A Nation of Cowards? NO!

Thu Sep 13, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [War] [My Two Cents]

Most of the time when I’m up at ungodly hours because of my work schedule, Fox News Channel doesn’t have live programming — but this morning (Thursday, Sept. 13) it did. One item that was mentioned during the wee-hours live coverage of developments in the terror war story was that during the closing days of the Clinton Administration, the government learned where Osama bin Laden was lurking — and considered mounting a strike mission to put down that mad dog, but decided not to do it. There was some low-key tut-tutting from the assembled reporters about that decision, and to my surprise I was actually just a little bit annoyed at them for it. Because Bill Clinton being what he is, and valuing what he values, there could not have been any other outcome to the deliberations. Let’s not forget what happened the first time Clinton went after Mad Dog bin Laden. The first downside to that effort was that it failed. The second was how it failed — with the destruction of abandoned desert encampments and an alleged poison-gas factory in Sudan that was in fact a maker of legitimate pharmaceutics. The third downside was when it failed, which was during a time when the Lewinsky scandal was getting particularly hot. Given that (job approval ratings notwithstanding) most Americans had soured on Clinton’s personal attributes by this time, it’s possible that even had the effort succeeded it would not have brought glory unto the sainted brow of The Man From Hope, except in the eyes of Geraldo Rivera and Bryant Gumbel and a handful of others. Now along comes this second opportunity — but with a presidential campaign going on during which most Americans still thought Clinton might like to help Al Gore get elected. A successful strike would have been great for Gore, and sort of okay for Clinton except that there would be snide comments about “wagging the dog” for political purposes. A second failure, especially a spectacular one, would have been great for George W. Bush but a disaster for Gore (even more so than the debates) and would overshadow any positive aspects, such as there might be, of Clinton’s legacy. Given what matters most to Bill Clinton, this lopsided risk made it a no-brainer. The mission was scrubbed before it could even be planned. If we had had at the time what some of us had come to refer to as a “real” president — one who put doing the right thing ahead of personal aggrandizement — the chance to do the world a service by killing a rabid varmint would have overshadowed any political risk. Not to mention that a “real” president wouldn’t have timed that reckless and ill-fated first mission the way Clinton did, so that such baggage would not have figured into the second decision. Heck, if we’d had a “real” president at that time you’d still be scratching your heads staring at that fourth paragraph and asking yourselves, “Lewinsky scandal? WHAT Lewinsky scandal?” But, we didn’t, so you’re not. So now I’d like to turn away from that regrettable period in our recent history and discuss another regrettable period in our nation’s history: last Tuesday. As most of you have no doubt heard or read, it now appears that the reason one of the hijacked airliners crashed in the woods of Pennsylvania instead of the White House or Camp David, is that some of the legitimate passengers learned, or figured out, what the purpose of the hijacking was. And having concluded that their lives were already lost, they took action to stop the scheme from claiming any more lives. With that decision, they went from victims to warriors, and went on to win what they could in their part of the war their captors had started. Heroes do not merely win victories, they don’t merely achieve things that are of great importance. They also inspire. Jeremy Glick and his comrades in that daring act of counter-terrorism displayed courage that many have begun to think no longer exists in America. Yet the occasional passing mentions in the news about a storekeeper who fights back when a criminal threatens him with a gun, the motorist who removes an armed carjacker from the gene pool, the neighbor who rushes into a burning house to wake and rescue the residents — these stories are still told, because they are still true. And then there are the police officers and firefighters who live lives of courage every day because it’s their job, and men and women in military uniform who go when sent, to be the targets of their nation’s enemies because that is what “service” means to them. Those stories are told every day, and we become so used to them that after a while they stop meaning anything. Rightly or wrongly — okay, wrongly — the everyday just isn’t very inspirational. Suppose God performed some great miracle every day — at first we’d be all ooh’s and ahh’s, but after a while it would just be another part of the scenery of our daily lives. Like a sunrise, or a rainbow, or the birth of a healthy child. Hmmmmm… The New York police officers and firefighters who risked — and in all too many cases gave — their lives at the World Trade Center, are heroes. Their heroism of last Tuesday and since, though performed on a vast canvas of violence and destruction, is simply a natural extension of the heroism they had all displayed in their jobs the day before, the week before, the decade before, and will in many days, weeks, and (please God!) decades to come. We have come to rely on their courage so much precisely because it is there all the time. Jeremy Glick and his fellow passengers seem all the more inspirational because what they did was not in the context of a career of steadfast courage and constant heroism. A terrible moment found them, and they found it in themselves to meet it head-on. This is the kind of courage that reaches into the hearts of the rest of us and tells us that we, too, can be heroes even though we do not wear badges or ride fire engines. Yes, there are cowards among us — wherever, whenever there are people, there will be cowards. And there will be heroes. Both will have their moments, but only the hero’s moment will ever be a worthwhile legacy.

