Bush gave Christmas present to lesbians and gays?

I noticed a Minnesota Independent post yesterday afternoon which said that on December 23 President Bush had signed legislation which makes it mandatory for businesses to roll over retirement benefits to a same-sex partner in the event of the employee’s death.

 

It seemed so basically fair, but also out of character for the 43^rd president, so aberrant that I looked for articles elsewhere to verify it.

 

A further search this morning revealed two more articles saying the same thing, but they [Colorado Independent and New Mexico Independent] are part of the same company.  I have not yet found anything from other sources to verify this story, but if it is true we can wonder about a few things.

 

Does W actually read what he signs?

Does he actually want to change his legacy as he vanishes from office.

Was it [to him] just such a small enough piece of the Worker, Retiree and Employer Recovery Act of 2008 that he didn’t think it important enough to get excited about?

If this language was in the bill, who got it in?  and was it snuck in or done up front?  And how many traditional gay bashers knew it was there when they voted for it?

Also

http://newmexicoindependent.com/13571/george-w-bush-gay-rights-champion

http://coloradoindependent.com/18531/bush-signs-law-requiring-same-sex-couples-to-enjoy-retirement-tax-break

Making life easier, one job at a time

The Pioneer Press has quit publishing two news sections on Monday and Tuesday for some time.  David Brauer of MinnPost reports that the Star Tribune will start doing the same on Mondays.

Well, I suppose the news that will remain will be that it is good news for the backs of those who deliver the rags.

What's up at Hillcrest?

I was recently by the HIllcrest Shopping Center.  It looks half empty.  Does anybody know what’s up?

We are starting to see higher than usual retail vacancies in other neighborhoods too, so this would look especially challenging for property managemers and neighbors.

Our growing religious stewpot

Last month I was at a Baptist funeral at which a rabbi sang “Eagle’s Wings.”  That seemed strange.

 

At an event I was at earlier today somebody mentioned that it was a sign of the times that we were having such a hard time deciding which Jewish man with a Catholic wife should be our senator, that a previous generation would never have given either much hope.

 

As one who remembers when back in the pre-Vatican II days when my Catholic neighbors were told by the sisters at their school that they shouldn’t even go into a nearby Protestant church for a non-Sunday, community event and heard similar cautions mentioned by Protestants about Catholic campuses, events like these do indeed make it seem like we are making progress in tolerance.

 

But I just noticed a post from a Muslim woman in the Washington Post’s and Newsweek’s On Faith which outdoes that all.  It describes a Muslim event at which Rick Warren, Obama’s invocator, spoke and Melissa Etheridge sang.

 

To quote Yakov Smirnov, “What a country!”

Pat Flahaven is retiring

It has been reported before but Doug Grow reminds us that Pat Flahaven is retiring as secretary to the Minnesota Senate.  He has done the job for 36 years and is certainly entitled to retire, but it will indeed mark a transition in the operations of our state. 

I wish him well. 

I first saw Pat Flahaven from the visitors’ gallery of the Minnesota Senate in 1971.  The first few days of that session were good theater and just the kind of thing that would interest a young person interested in public affairs.  Secretary to the Senate is a position which is generally invisible to the general public but very visible when one is in the chamber or the gallery and the young, clean-shaved man who seemed to be an up-and-comer headed for greater and higher things, looked very comfortable in the position.  In 1971, Pat Flahaven had just been chosen for the position, on a 34-33 vote.  He only held it for a few days before the Minnesota Supreme Court on a straight party-line vote removed the DFL majority. 

Two years later, after 114 years of statehood, the GOP finally relinquished control of the Senate, the DFL winning too many seats for even the most partisan of courts to take away and Pat Flahaven moved back to the post he has held since. 

I have not spoken to the man in many years and never knew him well, but have to note that comments made from many from both parties as he approaches this retirement are all favorable. 

And it is going to take two people to replace him.  Especially in this time of economic downturn in both public and private sectors, that is in itself an especially good commentary. 

Marty in 2010?

Joe Kimball suggests that John Marty wants to run for governor.

