarding the right or wrong of his argument. There can be no misunderstanding that he did use the wrong adjective. Let us just look at the consequences of similar misspeaking in the past. No need to list many, for it happens all the time, and – it seems – most often to Republicans. There was George Allen and his calling a planted heckler a name his mother picked up in the Caribbean. There was Dan Quayle and his failure to correct a school flashcard that misspelled potato. Oh, yes, Joe Biden recently spoke of chains in a way that some said was connected to slavery. And President Obama said of entrepreneurs that “they didn’t build that.” The latter two examples seemed to be scripted.

Leave aside that Republicans were more concerned about Akin’s words because Democrats thought the error made it easier for their incumbent to prevail. The point is that the “gotcha” game can impede open discussion of real issues, thus oversimplifying elections and encouraging candidates to adhere slavishly to talking points.

So, can we return to the day of Lincoln-Douglas debates to inform the electorate? Never, it must be supposed, in a time of fast foods and drive-in banking and 10-second sound bites.

Somehow, citizens should hope that they can have – and work for – political and public policy presentations that inform audiences about the true feelings and desires of candidates. Unneeded are bumper sticker length campaigns that appeal to guts rather than to brains. The same goes for TV ads.

Maybe levelheaded citizens that care enough can influence political discourse, guiding it toward beneficial arguments and away from rancor. The republic’s future could depend on such basic intelligence.

AMERICA CAN CHANGE

Class warfare is something like that old cliché about a circular firing squad. Those manning the weapons overlook how they could afford the guns.

What does it matter if the guy who owns the company you work for has a mansion in the town’s best suburb, has vacation houses in Florida and Maine, vacations in Europe and Asia, and gets there in his private jet? It matters because he had to pay, directly or indirectly, the contractor and building materials manufacturer and those who work for them; he had to pay for the fine clothes and luggage he and his family bought for traveling, the car and the driver he used to drive to the airport, the people who built his plane, those who maintain it, and those who pilot it. And he had to invest his profits to keep his company going and growing. The entire list of his spending, which benefits other people in many income classes and walks of life, is probably too long even to be affixed here in endnotes.

Politicians are wont to decry those who possess wealth for paying too little in taxes. They are also wont to ignore economic studies that show the top one percent of income receivers pay more taxes than their numbers might suggest, and the lower half pays very little. Too many of those elected officeholders and candidates for those offices attempt to use the disparity between poor and rich to create envy --- and votes.

Their ignorance – vincible or invincible – defies the normal ambition of people to do better, to get better jobs, to make more money, to live at least little more luxuriously. Such desires are fueled by advertising, which describes even marginally luxury goods in glowing terms. Those consumers who are content with their lot for reasons of moral self-sacrifice still will buy what they need. Envy exists, but as with most sins, it is not an everyday vice for most people.

Suppose that true equality of income (and, ergo, class) existed in this or any other society. Everyone would enjoy a comfortable place to live, have enough tasty and nutritious food, have a nice car, vacation at the beach or in the mountains, luxuriate in the beneficence of government.

Really?

Who would design their houses? Who would build them? Who would imagine new ways of cooling and heating the dwellings? Who would sell them? Who would cut the lawns and landscape them? All of that is done under the current system of economics. But what incentive would there be to learn architecture, engineering, business and the rest if at the end personal income would equal that of the guy next door. Why bother? I don’t have to learn a skill – or use one – because everything will be taken care of.

How would the government actually be able to convert capitalism to the new utopia of equal distribution of wealth and what goes with that “wealth”?

Obviously, that conversion could not happen overnight. Equality in outcome could not happen with new legislation effective at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31. As the New Year a new economy begins! What would happen to the hovels? What would happen to the mansions? What would happen to mac-and-cheese? What would happen to caviar and those little silver spoons?

No, such a sudden change is impossible, probably even with a bloody revolution. Societal and economic changes can only be made slowly because those affected must adapt.

Slowly, like affordable medical care; the enormity of societal change won’t be felt for years, as gradual tightening flattens freedom. Write and pass commercial legislation that covers thousands of pages so that lawmakers don’t have time to read and to understand, followed by bureaucratic rule-making to enforce that law, and business is stifled, new hires are postponed or abandoned. Reduce the military; spending on bellicose material would decline along with the jobs to supply it. Increase entitlements and citizen dependency spreads. Government grows. Freedom wanes.

Real equality may be impossible, but attempts to make incomes and people equal are real and destructive.

America can change. Will we let it? Will we let the effort continue?