September 11, 2001

Tue Sep 11, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [War] [9/11] [My Two Cents]

Late the night before, my wife Chris came home from working the late shift to tell me that her dashboard had begun to light up like a Christmas tree with anomalous warnings, including one about her transmission. I was scheduled to be in Columbus, Ga., before 6:00 a.m. the next morning for work but without checking on what was going on with her truck I couldn’t tell whether the problem would require major service or a quick fix, nor whether it would be safe for her to drive to work the next afternoon — and frankly, she makes better money than I do. So I got out of bed there and then and called the office to tell them I needed to stay home the next day to investigate the trouble. I’ll admit I didn’t mind getting some more sleep than I would have gotten. The next morning we got up and while I was eating a light breakfast and we were discussing what needed to do about her truck, Chris — as she often does — turned on the TV to The Weather Channel. After a while I decided I would start simply by taking her truck for a test drive, so I went in to take my shower, and turned on the radio in the bathroom to Eagle 106.7, a country station headquartered on the opposite side of metro Atlanta that I like because it plays more than just the country Top 40 of the moment. As I was getting ready to get in the shower I listened with half an ear while morning DJ Rhubarb Jones spoke of what happens when someone flies a plane into a building. After some more comments sunk in, I came out of the bathroom and asked Chris to change the channel to Fox News so we could find out just what was going on in New York City. By this time both towers had been hit, and the Pentagon too. It wasn’t until long after both towers collapsed that I could tear myself away and see about Chris’ truck. I finally took it to a local oil change place that offers transmission service, and the men there were huddled around a radio listening to the coverage. There was speculation that we would be at war before the whole thing was over, and that the draft might even be reactivated, but I was thinking it was like a Tom Clancy novel come to life — and I rather hoped that the kinds of “black” operations he writes about might prove to be feasible in real life. The transmission light — along with brake warnings that Chris had also reported — proved to be false alarms. An irrational voice in the back of my head whispered that maybe the plane crashes weren’t really happening, that it was all some kind of sick hoax with special effects and the collusion of everyone in the news media as well as the government and the entire populations of New York City and nearby portions of New Jersey who would be able to see the towers still standing despite what was on TV. Ridiculous, of course. I wondered about the people on those jets, and Chris and I later talked about our planned trip by air to California in late October. We decided to wait and see, since we still had several days to decide whether to complete our reservations. My mother is 75 and my dad will be 77, and both have had cardiac episodes in the last few weeks. If we don’t go, will I ever get another chance to visit them? We can’t afford to take the time to drive. Has there ever before been an attack on a civilian population — with which the attackers were not already in a formal state of war — that took so many lives? Surely not. People have been comparing this to Pearl Harbor, but the target in 1941 was military, and the Japanese made no attempt to conceal who they were. Some might try to compare it to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and perhaps if we had not already been formally at war with Japan for four years when that happened, they might have a point. What motivates someone to mastermind something like this? It may bear the label of religious fervor, but it can only be pure, evil hate. What God would reward men for doing such things? We often say, of individual acts of violence, that the guilty “have blood on their hands.” The mind behind what happened in our country on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, must be drowning in a sea of blood. And maybe if he is captured, that is how he should die: drowned in swines’ blood. Today there is no black or white, there is no North or South. There are no liberals, conservatives, Democrats or Republicans. There are only Americans. Somebody has made a mistake bigger than anyone has ever contemplated making. Somebody is celebrating when they should be getting their affairs in order. Having used hundreds of innocent civilians to kill thousands more, they have committed an act even more monstrous than the Sunday morning sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 — and our people will respond as they did back then, with grim determination to bring justice raining down on the guilty. To those who did this, and those who shelter them: You may be able to topple our buildings, but you cannot topple us. You have unleashed forces beyond your ken. You have engaged us in a war where our only defense is your annihilation. Having sown the wind, now reap the whirlwind. Let everyone else take caution, and stay out of the way. Kevin M. McGehee September 11, 2001

