Author: Peter

by

Unforeseen Positive Effects of COVID-19


COVID-19 has interrupted our normal activities in ways no one could have seen. One of our most sacred institutions, church/temple/mosque, have closed leaving us to finding a service on-line or just relying upon our experience with our particular faith. Many people have been told to not leave their homes, which, except for bad snowstorms and hurricanes, you never see.

Americans are indeed freaked out about COVID-19. They have raided food stores the likes of which has never been seen in the U.S. And some of their favorite haunts have either been closed by order of the city or because the business’s owner simply cannot afford to support a small number of people using his services.

My wife, who works as the bursar for one of Boston’s major educational institutions, has been working from home for over a week now. And this work from home has reached into many businesses, who formally did not use telecommuting or used it sparingly, to have most of their workforce telecommute.

I have been working in public education for over 10 years now in the k-12 public schools. These schools have slowly been computerizing and now most, at least in my area, use something called “Google Classroom” regularly for their students. Teachers can transmit assignments and have them turned in via this method. But it has also shown the shortcoming in this type of education. Students can ask questions via email but this method can be very slow. What needs to happen, and maybe some school districts are figuring out, is how to have students join in on a teleconference. I have no doubt this will be accomplish, necessity always precedes invention.

Nationally, we are seeing how a disease that was literally on the opposite side of the globe can quickly find its way to our shores and spread at an unnerving speed. The shortcoming of our health system have become painfully obvious. Most, if not all, hospitals are simply not prepared for a pandemic. But they are learning what they need to do. Worse, our country fell flat on its face in having enough test kits and test facilities for those who are possibly or probably infected. That too is changing and is likely to remain changed.

But in that realm of public health there is one aspect for which we do not, yet, have a response. When the health providers themselves become sick and shortages of personnel arises, what then? There simply are not enough trained technicians to handle a large influx of people requiring respirators and someone to monitor them. I suspect this shortfall will be covered by cross educating other technicians in this field.

The most important thing COVID-19 has done for us is to make visible all our shortcomings and is forcing us to address them. This virus will pass into history eventually, they always do, but when this particular one does we will have a host of new data that should forever improve our health system, our food distribution systems, our working situations, and many other areas. And that is always a good thing.

by

My Peculiar (?) Version of Alcoholism


What follows is a true story and solely my experience. Alcoholism does not run in my family. My parents were not alcoholics, my sister isn’t, but I am not sure about my brother, probably not though. The only person in my extended family who definitely was one was my favorite cousin. And he was that long before I took my first drink.

Just a tiny bit of background. From a young age, my mother would allow me to take a sip of the wine she had set out for my father for when he got home from work. It was love at first sip and I sipped for many many years. I once heard a fellow share at a meeting that the legal age for drinking in South Boston was 12. He was joking, of course, but he was putting a date on the beginning of his drinking career and I have heard a lot of people put similar dates on their drinking careers. But for me, my first drink happened at age 19 at the Fort Wolters (TX) officers’ club. And it was not just one drink. That would have been too easy. No, I went through 23 drinks, all but one of the 7 and 7 variety. Needless to say I was blackout drunk. And a little later that evening I made a total fool out of myself back at the barracks where I managed to fall completely down the barracks stairs from the 2nd floor to the first and then tumble into the latrine there hitting my head hard on the concrete floor. A number of my mates rush to see if I hadn’t killed myself.

And that was the last drink I took until January of the following year, 1969. I was stationed in Korea in what was ostensibly a war zone. In those days Korea was a very lonely place for a person who did not make friends easily. I discovered a club called the USOM (United States Overseas Mission) Club. I don’t know what their mission was but it was there that I took up drinking straight shots of rum. A very fast, cheap, drunk that was. In those days it was rare that a military person had to pay more than 25 cents for a drink of hard alcohol. After $3 you could be really drunk. Many was the night I did exactly that.

As an aside, for now, I entered a contest called “The Miller Man Contest” whose first prize was R&R in Hawaii. I entered it and immediately forgot all about it.