Question 1.  What do Warren Spannaus, John Marty, Mike Freeman, Don Moe, and Mike Hatch have in common? Answer: They were all chosen by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to be its choice for governor.

Question 2.  How did Governors Spannaus, Marty, Freemsn, Moe, and Hatch do?  Answer:  It's a  trick question.  None were ever governor.

It is a cold and hard fact that in this alleged blue state that the last time the DFL was able to endorse and elect non-incumbent governor was in 1970 when they chose State Senator Wendell Anderson. To put this into perspective that was in the middle of Richard Nixon’s first term while Saint Paul had its Supermayor, Bill Rigney had brought the Twins to their second consecutive American League West championship [and the Designated Hitter rule was still two years away], just a few months after the Apollo 13 adventure, and twenty years before this year’s youngest voters were born. [For that matter, it was in that same 1970 election that Minnesota voters approved a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to nineteen.]

Question 3.  Which of the men mentioned above lost the worst? Answer:  You could make a case that it was Freeman who managed to lose 2 to 1 to a Republican that the GOP had not supported, either in that election or the one previous.

Question 4. Can the DFL learn to pick better?  Answer:  I really do not know, but I guess Senator Marty thinks they won’t.

Coming to a UHF channel near you

Joe Kimball of MinnPost notes a forthcoming KTCI documentary. His opening may seem a little smug, but it seems right.

A television documentary on Minnesota's progressive Republican tradition will air Dec. 20 on TPT-Channel 17.

It's obviously a history project.

Link to the full article

Brother, can you spare a few billion?

The song, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” is a relic from a previous economic down time when a man who used to run a railroad is now looking for a handout.

We have changed our transportation from railroads to automobiles and a dime just doesn’t go as far as it used to, so now we are being asked spare a few billion.

I admit that I don’t understand all the bail out or not to bail out discussion that we have had the last few months. The subject matter is deep and somehow there is an air of extortion hanging over the whole topic.

But we need to remember that, while banks and insurance companies may sometimes provide useful or necessary services, that they don’t actually make a blasted thing. But we bailed them out.

So maybe it is not all my fault that I am a bit confused when I note that bailing out somebody who actually makes something, like automobile manufacturers, is suddenly so controversial.

Could it be that the money classes of our society do not respect sweat-of-the-brow laborers who might be union members and tilt a bit toward the Democrats , preferring instead to help out the people who sit in air conditioning and tilt toward the GOP?

Thune recall

Apparently, Dave Thune has become so scared of a possible recall effort that he is fundraising to fight it.

I am not in a position to evaluate the credibility of the fear, but do have to wonder how one could justify recalling the man.

David Thune did enough evil in his last term to justify recalling him then and to justify nobody ever voting for him again ever, but it seems that recall was intended as a way for voters to address things which have happened since the voters cast their most recent judgment.

Admittedly, he has not been the most conciliatory to those who were so anxious to have the GOP convention here that they could not realize that there would be public safety vs. free speech concerns, but that hardly seems grounds for recall.

Of course, there will always be reasons not to vote for the man. As Shakespeare’s Marc Antony reminded us, “The evil that man does lives . . .”

Let George do it

George Johnson was to be honored Wednesday night at District 2 Community Council’s December Board meeting/ Holiday Party. I was unable to be there, but assume that it all went well. I do know that our city council voted that day to honor him and I am assuming that Councilmember Bostrom was on hand at D2’s festivities to relay that commendation.

I first met George Johnson during the summer of 1988. District cleanups were new then, having been city funded in 1987 for the first time and still being funded as one-time-only events. I was the president of Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council then and the late Paul Gilliland, who held the similar position for District 2 suggested to me that perhaps we hold a joint cleanup at the now-gone Phalen Shopping Center. In the course of planning the joint cleanup he introduced me to a hydrologist named George Johnson who was the chairperson of his board’s committee which was planning the cleanup and who had the idea of working with Ramsey County and combing the joint cleanup with a hazardous waste cleanup. I immediately sensed by what seemed to be his true-believer approach to the matter.