Needed: A Surgeon General’s Warning on Newspaper Ink

Fri Jun 8, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

There’s no escaping stupidity. It’s everywhere, and if you hope to keep your sanity you have to learn to live with that fact. But every so often one particular source of stupidity just gets under my skin so deep that I can’t shrug it off. What is it, pray tell, about publishing newspapers that attracts so many people to whom ’idiot’ would be a compliment? We’re talking about people whose sole qualification for being placed on a pedestal is that their heads are as stone-stuffed as a marble bust — yet almost invariably such people believe themselves better qualified than you or I to make important decisions for ourselves and our communities. Consider just one issue: During my adult life I have lived in just three places. But in each of these places, the local newspapers have pushed — in the face of convincing evidence the locals are deadset against it — consolidation of city and county governments. In two of those places, past efforts have gone down in flames so convincingly that anyone with an I.Q. that doesn’t begin with a zero and a decimal point would get the message, but in both places the newspapers persist. The oddball locale has never even allowed a vote on the issue and most elected officials (who would normally jump at the chance for centralized power) are openly opposed. Yet the newspaper pushes it nonetheless. As if that weren’t bad enough, the publisher of that community’s local daily seems to have such a seething personal grudge against certain county commissioners that his opinion has been driving the way local news is covered (rather than the news driving editorial opinion, which was once the normal way of running a newspaper). Any criticism of this is met personally by the publisher with defensiveness and sarcasm. How reassuring of his publication’s objectivity. Is it something in the ink? Does the chemical composition of newsprint cause severe brain damage — which is most strikingly noticeable in those who have risen through the ranks to become editors and publishers? Could that be it? The Daily Routine, of course, is not a newspaper. Nor, as plainly stated in its mission statement, is its news section presented under the guise of a purely objective rundown of news stories. People who read it know, or ought to know, what they’re getting. And people who read a daily publication purporting to be a newspaper ought to get news stories presented in an objective manner under editorial judgment that trusts the reader to make up his own mind. However quixotic the bigwigs may be in promoting things their readers will never support, they owe it to those readers not to try to manipulate public opinion with blatantly slanted reporting. Yeah, I know. It’s like saying politicians should keep their promises, men should always be faithful to their wives, and nobody should ever blow up a building full of innocent children to make a political point. But you’d think an intelligent publisher would at least insist his news reporters try to maintain the appearance of objectivity. After all, if you’re really going to try to manipulate public opinion to get people to support things they don’t want, it’s counter-productive to let the reader see up your sleeve. The only logical conclusion is that there’s a stupidity epidemic in our nation’s newspaper offices. Somebody call the Centers for Disease Control.

Briefly, About Jenna Bush

Fri Jun 1, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [Here's Your Sign] [My Two Cents]

Part of the deal when it comes to The Daily Routine is that those who wait breathlessly for the latest in the JonBenet Ramsey saga, or which relative is dissing whom in the murder case of Robert Blake’s better half, or any other such story that is 99 percent gossip, will forever leave this table unfed. Our society has become so addicted to the comings, goings, doings and sayings of the well-known-for-being-well-known that it is one of the reasons Big Media does such an abysmal job of informing the American people about what’s really going on in their world. When you only have 110 minutes each week to tell people the news, and you have to spend 45 of those minutes gossiping about somebodies who would be nobodies if this were a just world, you naturally shortchange the important stuff. Fortunately, that lowest-common-denominator audience is so well served by the unthinking liberals of Big Media that alternatives are able to flourish by bucking the trend. Sometimes, though, a gossip story arises that touches, however lightly, on important events. One of these was the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, and another was the perjury committed by then-President Clinton in a deposition for the Jones lawsuit. Sadly, gossip and prurient detail became a matter of constitutional importance when the question of perjury was investigated — not because the Independent Counsel wanted to write an X-rated report to Congress, but because the perjury in question happened to be about a sexual matter and he could not pursue the case without asking questions that Kenneth Starr would not have wanted asked of his daughter (if he has one). The boundary between gossip and substance can be a touchy one, but the Monica Lewinsky matter helped to pin it down somewhat. Where, then, does the line fall when it comes to Jenna Bush? As a daughter of the President of the United States, her comings, goings, doings and saying are only of consequence in light of a nation’s natural tendency to regard the families of the powerful as part of a national family — just as other celebrities are regarded as members of an extended national neighborhood. Jenna Bush has no power over policy, no power to order the boys and girls in uniform into harm’s way for reasons good or otherwise. The value, such as it is, of the emphasis some are placing on Miss Bush’s adolescent efforts to procure alcohol, lies entirely in the discomfiture it is expected to inflict on the President and First Lady. George and Laura need no advice from me about Jenna’s misbehavior, but if I were George I would inform Jenna that since Texas law calls for six months’ jail time in the event of a third offense, she should not expect her father’s position to shelter her from that consequence should it arise. It would be the right thing to do as a father, and as a President. Using the presidency to protect her from such consequences, however, would be an abuse of power, and that would be a legitimate story. Unless and until such an abuse happens, that’s all I have to say about the case — and I honestly doubt anyone else has more. That’s not likely to stop Big Media from whipping up story after story about it, but those who hunger for such empty confections won’t find them here.

