Wednesday, July 27, 2011

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UTAH REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION

I have been a member of the Republican Party since 1974, but here lately I feel like I am in a family that has gone dysfunctional.

Republicans in Congress express shock – shock! – at the federal deficit and propose huge spending cuts, mostly against the interests of poor and middle class people. Republicans will leave no billionaire behind in this crisis, of course; they will continue somehow to grow the military budget.

I find Republican hypocrisy about debt utterly breathtaking. The founding fathers wrote the Constitution in part to consolidate commerce, currency, and debt. The USA fought the Revolutionary War, Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars all on borrowed money. Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush the Second, and various congresses all increased federal debt and debt ceilings

Americans have for ages purchased The American Dream with both federal and individual debt.
The American Way has always pushed payments two generations into the future. Why has the current crop of Republicans suddenly become righteous about debt?

Debt is not the main problem.

Americans consume mass quantities and shift payment into the future. We cannot sustain The American Dream and American in current funds. This has been our situation for ages. We always insist that Congress fund several federal pet programs to the max, but we want someone else to pay for those programs. Americans want the services of government but do not want to pay for them in taxes. So, both Democrats and Republicans implicitly supported deficit spending policies.

Most of your constituents will support federal budget cuts so long as Congress cuts programs where they do not have any sort of vested interest.

American culture is the problem.

Meanwhile, Congressional leaders and President Obama make speeches, go through complex public spectacles and rituals, and do not deal with the real problems of a culture too big to fund.


FIVE CALLS TO ACTION

I realize that a good letter deals in only one big issue at a time. However, today I do not quite have time to do that.

1. I would find it interesting to hear you express for the public record what we should reduce or eliminate in American culture.

2. The House and the Senate will need to raise the debt ceiling quickly.

3. The tax system is too complicated. Congress should reform it so everyone pays something into the funding of America.

4. Congress will have to raise taxes on the very rich and revoke a lot of tax credits on corporations and individuals, even the ones with political clout.

5. The oversees Empire of the United States has become too complicated and expensive to maintain. This means that the military needs streamlining, modernizing, and reducing.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

100 YEAR S OF MY FAMILY HISTORY ON GRANDVIEW HILL

This is the text of the talk I presented to my ward's primary sharing time. The information in the brackets adds details for a general readership / adult reading audience.

I always wanted to start a church talk this way:

Brothers and sisters -- young and old and indeterminate:
boys and girls and budding little wise guys:

100 years ago, in 1911, my grandfather and grandmother bought a farm and built a brick home a mile north of this church [Grandview South Stake Center]. They planted peach and apricot trees and raised a family of four boys and a girl. They watered the trees and plants, trimmed them, and harvested fruit from them. They sold peaches and apricots. They grew grapes and made grape juice. Very old grape juice.

My father started to milk the family’s cows at age 6. His father also taught him how to prune and water trees and pick the fruit. He learned how to grow grapes from his father and how to grow raspberries in Lincoln High School in Orem.

74 years ago [1937], my father bought a farm on Grandview Hill [1650 West 1460 North Provo]. Westridge Elementary School and Rotary Park are where his farm once stood. My father’s farm had apple, pear, and peach trees, grape rows, raspberry patches, flowers, and vegetables gardens . Father trimmed trees in winter. He sprayed the trees with stuff to get rid of bugs and watered trees in summer. He and his workers picked fruit in Septembers and Octobers.

70 years ago [c 1941], Father planted that row of tall old pine trees east of Westridge school and north of the parking lot. The pine trees were all about five inches tall. His barn stood 150 feet north of the last pine tree of that big row of pine trees.


63 years ago [18 July 1949], my Father married my Mother.

61 years ago [January 1950], He built our first red brick home where the park restroom now stands.

I arrived here 55 years ago [September 1956]. The street in front of Westridge School did not have sidewalks when I walked to and from Grandview School. The neighborhood had a few homes, and many open fields where kids played. There were other farms, too.

My father liked to do concrete in April, so I help him. In spring we would burn the dry weeds off ditch banks so water could flow to the trees. When I got older, I drove tractors and trucks around the farm and helped watered trees.

About 69 years ago, [1942], my father built a white wood building called a “packing shed.” Where the tennis court now stand at the corner of the park, In that building, he and his workers (including me) sorted the fruit by size using a noisy machine. Big Medium Small Tiny. We put the fruit in baskets and boxes, placed them in big refrigerated cooler rooms to stay fresh until we sold them. I helped sell fruit when I was a boy.