That cleanup went well, too well really. The cleanup drew traffic lined up on Johnson Parkway back onto Seventh Street almost to White Bear Avenue. The Police Department had to do significant reassignments to handle the thing. Fortunately, both districts managed to get enough volunteers to work the event. For some of the volunteers finishing up did not come until dusk. I don’t remember the exact numbers of how many came or how much was collected, but I doubt if the numbers have ever been really topped. And I remember George Johnson, moving about confidently and unflustered as crisis after crisis [or what we thought were crises at the time] came about.

[There were others whose deep involvement in this effort merit commendation, including Mr. Gilliland and District Five’s counterpart to Mr. Johnson, Roger Hallman, but this is a post about George Johnson.]

That was twenty years ago. Cleanups have gone on since and District Councils have started to think of them as entitlements and city staff to think of them as a comparably inexpensive technique for removal of junk. George Johnson has been organizing his district’s cleanup every year and sometimes even advising and/or helping out at others. Several years ago when District Five was undergoing a staff change and temporary shorthandedness, he helped us do ours.

George’s cleanup work was specifically cited in the City Council action Wednesday. But a full accounting of his contributions should include mention of his other contributions. I don’t know them all, but I feel that I should mention some of what I know.

He has served on the Board of Directors for District 2 for [as far as I aware] the entire time since shortly before that 1988 cleanup, serving as its president for a few months in 1990. [Full disclosure statement: I was a D2 employee at that time so he was my supervisor then.] He also has served for many years on the Saint Paul Planning Commission, including a spell [2004-2006?] as its Chairperson. He succeeded his wife on that commission.

And somehow as he has done all this he has raised a couple of sons and maintained a house and kept employment and all the other things that other people do.

The City Council praises several people each year this way. There are many people who deserve such commendation and they get some of them. There is a certain “hit-or-miss” factor involved in this, but this commendation seems well in order and I wish to add my own praise also.

FYI: 1006 Summit

The last time I was in the Governor’s mansion was in 1974 when Wendell Anderson was governor where with about 100 other people. I had a light supper and talked with a lot of other people who were [or thought they were] some of the movers and shakers of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party and/or the state of Minnesota.

I don’t know when or if I will ever get back to that building, but I will pass on that the mansion will be open for public tours [with no apparent political connection required] on the first three December Thursdays, from 1 to 3 in the afternoons.

The real secret ballot question

The generous and benevolent people who run the country’s companies [aka management] went to a lot of effort to see that we learned of the need for employees to have secret ballots in union organizing endeavors. There were labor and DFL types who did not agree that such a secret ballot was in peril.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the attempts of Marty Seifert and others [mainly Republicans] to demand photo identification for voting, noting the likely inherent pro-GOP such a disenfranchisement might bring about.

However I noted then that I would be posting about a possible source of abuse which practices now encouraged by DFLers and Democrats have come to embrace. That practice is absentee voting.

Only a ballot which has never been out of the presence of two or more judges of different parties can be really considered to have an assurance of privacy. When you get to a voting station on election day [or at an early voting location] two or more judges of different party give you your ballot which has been examined and initialed by two or more judges of different party and you take it to a booth and fill it out. You place the completed ballot into a secrecy folder and insert it into the counter yourself. If the machine is not working there are procedures established to place it into a sealed compartment where judges, again from different parties, will process it and others similarly placed there when the gizmo is working again.

After the machine prints its totals in the evening, the ballots are removed, sealed, and sent to an election office always in the presence of two or more judges of different parties.

There may be an occasional screw up but these are few and can happen with absentee ballots too.

What makes most absentee ballots [there are exceptions such as when judges take ballots to hospitals or nursing homes] so vulnerable to attacks on its privacy is clearly that any ballot spends a good amount of time out of the custody of the election judges and officials.

Back to the comment on union elections: Remember the campaign spot which showed somebody who was designed to bring to mind a gangster-type union official welcoming a poor voter in to vote? Just imagine how that could work out when it is just you the voter, your boss and a piece of paper. And if a boss is not intimidating, what about a spouse? or a mother-in-law? or your clergyperson? or whoever strikes terror in you?