When I returned to the U.S. in December 1969 I had no thought of drinking. My father died almost exactly one month later, January 24, 1970. A month later, while I was suffering from a particularly bad case of the flu, there came a knock at the side door. Upon answering it the man on the other side asked, “Where do you want it?”

“Where do I want what?”

“Twelve cases of Miller beer.” It seems I had won an alternate prize. Curiously, at that moment I did not care for beer and suddenly I had 12 cases of it! I did sell off over half of it but I also gain a taste for it. But there was no getting drunk. In fact, between then and October of that year, I barely had anything to drink at all. October 1970 is when I went back into the army and found myself stationed in Italy. I never drank every day in Italy but when I did, it was always for the same two reasons. I either wanted to escape reality or I wanted to feel sociable. In other words, I saw alcohol as medicine and that never changed.

There were only a couple of times in my entire drinking career where I drank a got drunk for more than a couple of days in a row. And those times were me drinking for a week solid. But then I’d stop. And I could stay stopped for a month. But put a little stress on me and I was looking for a drink to release the stress. It never occurred to me that stress relief would come via facing what was challenging me.

I cannot say I never drank in the morning, I did. I cannot say I never drove drunk, I did. But most importantly, I cannot say that my drinking only hurt me, it did not. Most importantly, it hurt what should have been healthy relationships, my wife, my daughters in particular.

In the final years, I had so many liquid lunches it was ridiculous! I had one half hour for lunch at work. My half hour started at about 11:30 and ended at 1, regularly. And I was always chasing that “buzz” which left me feeling good. But mostly I blew past the buzz and into another universe.

Finally, on July 3, 1998, I was out and about in Boston with my girlfriend. We started drinking about 11 and continued on. I can remember at the first place we stopped I ordered a beer, it was a hot and humid day, and I told the waitress that as soon as she went back to bring me a second beer because I would definitely be done with the first, and that is exactly what happened.

From there my girlfriend and I wandered down the Boston Esplanade to a place where we lay down in the grass and just took everything in. I actually sobered up. But when I got up I felt light headed. And when I started to walk, I found breathing a bit difficult. My girlfriend looked at me and told me that I literally looked gray. She thought it best we call an ambulance but I objected, saying that the Massachusetts General Hospital was so close that I could easily get there. Well, that meant I had to climb and cross this foot bridge over a busy thoroughfare to the hospital. It took all the will-power I could muster to make it over that bridge and then fall into the emergency room. It took the doctors fewer than 3 minutes to diagnose me with having a heart attack.

A doctor a little later came by me and said, “you have to stop drinking and drugging.” To which I replied, “but I don’t drink!” Alcoholics are really smart people who while drinking say incredibly dumb things. And there I was, instead of denying the drugs, which would have been the truth, I picked alcohol, which was the problem. It never occurred to me that this trained observer, this physician actually knew what he was seeing and talking about.

It wasn’t until later October that I found my way to Alcoholics Anonymous and had my last drink. I put my sober date at November 1, 1998 because I had no faith in myself that I could remember something like October 23 which was probably the last day.

But I was still not an alcoholic, in my mind. I went to meetings because they promised to make my life better if I would stay away from a drink a day at a time. I figured that was a fair trade and also, I was desperate. Even more, where step 2 of the 12 steps refers to a return to sanity, I knew I was crazy and if this 12-step program could stop the crazy in me, I was all in. And it actually took me a few years before I realized that I was truly an alcoholic.

Today, 21 years and 4 months later, my life is really good. I could still argue that I am not an alcoholic but to what end? The kindness, the wisdom, the friendship I found in all those meeting I went to are second only to the birth of my daughters. And without the meetings, saying I was still alive, it is doubtful I would have any of my daughters in my life today, or anyone else for that matter.

My story illustrates that you do not have to drink everyday to be an alcoholic. If you drink to be sociable, because otherwise you cannot, you might think about it. If you find yourself getting blackout drunk, you might want to think about it. If you find yourself waking up in strange places with no idea of how you got there, you might want to think about. If you think you are too young to be an alcoholic, think again. Were that true there would not be alcoholics anonymous meeting meant for young people, teenagers are regularly sighted at such meetings. And if what I have offered about is not enough,

If you are reading this and wondering if you are an alcoholic do this: make a vow to yourself that you will not drink for 90 consecutive days and that for each of those 90 days you will find an A.A. meeting, attend it, raise your hand a tell people what’s going on with you, and stay after the meeting to talk to members of the meeting. I promise you this, you will not regret it.