41 years ago [April 1970], my family moved into the house where I now live. The neighborhood then had the street in front of Westridge School [1460 North Street], and the street where the C***l family now lives [1750 West] and the street where the R******* C******** family now lives [1400 North]. The street where the S******t and S****s families now live [1500 West] was a dirt lane lined with wild roses and tall shade trees and fruit trees. The street where I live was then a dirt road with an open irrigation ditch and no sidewalk.

My relatives started joining the Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in the 1930s. When I was your age, I attended church in an old chapel 9 blocks northeast of this building [Columbia Lane, Provo]. It belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints then. Today, the Baptist Church owns it.

I also attended church in that brown chapel 4 blocks northeast of this church [1350 West]. The church held primary in the middle of the week in the afternoon after school. We primary children studied Jesus and The Articles of Faith. {I held up my old primary bandallo around my neck} On our birthdays, the boys and girls would contribute coins to a bank in the shape of Primary Children’s Hospital. We sent that money to the hospital to care for poor children.

39 years ago when I was a priest, [November 1972] the ward moved into this chapel [Grandview South Stake Center, Grand Avenue]. At that time the church held Sunday school classes separately for adults, big kids, and little children. In fact, I blessed the sacrament for the Junior Sunday School children at this desk right there.

Today [24 July 2011], I remember the open fields and all the fruit trees, white with blossoms in May and glorious in autumn color in October. My grandparents and parents have all long gone.

The past is only the present a second ago. When you get good at writing, I hope you will write down what you do in your homes and in church so that the children of the future will remember you too.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

REMEMBERING PRESIDENT'S WIVES: HOSTESSES, ADVOCATES, POWER BROKERS

Here is the short list of wives of the Presidents of the United States who either served in my lifetime or died in my lifetime:

Grace Coolidge died in1957

Edith Wilson 1961

Eleanor Roosevelt 1962

Mamie Eisenhower 1979

Bess Truman 1982 died age 97

Pat Nixon 1992

Jackie Kennedy 1994 died age 64

Lady Bird Johnson 2007 died age 94

Betty Ford 2011 died age 93


Here are the living former and current first ladies:

Rosalyn Carter still alive and now the senior living former first lady

Nancy Davis Reagan still alive and now the oldest of the living group at 90.

Barbara Bush still alive

Hilary Rodham Clinton still alive

Laura Bush still alive

Michelle Obama current first lady. The first president’s wife born in my lifetime


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

First of all, I think, the president's wife should be called the President's Wife. "First Lady" is way too precious for the 21st Century.

In 1976, most conservative Utah LDS political activists and voters disliked Betty Ford. They were uncomfortable for starters that she had discussed openly breast cancer, for they did not want to discuss boobage in public, even in a medical context. She openly campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, which Mormon men detested. The ERA in their minds would open the world up to more radical lesbianism. It also represented in their minds something that would force the LDS Church to admit women to the priesthood and pay women equally with men in the work place. Taking women seriously as equals was just about the last thing the Old Boys in Utah wanted to do under any circumstances.

The Utahns did not like Betty Ford especially after she spoke frankly on 60 Minutes about her children’s marijuana use and premarital sex. Betty made the comments around 1975; at that point she had lived in Washington since 1949. It says a lot about the drug and sexual climate of the place that she made those admissions without batting an eye. Washington has been soggy and kinky for ages; those are workplace hazards of the place. When she went public about her alcohol problem, it was certainly no surprise to people who knew the Washington social scene well. Washington’s cultural tolerances of alcohol caught many public figures and their wives.

The president’s wives are not elected to office with their husbands. Technically the best first ladies were people like Grace Coolidge, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, and Laura Bush who did hostess duties and little else.

Unfortunately, this nation has endured some Eva Perons of the West.

When I was quite a little boy, Edith (Mrs. Woodrow) Wilson died, almost a year into the Kennedy Administration. She attended Kennedy inaugural with about seven other past and future first ladies. In 1919, her husband suffered a stroke that incapacitated him, but she helped keep up appearances and she in fact did act in some ways as president. Technically, she should have orchestrated a resignation so that a fully functioning President Marshall could have been in place to meet the needs of the 1920s. However, the powerful do not give up power easily, so she became in some ways the first female acting president of the USA.