Before this year’s election there was concern about the “Bradley factor,” the idea that people might profess tolerance but not carry it out in the ballot box. Can we speculate what might happen if the guys at the lodge decided to have a “ballot party”?

Maybe we should eliminate absentee voting or at least limit it to the most extreme circumstances [e.g., military, public officials whose jobs put them elsewhere]. If people think this unfair, maybe we could make early voting more common.

No picture, no vote?

The closeness of the Coleman-Franken election has prompted Marty Seifert to come out with another attempt to require producing photo identification as a qualification to vote. A Minnpost article by Marisa Helms [which also addresses other election matters] notes that Seifert and the House GOP consider the matter high-priority and says that his caucus will “push the envelope” for this “simple reform.”

Of course, the fact that this requirement would be so simple and would be hardest on people who are less affluent and who move with the most frequency would certainly not be in the mind of somebody as fair-minded as Mr. Seifert. I am certain that he would consider this pure coincidence.

He also notes that one has to show an ID to get on an airplane or buy a beer. While I am not sure that I agree with that even that amount of personal invasion, it should be noted that traveling and drinking and participating in our civic, governmental processes are different things and rally cannot be compared. We have no law now which requires the possession of identification and we should all be concerned that as we demand photo identification for ever more things that we are approaching the time when we will find ourselves having to carry internal passports, something the libertarian faction of any party must shudder about.

It should be noted that until about a quarter century ago that a voter’s registration card was present at each precinct and the judges had the opportunity to check the voter’s signature with the signature on the card. I do not know why that safeguard was ceased and I know that if used that it would likely have different results than photo ID, but it seems that it could address some of Seifert’s concerns and not require the presentation of the ID card.

But we know that everybody’s concerns about fairness in election depends on perspective.

There will be another post soon on one of the possible sources for abuse that DFL people seem to like.

Earlier posts on Marty Seifert can be seen by clicking the label "Marty Seifert." Two posts of interest are

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2008/03/well-now-we-know-how-much-time.html [3/3/08]

and

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2008/03/rosario-seifert-is-sir-punisher.html [3/10/08]

Can we hold back on the posturing and just get them counted?

Pat Kessler of WCCO television has noted that Norm Coleman gained more over Walter Mondale when the final numbers came in six years ago than Al Franken has gained on Norm this year, but nobody really noticed or cared. But this kind of difference is close enough that it makes Norm uneasy and causes him and his attorneys to carp daily and keeps Franken’s hopes alive for a while. I do not doubt that if the numbers were working the other way around that Franken would posture similarly.

We may find votes which did not register because people did not mark ballots correctly. Our election laws do not require that ballots be marked for the convenience of optical scanner, their inventors, or users. They require that the best effort be made to determine the voter’s intention.

Properly counting these votes may produce some interesting results in a race this close, but the law neither requires that the voter be smart enough to follow instructions nor that they be conformist enough to fill out the ovals. [Not everybody did well at coloring within the lines when a child.]

And it may be that there may be enough of these ballots to make a difference. Democracy is not always pretty.

November 11

1ovember 11 brings to mind that life is dangerous. If we don’t create havoc to ourselves, nature may to it to us.

Last year on this date, I posted on both Veterans’ Day and the Armistice Day blizzard. Nothing much has changed.

The links are

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/11/veterans-day-observations.html

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/11/armistice-day-blizzard.html

Be smarter than the man [woman] you vote for?

I won’t go into how much life follows fiction, but I am remembering that on an old Red Skelton sketch from 1960 Red’s Clem Kadiddlehopper character who was portrayed as a dumb bumpkin got discovered and became an overnight political sensation as the country got swept up in the slogan, “Be smarter than the man you vote for.”

I am catching up on some articles which I was not seeing for a while and have noticed one from C. Ford Runge in MinnPost on a while back in which he pans what he perceives as Governor Palin’s anti-elitism.

He states that the Alaska governor has established a new standard in American politics: "dumb as me"

Intellectuals have been bewailing anti-intellectualism in politics for as long as it has been around. They sometimes are correct. And it seems that you cannot ever go wrong attacking the elite, although we do not always agree on who the elite actually are.