If you remain unconvinced, take a minute to take the test below which was developed by Johns Hopkins University.

20-Question Addiction Questionnaire John Hopkins
Johns Hopkins University developed the following self-test for identifying alcoholism and addiction. Please answer the questions as honestly as possible.

  1. Do you lose time from work due to drinking or drug use?
  2. Is drinking or drug use making your home life unhappy?
  3. Do you drink or use drugs because you are shy with other people?
  4. Is drinking or drug use affecting your reputation?
  5. Have you ever felt remorse after drinking or drug use?
  6. Have you gotten into financial difficulties as a result of your drinking or drug use?
  7. Do you turn to lower companions and an inferior environment when drinking or using drugs?
  8. Does your drinking or drug use make you careless of your family’s welfare?
  9. Has your ambition decreased since drinking or using drugs?
  10. Do you crave a drink or a drug at a definite time daily?
  11. Do you want a drink or drug the next morning?
  12. Does your drinking or drug use cause you to have difficulties in sleeping?
  13. Has your efficiency decreased since drinking or using drugs?
  14. Is your drinking or drug use jeopardizing your job or business?
  15. Do you drink or use drugs to escape from worries or troubles?
  16. Do you drink or use drugs alone?
  17. Have you ever had a complete loss of memory?
  18. Has your physician ever treated you for drinking or drug use?
  19. Do you drink or use drugs to build your self-confidence?
  20. Have you ever been in a hospital or institution on account of drinking or drug use?

If you answered “yes” to 3 questions, it suggests you probably have a drinking or drug problem.
If you answered “yes” to 4-7 questions, it suggests you may be in an early stage of alcoholism or drug addiction.
If you answered “yes” to 7-10 questions, it suggests you may be in the second stage of alcoholism or drug addiction.
If you answered “yes” to more than 10 questions, it suggests you may be in end-stage alcoholism or drug addiction.

by

Coronavirus and American Hysteria


It is a quiet Saturday morning. My wife got out of the house at 6AM to hit the grocery stores before the crowds did. She reported that paper products, meat, and cleaning products were totally absent. We laugh about it because there is just the two of us and we feel we’ll do just fine, even if one of us gets the virus.

Now for me getting the virus is, according to the CDC and NIH, a reason for great concern. I am 71 and have heart disease. I am in their “high risk” group. But why am I laughing about all this?

To start with, I am in excellent health. A recent stress test of my heart showed it to be in excellent shape. I survived chicken pox, measles and mumps. Remember, the was no vaccine for those diseases in the 1950s when I got them as a child. The only thing we got, twice, was the vaccine for polio.

In the US Army in 1969, I was stationed in Korea, north of Seoul, in what was an active war zone. At one point we were two hours from a large scale war breaking out. Did this immunize me to certain fears? Maybe.

The CDC estimates that about 50,000 people each year die from the flu or flu-like diseases. I would read into that that they get pneumonia. And there we are. Top doctors have told us that people over 60 being in the high risk group is no different than any flu season. The exact same rules apply. I got my flu shot last fall and got the flu anyway. Medicine is an extremely non-exact science. Much of it is best educated guess.

According to the U.S. Census bureau about 40 million Americans are over 60 years of age. And that is out of about 320 million Americans or about 12.5% of the total population. What all this means is the 40 million Americans over 60 plus those under 60 with what is referred to as “underlying health conditions” need truly to be worried.

The CDC has said that the high end projection of those Americans who could get the virus is about 50% of the total population. But that is just a guesstimate. The reality is that they just don’t know. And it is that “don’t know” portion of the equation that, I believe, has so many Americans in a tizzy.

It is projected that the high end mortality rate will be about 2% of those who contract the virus. But that’s about the same rate as with the annual flu. My wife and I discussed how we stand right now if both of us were to contract the virus and we believe we have enough food and other items to see it through. We have not done any special shopping, no extra sanitizers, no stockpile of toilet paper and paper towels, nothing out of the usual.