How Big the ‘Big Tent’?

Fri May 25, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [My Two Cents]

Recently we’ve seen the United States Senate change hands as a result of Sen. Jim Jeffords’ decision to leave the Republican Party. Jeffords, despite more than a quarter of a century as a GOP officeholder, has a voting record far to the left of any other Republican in either house of Congress. Given that and the fact his home state of Vermont is one of those out-of-the-way places where liberalism still clings tightly, Jeffords’ decision is arguably the best for himself, though the consequences for America and the Republican agenda are less positive. The switch has raised anew the question about the GOP’s future — whether it can continue to promote itself as a ‘big tent’ party or whether its commitment, under President Bush, to more conservative principles undercuts that image. Being a conservative myself, I might be expected to claim that the GOP can be both a ‘big tent’ party and a party with a clear set of principles that distinguish it from its competitors. So I won’t expect anyone to take my word for it. The truth is, the Republican agenda under President Bush is much closer to the American mainstream than is the political agenda of new Senate Plurality Leader Tom Daschle. And the agenda of Senate Republicans having been moved closer to the mainstream by Sen. Jeffords’ defection, the outcome is very much to the GOP’s benefit. It may seem uncordial to wish the Senator a fond bon voyage, but sometimes, as now, the truth lacks good manners. As noted May 25 in the Newnan (GA) Times-Herald by one Angela Webster, Jeffords’ position on Bush’s education package was so far from “moderate” that even Ted Kennedy had to drift leftward to match him. I’m sorry, but anyone capable of pulling Kennedy to the left is not a moderate, and isn’t likely to have better than a spy-satellite’s view of the nation’s political mainstream. It’s one thing to say that the Republican Party must have room for all points of view, but it’s another thing entirely to expect that such marketing won’t be at odds with the real purpose of a political party, which is to enact a coherent political agenda through such activities as electing candidates. If the GOP existed only to elect candidates, without having a more or less common set of goals those candidates are expected to pursue, our elections might as well be about choosing between Coke and Pepsi. This is not to say that Republicans can’t still pursue a ‘big tent’ objective — after all, they can’t win national elections without a broad base of support for their agenda — but they have to recognize that the ‘big tent’ and the ‘party of principle’, while not absolutely incompatible, can nevertheless pull them in conflicting directions. The ongoing debate over how to achieve balance between the two will always be charged, but healthy for the party. I think one thing all Republicans should be able to agree on — with the possible exception of those like Jeffords who often find themselves to the left of Ted Kennedy — is that the notion of the ‘big tent’ has to be kept within reason. The GOP can do a lot of damage to the competition by demonstrating at every opportunity that it is they who are closest to the mainstream. Pandering to way-out-there ‘Republicans’ for no better reason than to stave off what many have regarded as an inevitable change in Senate control, doesn’t really serve that end. For one thing, it feeds the misperception, happily promoted by Democrats, that President Bush could never get his agenda enacted without Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Most of what he has gotten through Congress has passed with the support of even Senate Democrats. The President has well-deserved confidence in what he stands for. As a Republican of the conservative persuasion, I can relate.

A Latter-Day John Brown?

Sat May 12, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [Here's Your Sign] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