Intellectuals often feel superior by what they know and the dumb as me folks refuse to become intimidated by them [an attitude which can be confused as a reaction to an intimidation].

But both sides and the rest of us need to remember that we need to have open minds when we look at public affairs regardless of which side we are on.

Perhaps Runge’s article might be a place to start thinking of some of this. And, then again, it may just be a piece of gobbledegook.

Do we always know who we are voting for?

We often don’t hear about who runs for or gets elected to the position of supervisor for Ramsey County Soil and Water Conservation District. Nobody knows what they do or who is running or why we should be voting for them.

Four years ago, a very qualified Marj Ebensteiner was unseated, likely because so many new voters brought in by DFL registration efforts connected her somehow to the state GOP’s leader whose name was Eibensteiner and/or were swayed by the Scandinavian name of the victor. The fact that Ms. Ebensteiner had very clear and historic DFL identification evaded them.

This year the recently-deposed Maplewood City Manager Greg Copeland sought the position. I voted for him because I thought he could make the District visible and maybe even interesting. But he lost. It wasn’t even especially close and I have not seen a precinct-by-precinct breakdown, but it would be interesting to know how much he carried/lost Maplewood by.

And this year’s winner was named “Humphrey.”

Interesting?

Should prosecutors and sheriffs choose judges?

There may be several small posts in the next few days dealing with post-election and post-campaign matters. There is not shortage of places to read pontifications on some of the big things, so I will try to get light on some of the things few others seem to notice.

From a MinnPost article by Joe Kimball on the election of Gail Chang Bohr to a Ramsey County judgeship we are reminded that she had the endorsements of many big names. Names like Mondale and McCollum are one thing, but doesn’t anybody get just a little queasy at seeing the names of the county attorney and the sheriff on there. We are entering a new era of political involvement on judicial elections and we don’t always know how we will always navigate the new waters, but involving officials so close to the operation of the court system in this process can create a few questions.

Are we too anti-intellectual in our politics?

I am catching up on articles from places which I was not seeing for a while and have noticed one from C. Ford Runge in MinnPost on Thursday last in which he pans what he perceives as Governor Palin’s anti-elitism.

He states that the Alaska governor has established a new standard in American politics: "dumb as me"

Intellectuals have been bewailing anti-intellectualism in politics for as long as they have been around. They sometimes are correct. After all, one cannot ever go wrong attacking the elite, whoever the elite actually are.

Intellectuals often feel superior by what they know and the dumb as me folks refuse to become intimidated by them [an attitude which can be confused as a reaction to an intimidation].

But both sides and the rest of us need to remember that we need to have open minds when we look at public affairs regardless of which side we are on.

Perhaps Runge’s article might be a place to start thinking of some of this. And, then again, it may just be a piece of gobbledegook.

I am already tired of this senate election

I am a bit surprised that Dean Barkley has not moved up in the polls considering all the invective that Franken and Norm and all of their surrogates have been using. I do know that they have convinced me to send the former Senator back to D.C.

And I am already tired of this election.

There have just been too many strange things in this campaign, whether one refers to the untimely filing of a suit against our senior senator which we are supposed to believe that the comedian from Gotham had nothing to do with or where Norm sleeps [I rented a basement bedroom when I was in college and it did not make me a member of the household and at least he did not pull a Durenberger and bill the government to stay in his own residence] the idea that corporate owners are more concerned with workers’ rights than their unions are [and the radio commercial refers to “America under Al Franken” like he was running for President].

I have always considered CCM as more idea-based than candidate-based and have not used this place to endorse candidates, although I suspect that sometimes people can make their inferences, such as in last year’s Helgen-Haas race.

But I guess I’ll vote to return Dean Barkley to Washington.

Also notable: Dean Barkley and Al Franken are both too old to become new senators because by the time that they have enough seniority to do much they will be too old. However, Barkley, because of his previous service, would go in at the top of the class.

Any boy can grow up and become . . .