What Americans are not doing to sitting down and figuring out just how much toilet paper and towels they use on a daily basis. I believe had they done this, the run on such articles would have been much smaller. Where food is concerned, people can easily make soups and other freezable items that would take them through two weeks. My point being that a little prior planning would greatly reduce this panic buying that is presently going on.

It is my belief that this virus will peak sometime about mid-April in the U.S. and that it will not be anything close to what happened in China. Yes, this disease spreads almost unnervingly easily but we all already have the best protection against it, our immune systems.

by

American Education: Not For All Americans


After retiring from a nearly 40 year career in engineering and discovering how boring retirement can be, I decided to become a substitute teacher. From the very beginning I worked in an inner city school whose population is roughly 80% non-white. The kids were great and, even with a large number being declared “English Language Learners,” they were bright, conscientious and basically good kids.

From that school I went to an upper middle class town’s middle school, an education in contrasts for me. But earlier this year I returned to the school district where I started.

My wife is the bursar at one of Boston’s colleges and so we each have a lot of experience in education. This morning, a Sunday, while reading the newspapers, the Boston Globe and New York Times, the plight of the poor was brought to light in both newspapers. Simply put, too many of our schools are profiling schools to weed out the “undesirables,” or are pricing themselves out of a family’s ability to pay for education.

In the public sector of Massachusetts education there are three forces at work: 1) general public education, 2) charter schools and 3) vocational-technical high schools. The charter schools, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education, offer an alternative education for high performing student. The most notable problem with this system is that its funding comes from the same pool of money the city or town gets for its educational programs. Such schools can syphon off a disproportionate amount of money. That is, the per student cost of the charter school can be higher than then rest of the schools in the system.

Finally there are the vocational-technical high schools. At one time these schools were a haven for student who did not excel under the general educational model but who could do well in an atmosphere where they received training for a well-paying vocation. But because of their excellence the demand for seats in these schools has risen greatly allowing the schools to cherry pick who they would admit. In one case, highlighted in the March 8 Boston Globe, a girl was denied admission because of a single incident of fighting years before. Today she has a GED and no real hopes.

I have learned over many years that an entirely unique situation is rare. That said, it is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, Massachusetts Vocational Technical schools are cherry picking their students. That needs to change. The obvious answer, though an expensive one, is to increase the number of seats available. But there is another way which costs nothing: needs based. That is, children who come from the poorest families are admitted first.

Next is the higher educational schools. Recent trends from the Federal Government combined with rising costs of education, have priced out highly qualified candidates for college because they come from very poor families. It is rare that all college expenses are covered by scholarships. The only remaining “free” money is from the Pell Grant which amounts to about $6,000 based on needs. When you consider the average four year college education can cost $250 thousand or more, that a person carries more than $100 thousand in debt upon graduation is not unusual. That amount of debt can cost a person $800 a month in payments, which for those occupying entry level positions, can be overwhelming.

The United States trails many countries in its approach to financing education. One solution is to increase the Pell Grant maximum to the average cost of tuition and board on a prorated needs based metric.

We are the richest nation in the world so why do we trail so much of the world in our educational approach? We must re-evaluate our priority and come to terms with the long known fact that the solution to poverty is education.

by

What is AMTRAK’s Future?


AMTRAK was formed in the 1970s to take over the nation’s private railroad’s passenger network. For years those railroads had been unable to make a profit on most, if not all, of their passenger routes. It is worth noting that America was one of the few countries world wide that still had privately run passenger service.

Support for AMTRAK has been weak since its inception. Many senators and representatives from states that were either marginally served or not served at all wanted to end AMTRAK entirely. It has been recognized since AMTRAK’s inception that certain routes would pay for themselves and make a profit as well. One such route is referred to as the Northeast Corridor, Boston to Washington D.C. The trains on this route typically run at or near capacity. But the same could not be said of the long distance trains even though these trains frequently ran full. The problem was simple, in order to break even the fare charged would have been exorbitant. And some routes were eliminated for this reason, Chicago to Los Angeles via Denver and Las Vegas. Denver to Portland Oregon. Chicago to Miami are among those eliminated.