The other day I heard something that literally made my day. While running some errands, I had my car radio tuned to WGST, the Atlanta station that carries the Rush Limbaugh show. During a break, the station ran a public-service announcement that went, in the absence of a verbatim transcript, more or less like this: “With so much in the news recently about Timothy Veigh, we here at WGST would like to take a moment to remember his victims.” After a moment of silence, the announcer went on, “At times like this, it helps to be reminded that sometimes the two sides there are to every story, are Right and Wrong.”* That was a risky thing for a radio station to say in this day of political correctness and the near criminalization of judgmentalness. Yet it seems that McVeigh’s crime is one of those rare birds in post-modern America: something we can all pretty much agree on. There aren’t many things that can even aspire to that status. Slavery is one, and the event of nuclear war another — but not much else. Abortion? The environment? The right to enjoy the fruits of one’s own labor? Some days we can’t even agree on whether the sun rises in the east. That there is a consensus on McVeigh is all the more curious because the penalty to which he was sentenced is viscerally opposed by a small but vociferous segment of the public — some of whom are conservatives. My own view on the death penalty is that it really isn’t killing — it’s just chlorinating the gene pool. But even a lot of death-penalty opponents are holding their peace when it comes to the Butcher of Oklahoma City. The only controversy seems to be whether he acted as much the lone wolf as he claims, or whether one or more as-yet unidentified persons were more involved than is currently accepted. I still don’t think the whole story has been discovered, and I doubt McVeigh will tell any more of that story than he has. And that’s because Timothy McVeigh seems convinced that his cause is more important than his own life, and that he can still further the cause even as a corpse. Most people would like to think that the men they send to kill or be killed in their nation’s defense would be willing to lay down their lives for that cause, if necessary. And the cup of military history runneth over with examples of heroism on that scale. But the willful quest for martyrdom is not something Americans are accustomed to. In our age, that mentality is left to Middle Eastern suicide bombers — just as a previous generation associated it with Japanese kamikaze pilots. Americans just can’t get their minds around the idea that someone could actually want to die for his cause even when he doesn’t have to. Timothy McVeigh is not the first American to display such a level of fanaticism, though. More than 140 years ago there was a man whose devotion to a cause led him to take up arms against his lawful government, years before any Southern state opted for secession and made armed rebellion against the United States a quasi-legitimate exercise. And this man’s cause was one with which Americans today are in 100% agreement: the abolition of slavery. John Brown, late of “Bleeding Kansas,” led a raid on the Army arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), was captured, tried, and sentenced to hang. And hang he did, decrying with his last breath the evil that would yet lead to Civil War and a century and a half of hard feelings between North and South, black and white, centralists and de-centralists. McVeigh insists that he was right to kill 168 innocent men, women and children as punishment against a U.S. government that committed murders under color of authority at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas, just as John Brown insisted with his last breath that he was right to challenge the lawful authority of the United States over slavery. I don’t say that “McVeigh believes” the government committed murders, because it’s not a matter of belief — any more than John Brown’s condemnation of slavery was a matter of belief. Both men committed their crimes because they were outraged at crimes being committed by, or under the protection of, the government. Given how popular opinion must have reacted to the raid at Harpers Ferry, you would think that America would have shrunk from the abolitionist cause for some time afterward — but the raid occurred in 1859, only two years before the outbreak of Civil War. Back then, most people could understand the difference between an atrocity, and the belief that led to its occurrence. In all, the effect of Brown’s action seems to have been a wash — slavery was ultimately abolished, after an armed challenge against the U.S. government, but it came neither because of the raid nor in spite of it. Or perhaps it would be better to say both because of and in spite of it. Whatever reforms may come to our government today in light of the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco, there will probably be elements of both “because of” and “in spite of” when it comes to the relationship to Timothy McVeigh as well. His atrocity helped empower and re-elect a hopelessly corrupt President, whose tenure and departure has nevertheless reintroduced such notions to public discourse as “Right and Wrong.” His prosecution has brought to light yet another in a series of faults in the conduct of the FBI, which bore a share of responsibility for both incidents that McVeigh thought he had a right to avenge. Perhaps this will prove to be the catalyst for such reforms as may restore public trust in federal law enforcement agencies, or perhaps it will serve merely to erode that trust even further. There are of course major differences between John Brown’s cause and that of Timothy McVeigh. Slavery was an offense on a grand scale compared to the mere incompetence, recklessness and dishonesty that surrounds Waco and Ruby Ridge. Millions were enslaved, compared to the relatively few victims of Elmer Fed whose screams drove McVeigh over the edge. And as shocking as Brown’s raid must have been in 1859, his victims were soldiers — able and willing to fight back — while McVeigh’s victims, civilians and their children, had no such opportunity. Bombing a building full of children is not the act of a heroic would-be martyr, but a display of malicious cowardice for which there is a special place in hell. It may be, though, that history tailors its shocks for the times. Maybe a society that sanctions infanticide to protect a woman’s standard of living isn’t as easy to shock as one that tolerates slavery. Some will bridle at that suggestion, but a greater proportion of slavery’s victims survived it than do abortion’s victims. Sometimes the two sides there are to every question, are Right and Wrong. If we as a society needed to be shocked, there are certainly enough reasons. Editor’s Note: You’ll notice this took place four months, almost to the day, before 9/11.