I remember when I was a child being told that any boy born in this country could grow up and become President. [Of course, this was bull. There isn’t enough time for everybody to become president even if the term is just for one day. And, funny, I don’t remember the same being said about any girl.] But figuring out who was born in this country can put some people in fits.

Late in the 1964 election cycle, Melvin Belli, a famed torts lawyer of the time, filed a lawsuit alleging that Barry Goldwater was not eligible to be President because he was born in the Arizona territory, not in one of the United States.

His case was never heard in court. Courts do not usually rule unless there is a case in hand and with the short timeline and Goldwater’s rejection by the people of 44 states, there was never a case to put in front of any judge[s].

.

The press at the time laughed at the idea, because people born in US territories are citizens at birth. Congress has made it so. But I remember reading some law professor saying shortly afterward that the suit would have had at least some theoretical merit, apparently reading the language to require that a president be born in one of the United States. I looked at my copy of the Constitution and was not sure that I agreed, but figured that it was one of those things that law professors have fun with. Several years later I remember seeing a similar article. A lot of Latin was thrown about.

Now we might have a similar case coming up since John McCain, although a citizen from birth, was born in Panama. A foreign country is not the same as a territory, so the case would be different, but it seems a lot the same to a non lawyer like me.

Pat Kessler of WCCO poo-poohed the idea that Senator McCain is ineligible the other day and most other people have too. I am pretty sure that they are right in the theory.

But even if they are not right, I think it mainly a matter of fact that if the McCain-Palen ticket carries enough states to have 270 or more electoral votes that they will be declared elected.

Let’s think of things practically. When the electoral votes are counted on January 6 and Dick Cheney [possibly after an objection is raised by somebody in Congress] declares that John McCain has been elected President, somebody [maybe not even a nutcase] will likely be running to a federal court house.

But can anybody imagine that the federal court system would step into this separation-of-powers argument to say that the American people’s choice cannot take office after a joint session of Congress has declared him elected, for a legal reason that even most attorneys cannot understand.

Even if the Supreme Court did not have a 7 to 2 Republican majority this would not happen. But it will give a few lawyers and professors something to think and talk about for a while.

Lawyers and professors are free to enlighten us here, but the matter seems clear to me.

The Constitution refers to our republic as the “United States of America.” Barack Obama was born in neither North America nor South America, but on a Pacific island. Will anybody run with this?

If you don't trust the polls, maybe you want to think of things this way

We are entering the time of the election cycle when we start hearing about how irrelevant things affect our elections. This morning I heard that when the Redskins win on the last day before the election that one party wins and when they lose the other does. It supposedly worked out that way for the last dozen or so quadrennial cycles.

Others have based similar theories on things like hem lengths of skirts, whether the Dow Jones goes up or down the day/week/month before the election, or whether the American League or National League team wins the World Series. If you take a small enough sample you can make any of these work for a spell, and indeed their could be a relationship between stock prices and politics.

But I have observed one thing which nobody seems to have noticed. I don’t know that there is any cause-effect thing here, but I do admit that we are not as geographically united a country as we sometimes seem to think we are.

But the truth I have noticed is this: SINCE 1944 EVERY WINNING NATIONAL TICKET HAS HAD AT LEAST ONE CANDIDATE WHO WAS RESIDENT OF OR NATIVE TO A SOUTHERN OR BORDER STATE, border state being defined as one where slavery was still legal up until the Civil War.

To be specific

1944. Harry Truman [Missouri]

1948. Truman and Alben Barkley [Kentucky]

1952 and 1956. Dwight Eisenhower [born in Texas]

1960 and 1964. Lyndon Johnson [Texas]

1968 and 1972. Spiro Agnew [Maryland]

1976. Jimmy Carter [Georgia]

1980. 1984, and 1988. George H. W. Bush [Texas]

1992 and 1996. Bill Clinton [Arkansas] and Al Gore [Tennessee]

2000 and 2004. George W. Bush [Texas]

So who is it this year?

Palin and McCain don’t qualify, so I guess it will have to be Obama and Biden [Delaware].

Maybe we will know if this holds out some time next week.

ADDENDUM [11/5/08]: Well, it was Obama and Biden, so the string continues for one more cycle.