The first, and probably the most important issue, is how we and Washington DC view AMTRAK. Instead of viewing AMTRAK as a national necessity, as happens in Europe and Asia, it is viewed as an unnecessary luxury. Our national psyche desperately needs to change its view so that in falls in line with the rest of the world.

The second problem is the AMTRAK footprint and level of service needs to be expanded. Such an expansion would initially cost in the billions of dollars but in a budget that is in the trillions of dollars our lawmakers can surely figure out how to get it done. What they now see as a luxury will in the next 20 years become a necessity as the price of long distance travel rises to levels 4 and 5 times what it is today.

Fuel prices are the variable that sets the price for all forms of travel. Through fracking the U.S. has been able to extract oil from old fields that had been considered dry. But such extraction is very limited. This sort of oil extraction will soon be on the decline which means at the same time the U.S. will again be reliant on oil from foreign countries. We are a decade away from $5 per gallon gasoline prices. Airline fuel prices will also rise at the same rate or more. When that happens air travel will become prohibitively expensive for those people who can only fly once a year or less.

Rail travel will become the most cost effective way of moving people and goods from one point to another. But for AMTRAK to be a truly effective railroad, it must serve all large and medium size cities in the U.S. Presently it does not come even close to this but now it the time to act. The longer America waits to enact such travel, the more expensive it will become.

Simply put, AMTRAK must now become a national necessity and it is up to the public to demand service to their city that has no service or to demand a level of service that meets their travel requirement.

by

The Perfect Democrat Candidate


Like everyone in America, I have a certain bias towards one of the many Democrats running for President right now. But to start with, I think the perfect Democrat candidate would have the following on his/her resume’: be a veteran, have held a political office either for a long time or where a large number of people were his constituency, has no skeletons in his closet or other characteristics that Donald Trump can use as a cudgel, and someone who speaks well and can hold his own in a debate. Additionally, the ideal candidate will be between 40 and 56.

There is no one now running who has all those characteristics. There are two veterans among them, Pete Buttigieg, and Tulsi Gabbard. Each of these candidates have a problem which Trump will, even improperly, use against them. Ms. Gabbard lacks name recognition and her views are largely unknown. Mr. Buttigieg is gay and as disgusting as it is, Trump will use that to whip up the prejudices of those who either do not like gays or who have a religious complaint. That, in my opinion, puts them in a poor position to win.

Tom Steyer has a great message but no government experience. For going on four years now, we have seen what someone with no governmental experience can do and that is unacceptable. The same applies to Andrew Yang.

Bernie Sanders has a good message but by describing himself as a democratic socialist makes him easy canon fodder for any Republican who feels like calling him a Communist regardless of the lack of truth. Most Americans do not understand the difference between socialism and communism. As an aside, this country has had socialist representatives.

Elizabeth Warren is faring poorly in a state adjacent to her own, New Hampshire to Massachusetts, where traditionally candidates do well. Not only is this a sign of her being unelectable but highlights a public view of her as being an intellectual elitist. She also tends to be “preachy” which most Americans find condescending.

Joe Biden is burdened with the Ukrainian controversy even though there is no truth to it. Trump has never had a problem promoting a falsehood to whomever will listen and for Biden, he can expect that to continue. In my opinion, when speaking, Biden does not come across as someone who inspires confidence.

This leaves us, basically, with Amy Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg. I like both of these candidates. Amy is both a veteran and a U.S. Senator which checks off two of the important boxes. She is 59, slightly older but still at a younger age than her male rivals. I think her problem is simply one of name recognition and her positions.

I think Mike Bloomberg is easily the most electable of all the candidates. To start with, as Mayor of New York City, were New York City a state of its own, he would have headed the 11th most populous state in the union. He also had an extremely impressive business background having come from a middle class family to the highly success multi-billionaire he is today. Bloomberg is a very good speaker who would easily hold his own against a Trump onslaught. And finally, he has made his positions very well-known. His only downside is his age and his, thus far, inability to connect with the youth of the nation. Still, I do believe that Mike Bloomberg would win the presidency in a landslide.

by

We Baby Boomers Failed Our Children


I cannot say I remember the 1960s and 70s like they were yesterday but I certainly remember them well enough. Those we years of turmoil as our nation was transformed from that of our parents, the great depression, World War 2 and Korean War. They were the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” generation. And Tom Brokaw later described them as the “Greatest Generation” although I have reservations about that, I am also not about to dispute it.