More Wells! More Generators! More Supply! Fewer Wackos!

Wed May 9, 2001 12:00 pm by McGehee [Our Times] [My Two Cents]

With President Bush’s energy policy about to be unveiled, the wackos are out in force — condemning what they anticipate will be an overemphasis on increasing supplies of bad old energy sources and insufficient attention to alternative energy sources and energy conservation. Do you know where in America alternative energy sources are most heavily relied on? California. Do you know what state’s people use the least energy per capita? California. By the wackos’ logic, the Fugue State should be wallowing in an energy surplus, and the rest of us ought to be shivering in the dark. Yet in the other 49 states, blackouts tend to be limited to old hippies who partook once too often of LSD, heroin or benzedrine — while Californians are fast becoming accustomed to unannounced power outages ordered by that state’s Energy Emperor. Try pointing out this salient fact to the wackos, though, and they’ll eagerly inform you that California’s blackouts, along with skyrocketing prices for gasoline and natural gas, are the consequence of Big Power, Big Oil and Big Heat all deciding, all at the same time, to start screwing with their paying customers because now “their guy” is in the White House. Really? And now that “their guy” is in the White House, they’re pissing the electorate off so “their guy’s” party will lose Congress next and then “their guy” gets defeated for re-election two years after that? Diabolical!! Is there no end to their fiendish scheming!!?? All this energy uncertainty facing our nation is no coincidence — it is nothing less than The Clinton Legacy. For eight years there was no energy policy. In fact, for eight years there was only one policy: Exalt Bill. Give him credit for the sun coming up. Shield him from blame if the sunrise is obscured by clouds. Raise him above all the petty bonds and shackles and rules and laws that constrain us mere mortals. Exalt him! Preserve, protect and defend him! As a result, our energy infrastructure is in a shambles. There’s natural gas at Point A, but the people who need it are at Point B, and the pipeline that serves them isn’t sufficient to satisfy the demand. Build more pipe? Heavens no, the government won’t permit that! The demand for gasoline is greater than our refineries can handle. Build more refineries? Heavens no, Washington won’t permit that! The demand for the particular blend of gasoline mandated for Chicago is too great, but we have a gasoline glut in Memphis. Ship some Memphis blend to Chicago to relieve the pressure? Heavens no, the EPA won’t permit that! The wackos who created this situation now bemoan the prospect of a national energy policy that will look for more domestic oil reserves, and make them available to the nation; will streamline the process for building more power plants that use conventional fuels; will de-emphasize the kinds of pie-in-the-sky alternative energy schemes that brought California kicking and screaming into the Third World. We can hope that the EPA’s gasoline blend rules will be reviewed, that modern technology will be applied to next-generation nuclear plants to make them more efficient, cleaner and safer than the already excellent record older plants enjoyed before hype shut down the permitting process, that a mature balancing of needs and desires will put the world’s lone superpower back on the road to energy sovereignty. This isn’t just a matter of helping the economy — which does, after all, need it — it’s a matter of national security. Failure in the vital area of energy renders us vulnerable in a world where we’re in everyone’s crosshairs simply because we are powerful and prosperous. The only increase in pollution we can be sure will result from Bush’s energy policy is that spewed by the left-wing radical wackos whose extremist philosophy was allowed to run unchecked while Official Washington pursued its policy of Exalt Bill. If the EPA would regulate that kind of pollution, it might actually save some lives.

Beware the Education-Industrial Complex

Thu Mar 29, 2001 8:00 am by McGehee [Coweta County] [My Two Cents]