As children of the “duck and cover” generation, always fearing the Russians (the USSR) was going to drop a nuclear bomb on us, we suffered through monthly drills and air raid sirens. We also were witness to the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States altered so that it now contains the phrase “under God.”

By the time we were old enough to see what was going on around us and digest it, we knew we did not like what we saw. The first thing to show itself was racial inequality. A group called the “Black Panthers” emerged whose mission was to protect the black neighborhoods from the all white police and others who felt it their mission to keep the black man in his place and if that meant cracking a few skulls, so be it.

At the same time Martin Luther King was forming peaceful marches to protest segregation even though the Federal Courts had outlawed such things in 1954, it persisted in the south where “Jim Crow” rules still dominated the cityscape and rural areas as well.

By 1965 the Vietnam War was beginning to ramp up to its height in 1969 and 1970. College students questioned the government’s reasons for our fighting such a war in the first place. They had rightly seen such an act as one of Imperialism which the North Vietnamese had been shouting for decades, going back to when the French were the occupying country.

The mid-60s also saw the rise of the women’s rights movement. Women were fighting both to throw off the yoke of government control of their bodies, birth control and abortion, as well as equal pay for equal work. They tried in vain to get an Equal Rights Amendment added to our Constitution. The argument from those opposed was the old refrain that there were laws in place which guaranteed their right to equal pay.

Then, finally, there were the hippies who found their leader in the former Yale Professor Dr. Timothy Leary. Leary extolled the virtues to using LSD even though he logic was without merit, he more importantly brought into public view a group of people who wanted to dress as they pleased, have sex as they pleased, and live however they pleased without being condemned by society.

For each of the above movements, and others I have not mention, partial success was achieved. In 1973 the US Supreme Court ruled abortion both legal and the right of every woman to decide. This also included birth control which women had been fighting for since the early 1900s when Margaret Sanger in New York City set up the first women’s health clinics in the lower east side of that community. For efforts she was shunned for her activities, even though she was a trained nurse, and then jailed for sending birth control literature through the mail and finally run out of the country in the late 19teens. Seventy years of struggle is now under attack as states have gotten the Federal Government to stop funding of Planned Parenthood and at least two large states, Texas and Missouri, have limited the number of Planned Parenthood in each state to one.

As for equal pay, women still only get about 75 cents on the dollar for doing the exactly same job at the exact same level as men.

Where people of color are concerned, they are part of the lowest income per capita in the U.S. and, of course, among the least educated and therefor the most incarcerated. Prison populations frequently approach 50% a black population in spite of there being 13% of the total U.S. population. They are still under attack by the white population.

Our imperialistic tendencies appeared once again in 2002 when President Bush declared war on Iraq under the false premise that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They knew going in, however, that he did not but they felt he was part of a grand conspiracy with Al Qaeda to attack the U.S. There was no proof to support such a supposition.

And during the decades of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, it was the baby boomers who were in the halls of congress, in the board rooms, and in positions of great influence. It was our responsibility to continue and improve upon the changes and challenges which began in the 1960s and 70s.

But as I, a member of the baby boomers, look back over those decades I can only conclude that we have failed the succeeding generations, the Gen X’ers, the Millennials, and the Gen Z’ers. Our legacy to them is a failing health system, out of control global warming, poor distribution of the nation’s wealth, and an attack of women’s reproductive rights that we should have foreseen and been ready to beat back. We did neither.

And worst of all, children in schools today, even though their numbers a far fewer than the baby boomers, are going to overcrowded crowded classroom headed by underpaid teachers, and sometime under-educated.

It is now up to Gen X and the Millennials to right our wrongs, to re-energize movements started in the 60s to meet the demands of today’s society and to secure the future to our children and our grandchildren.

by

The U.S. Senate’s Abdication of Responsibility


It is Sunday, January 26, 2020 and President Trump’s legal counsel has finished its opening remarks. I cannot help but wonder why they even bothered? Ah! The old magician’s trick of sleight of hand. They know full well that their client is guilty as charged but they are thinking in terms of his winning the next election and not of discrediting the House Managers’ case as put forth. They are simply deflecting and trying to confuse the American public by offering facts that have virtually nothing to do with the case at hand. And you should expect more of the same come Monday and Tuesday.

To their shame, Republican Senators have announced, in so many words, that they are part of the President’s defense team. They are going to vote to acquit regardless of how compelling a case for removal is put forth. And the House Managers knew this before the Senate hearings even began. So why do they persist?

In 1999 the case against President Bill Clinton was on a single charge, lying to Congress. And the Senate, then as now, rather evenly split between parties, came within one vote of removing him! What was the lie? He told Congress that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. The right move at that moment in history was to censure Clinton but not to remove him. They probably would have gotten enough votes for censure! Clinton took advantage of an all too willing Lewinsky and the Republicans that it unseeming but a “high crimes and misdemeanors?” Not even close.

The most damning charge against President Trump is his obstruction of Congress charge which the Federal Circuit Court in D.C. has already ruled to be true. Republicans do not like that decision and have appealed the ruling which will probably be affirmed and they then will push it into a very conservative U.S. Supreme Court counting on the justices to overturn the lower court’s ruling. Should that come to pass, and it will likely take two years time for that court’s ruling, then our democratic republic is compromised. The Constitution’s checks and balances between the three branches of government will no longer exist. With the Constitution compromised, our republic could fail.

The world has a lot of democratic governments but ours stands alone with each branch keeping the other two in check. The President can, for example, veto a bill that he does not believe is in the best interest of the country. That bill must then be passed by a 2/3rds majority of Congress to become law. The U.S. Supreme Court can hear cases where the constitutionality of a law is challenged. That happened in the 1990s when Congress approved the President’s right to do a “line item veto” in the nation’s annual budget. The U.S. S.J.C. overruled Congress saying that it was indeed unconstitutional. The Congress has the right to subpoena persons and records from any agency in the executive branch it deems it needs when it finds an executive decision to be questionable. But the President refused flatly to allow for either and was therefor put in “contempt of Congress,” a felony under both statute law and the Constitution.

Republicans know full well that Trump is barred from ignoring a subpoena as ruled by the U.S. S.J.C. in previous filings and as born out by the Nixon and Reagan investigations.

If senate Republicans allow Trump to be victorious, then all future presidents can simply point to this point in time and claim it is within their right to do as they wish. That of course creates an imbalance of power, an anathema to what those who wrote the constitution had in mind.

There are always those who, regardless of the strength of facts presented, will vote to acquit. But to know at this juncture that a 53-47 final vote of removal will occur is about as disgusting a turn of events as can happen. Can you imagine a serial killer who demands a bench trial (a trial where there is only the judge to decide an accused’s fate), who happens to be a beautiful woman, is found innocent because the judge liked how she looked? That is exactly what is happening now because, even though this does not look like a courthouse, there are 100 judges in attendance and 53 of them simply like how President Trump looks.

This will certainly be a travesty of justice and we will be the worse for it.

by

As Teenagers Look Towards Their Future


I teach in a fabulous school system, Lexington, MA., though I am just a substitute teacher. I take my job very seriously and try to add to each student’s experience. The two things I most frequently do is to remind them of the tremendous opportunity afforded them in Lexington Public Schools, one of the best in the state. But I also try to reinforce in them that they are both intelligent and up to the task in front of them. Most recently a young man who was struggling with a classroom project kept calling himself “stupid.” I did my best to assure him that he is not stupid, that some things do not come as quickly to one student as another. I told him that at his age I was just such a student.