On March 20, Coweta County voters — that’s where I live, Coweta County — defeated by a mere 98 votes a measure to extend for five additional years a one-percent special local-option sales tax (SPLOST) for the county’s public schools. That 98-vote figure isn’t as narrow as it sounds considering that, although there are over 85,000 people living in Coweta County, the voter turnout for this minor special election was quite small. But it was pretty narrow nevertheless, and as you might imagine, if you’ve ever witnessed a school-related ballot measure election in your neck of the woods, the supporters of this SPLOST are hopping mad over the defeat. Coweta County is growing by leaps and bounds, more than doubling its population since 1990. School construction here, as just about everywhere else in the shadow of Fortress Atlanta, is a minor industry in itself. There is undoubtedly a need for new facilities to serve the growth in the population of school-age children. It’s unclear whether the present economic ebb will translate even temporarily into a cooling of Coweta’s growth trend, but once the economy picks up steam again, any such softening of growth will vanish quickly. The current SPLOST, enacted four years ago and set to expire in 2002, was supposed to address the county’s need for more and bigger public school facilities, and to pay off a previous bond measure used to finance school construction work. As the day of reckoning for the local school board’s proposed extension drew near, the members of the school board failed to answer pointed questions from people in the community about the use of those previous funds. And therein lies the rub that rubbed out the school board’s plans. Against the rising tide of unanswered questions, the supporters of the SPLOST extension trotted out the usual arguments — along the lines of, If you oppose this modest but necessary measure, you must not care about the children. It would be nice to have confidence that Coweta’s response to such campaign tactics represent the beginnings of a nationwide trend, but that would be as-yet unfounded optimism. Indeed, the local attitude toward matters of public school spending had been much more pliable until this time around, and had the turnout been larger on March 20 the outcome might very well have been different. The school boosters now know they’re up against an incipient revolt, and will be plotting strategy for the next attempt. If they hold to this year’s flagrant tactics, but simply turn up the volume several notches, they will probably lose again. Or they may win. It remains to be seen. What the Coweta County school board and their supporters — and counterparts around the country — need to come to terms with is that there is a distinction, readily apparent to adults to whom it is pointed out, between saying “educating our children is our top priority” on the one hand, and going on to say that the school board should be given everything it asks for, every time, regardless of any questions that may be asked and unanswered. That a narrow majority in my home county recognized this distinction when they went to vote, is encouraging. But too many people remain unaware of the need to hold school boards, and public school establishments in general, accountable for how they spend the taxpayers’ money. The lack of accountability we see in education today reminds me of President Eisenhower’s warnings against the “military-industrial complex”, a combination of Pentagon generals and defense contractors that — if not watched closely by congressional overseers — could ratchet up the cost of defending the country beyond all reason, even as they painted their questioners as being “soft on defense,” with unconscionable negative consequences on the rifle-bearing enlisted men who actually achieve our nation’s defense. Examine a school district budget these days (assuming you could get hold of one) and I’m willing to bet there will be more than an occasional “educational” equivalent of the $400 hammer and $8,000 toilet seat. It’s a lot easier to scrutinize the Pentagon’s spending. The nation only has one Pentagon, and a national news media outlet can afford to commit the resources, if it chooses, to dig through the reams of paper describing what America’s defenders are doing with the billions allocated to them. But few local newspaper editors want to be slandered by their hometown’s own education-industrial complex as being “soft on education.” Besides, it’s only a few measly million… Right. And Coweta’s SPLOST extension died by only a measly 98 votes.

Bully THIS

Wed Mar 14, 2001 8:00 am by McGehee [Here's Your Sign] [My Two Cents]

At the risk of being targeted for psychiatric evaluation, I confess here and now that, when I was in school, I was picked on by people whom most today would reasonably conclude were bullies. I certainly thought so at the time, and so did many of those adults who were aware of the activity. I doubt the bullies thought of themselves that way then, though maybe in the wake of the mass shootings at high schools in recent years their consciousnesses have been raised. Without a doubt, the notion of having one’s favorite taunting target suddenly turn the tables with a gun, tends to focus one’s attention on one’s own behavior. But whatever guilty thoughts may be passing through the minds of those grown men (and yes, women) today, doesn’t change what happened back then. And what happened back then was, they survived. And so did I. It wasn’t uncommon in those days for my complaints to teachers about bullying to be futile. Sometimes I was even accused of deliberately inviting the torment: kids wouldn’t focus so much on me if I weren’t doing something to provoke it. In retrospect, I can see that such responses were from people who thought I could get along better by being more like everybody else. I wasn’t just different, I was an individualist despite not even having heard of the word yet. I knew that I had a right to think for myself, to make my own decisions about things that were nobody else’s business, and to enjoy things that gave me pleasure — like knowing the right answer when Teacher asked the class a question. I also knew I had a right not to be pressed and formed into a Kid McMuffin by any school administration, classmate, or even (had it been an issue) my own parents. It may startle many public-school reformers to know that the conformity factories where most of this early unpleasantness took place, sometimes it seemed with tacit adult approval, were not government-owned schools. I did attend government-owned schools for the three years now deemed “middle-school,” but nine of my twelve pre-college school years were spent in Catholic schools. To be fair though, the one time I had a schoolmate hold a knife to my neck — a puny X-Acto knife, no real danger — was at a government-owned school. So I guess it sort of evened out. The talk about bullying today seems oddly antiseptic compared to my memories of what used to happen to me. Maybe bullying has been defined so far down that it now includes having someone sneer at one’s shoes in the hall. When I was bullied, usually a fight ensued — if not immediately, eventually. It wasn’t always one-on-one. I rarely if ever had anyone take up for me; those who weren’t against me felt safer just watching. Sometimes I sought to even the odds, or even gain advantage, in unsporting ways. Once I unfolded a tiny pocket knife, scarcely more dangerous than the aforementioned X-Acto, and of course I never touched the kid with it — as soon as he saw it, he lost all desire to fight and ran home. That was about the time I began to understand the concept of deterrence. It was during those “middle school” years that I began to make headway against it all. I gained confidence in my ability to defend myself physically, even though early on one of my most decisive defeats was by a girl in my class. Every once in a blue moon someone who targeted me for a pounding would wind up with a fat lip, a black eye, a bloody nose — and maybe even a new attitude. Once a guy I was fighting accused me of having something in my hand when I hit him back, but my hand was empty. Hey, not only could I hit, I could hit hard. Not every challenge could be met physically though. One boy threatened, quite credibly I thought, to beat me up fiercely on the last day of school — so on that day I told another bully something uncomplimentary that the first one had said about him. I’m sure the Klingons would not have approved. By the time I got into high school, while I may not have become a widely respected member of the pack, I was more or less free of the fear that I might have had about the way the others treated me. Also, it being an all-boys school at the time, I didn’t have to worry about getting beat up again by a girl… The advent of testosterone undoubtedly affected how I dealt with would-be tormentors in those years. In a blind rage one time, I chased one the entire length of the school before he realized who he was running away from. He stopped, threw a punch that I ran right into, and then he had to take a step back and start talking fast when I kept coming. He promised to take up the matter with me after school, but he never showed. One who did show, inadvertently broke my nose and when he realized I was unfazed by the torrent of blood running down my face, decided it must matter more to me than to him, and walked away. In the long years since I have occasionally run into someone I knew back then, including people whom I would once have hated for their treatment of me. Turned out, it mattered a lot more to me than to pretty much any of them, and now it doesn’t matter to me at all, except as fodder for an article on bullying. Given how it all turns out, the overall memory is actually kind of pleasant. I got in trouble a lot. I bled a lot. I was humiliated and terrorized and sometimes feared grievous injury. And I outsmarted them, threw a scare into them, actually inflicted educational pain on them, and later became friends with them. These days I hear about how people long since grown up are still traumatized by what they went through in high school. Yeah, those nasty remarks about your shoes must have been terrible. The Columbine/Santee phenomenon isn’t caused by guns, nor is it caused by bullying. It’s caused by a national epidemic of inability to Get Over It.

DEMSPEAK: A Lexicon

Mon Mar 5, 2001 8:00 am by McGehee [Humor?] [My Two Cents]

Arms Race: Any real-dollars increase in U.S. defense spending. Big Government: Utopia. Constitution, Living: Whatever our judges say it is. Constitution, Strictly Construed: A black man is only three-fifths of a human being. Dangerously Low Levels of Federal Spending: The gross domestic product, minus one cent. Disaster: 1994. Disaster Relief: 1996 — uh, 1998 — uh, 2000 — uh… Draconian Budget Cut: A budget increase that is smaller than last year’s budget increase. Economy of the Last 50 Years, The Best: A Democrat is in the White House. Economy of the Last 50 Years, The Worst: A Republican is in the White House. Environmental Catastrophe Waiting to Happen: Freedom. Giveaway to the Rich: A tax cut. Greedy Special Interests: Anyone who wants their taxes cut. Gun Control: The government has the guns, and the control. Hate Crime: Republicans get their way, with help from their bigoted redneck supporters. Healthy Democracy: We get our way, with help from our bigoted elitist supporters. Impeachment: (In 1999): A bad idea. (In 2001): A good idea. Justice: We get our way, with help from intellectually engaged judges. Justice, Miscarriage of: The Republicans get their way, with help from ideologically rigid judges. Limited Government: Hell on earth. Necessary Social Programs: How we keep our constituency groups on the plantation. Partisan Rancor: Republicans get to say what they believe. Partisanship: Republicans get their way, with help from traitorous Democrats. Partisanship, Bi-: We get our way, with help from civic-spirited Republicans. Racist: A white Republican. Social Collapse Right Around the Corner: Freedom. Targeted Tax Cut: A transfer of money from taxpayers to non-taxpayers. Theft: Private ownership of anything. Uncle Tom: A black Republican. Unfair: We lose.

Page 1 of 18 pages  1 2 3 >  Last »