But I write this article because of an 8th grader, a very bright young lady, whom I have been mentoring for the last several months. She took the time to show me some of her writings which I found to be both well-written and thought provoking. She is obviously a young lady who grasps concepts far beyond her 14 years on this planet. But one of her most important questions to me, in general terms, is “why are things the way they are?” As someone who possess a Masters in History, I encouraged her to look backwards at least 100 years and, in time, I will encourage her to look back further.

What concerned me most about her question, though, was its inherent fear of a questionable future. I spoke to her briefly about my generation’s efforts to change society for the better, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I did not go deeply into it, not because I doubted her ability to understand my generation, but because context is required and so I gave her an assignment to look at women who were improving their lot in the late 19th and early 20th century. I explained her that to understand where you are, you must know from where you came. I narrowed that to include only women so that gender identity, her own, would focus her thoughts on certain historical facts about women, suffragettes, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Jane Addams, Lucy Stone and other women who found their niche and worked hard to improve the lot of women of their day.

It concerns me that any student should fear for their future but, considering the times in which we live, it is quite understandable. Today’s youth is bombarded with negative news, the prospect of uncontrollable climate change, political upheaval, losing the “American Dream,” among many other things.

I see it as my generation’s imperative to encourage young people to become involved with changes that will brighten their future. We need to encourage young people in their 20s and 30s to become politically involved. We need them to become outspoken critics of the status quo and to be instruments of change. My generation helped bring about many changes but we forgot to pass the idea of continuing change to our children. And so it is time for our children’s children to take over, to be the ones who define their future, and to reject any idea which runs contrary to their own well-being.

by

The Arrogance of the Democratic Party


For most of my life I was a registered Democrat but some years ago, having become disillusioned with the party, I registered as an Independent and remain that way. I have always been a moderate as I have fully embraced some of the old values of conservatives. I say “old” because in recent years they seem to have abandoned them. I am thinking of the military when I say that.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, 65 million to 63 million, but lost in the electoral college. Her arrogance doomed her as she took it for granted that she would win states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, with a good shot at Ohio. She won none of them. Why? She decided her campaign time was better spent in other states.

Until recently, there was not a single Democrat who I could get behind. Part of it is pragmatism and part of it is being unable to embrace the central idea of their campaign.

I like Elizabeth Warren very much, but for a brilliant person who has been an excellent senator for my state, when it comes to speaking in Presidential terms it’s like she trying to learn on the fly public speaking. Her logic is lacking and her message is muddled. I think Ms. Warren has far more to offer and will garner more power as a Senator than she can offer as a president.

Joe Biden has skeletons, maybe not of his own making, but which will be his undoing in running for President. And like Warren, his message is muddled.

I love Bernie Sanders for his energy and his ability to draw young people to his causes. But Bernie is simply too far to the left and too old. In fact, all three of these candidates, I consider to be too old. It’s time for young blood but my choice candidate will not support that position, unfortunately.

I do love Tom Steyer’s message, but with no government experience he would be a poor choice for many reasons. We’ve endured a three year disaster with a President who had not government experience, we certain do not need another which therefor applies to Andrew Yang. Should a Democrat win the Presidency, Mr. Yang would be a great candidate for some cabinet post as would Pete Buttigieg, because, and I hate saying this, America will not at this time elect a gay President.

That leaves me with former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. My supporting him blows my age argument totally out of the water because by the time he is sworn in he will be 78 and shortly after that will turn 79. But Mr. Bloomberg is kind of an odd duck in that he served New York City as a Republican. Prior to being mayor and since October 2018, he is a Democrat. Mr. Bloomberg served 12 years as New York’s mayor. This is very significant because only 10 states have more people than New York City. That puts him on a par with 40 state governors.

Bloomberg came from a family of meager means and so he put himself through Johns Hopkins University and then through the Harvard Business School where he earn his MBA. He join Solomon Brothers Financial where he worked his way up to become a partner. His present worth is estimated to be $56 billion, entirely self-made.

One thing you never hear from him is that he is a noted philanthropist. He understands that a good man knows to give back what was given him. He has given away an estimated $8 billion.

Even the little I have heard from Mr. Bloomberg has always been logical and made a lot of sense, something I cannot say of any of the other candidates. I do hope he wins the party’s nomination because he seems to lack the arrogance that many of the others in the field have.