The first Mrs. Wilson, incidentally, was a civil rights social activist in Washington before her untimely death.

Even today, the hard line conservatives cannot stand Eleanor Roosevelt. It is hard to tell what they dislike most about her – her stands on civil and human rights, her instrumentality in founding the United Nations, or “My Day.” At one point in her first lady career, Hilary attempted to emulate Eleanor with her own weekly column, but she clearly did not have Eleanor’s stamina or clear writing style. Oddly enough, Eleanor influenced an actor/ screen guild president / California governor named Ronald Reagan. From 1975-1979, he presented nearly 1000 short editorials – most from a conservative point of view – on his syndicated radio program, most of them written by himself. The editorials also appeared in some places as a newspaper column. The spirit of “My Day” was not far away.

Americans adored Jackie Kennedy for no substantial reasons other than she was young, beautiful, stylish, glamorous, gracious, and sophisticated. It is interesting how many people prefer a first lady image rather than a working first lady resembling Hilary, who labored on health care (and botched it). She later became an actual elected senator and an actual secretary of state – both of which eluded Eleanor Roosevelt. She did serve as a United Nations delegate. She could have been the first secretary general of the United Nations, a position that her husband Franklin seriously contemplated before his death.


Jackie’s glamour image is somewhat misleading, because she was also bright and a hard worker – particular in the herculean efforts she brought to the White House restoration project from 1961-62.

Jackie was born in 1929 and served as first lady while in her 30s. She might still be alive if her health and emotions and not been undercut by the horrors that she witnessed in her lifetime.

Lady Bird and Betty are my first lady heroes – tough talking, willing to make a difference. Lady Bird was a Texas business woman along with being the wife of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. I could not stand him, but Lady Bird was first rate. First of all, she put up with Lyndon’s eccentricities, and that took real character. Second she got involved in the cause of Texas wildflowers and national beautification. What’s not to love there?

Mrs Carter also had her causes, but she came and went quickly. I find it hard even to remember her as first lady.

Betty Ford spoke out on the dangers of drug addiction and of breast cancer. Heaven only knows how many lives she helped save and redeem. It is true that she supported abortion on demand as birth control, but that was hardly unique in the period – so did Carter, Hilary, Obama, and the Bushes.

Utahns adored Nancy Reagan in 1976. Well, Utahns disliked Betty Ford intensely in 1976. This situation has its ironies: for starters, the Ford family was one of the best looking political families ever with few skeletons in its closet. Certainly the Reagan family was more dysfunctional than the Ford family; heaven only knows their private lives could not stand scrutiny.

Nancy’s Reagan’s interference in the Reagan administration goes beyond legend. It is infamous. Anyone who consults an astrologer before overseeing her husband’s bookings cannot be all good. Peggy Noonan reported in What I saw at the Revolution that Nancy did not particularly care for the Sandinistas; she thought her husband’s public support for them was bad for the president’s image. She also wanted her husband to stop speaking out on antiabortion themes as well. That sort of thing only pleased his base support and did nothing to expand his foundation. She could sometimes satirize her own image – she once sang “Second Hand Rose” at a GridIron Dinner, but basically she and Madame Chiang Kai-shek would have gotten along famously. Who knows, they might have.

Barbara Bush also presented a force to reckon with in her husband’s presidency. She makes an interesting contrast to Betty Ford. Ford turned cancer and addiction adversity into causes that helped redeem thousands, maybe millions of people. In the early 1950s, her daughter died of blood cancer after early experimental chemotherapy treatment. Barbara so internalized her grief that her hair turned prematurely snow white. She could have advocated for childhood cancer victims – as far as I can remember, she did not. At least not to the extent that Betty Ford advocated for cancer and addiction.

Hilary was a power in her own right even in her husband’s administration. As a result, she was the most despised first lady since Eleanor. In all fairness to her, I think she would have been a marginally better president than Bill. She certainly could have done no worse.

She really should have been the first presidential wife to divorce her president in his term. Bill’s extramarital activities with Monica Lewinsky – I called her the courtesan of Lewinsky – certainly caused her plenty of negative emotions and of embarrassment. If her husband had possessed any decency, he should have resigned, but that is another story.

Few public figures are as difficult to write about as Laura Bush. As first lady, she did advocate for literacy, yet her years as first lady tend to fade in the mind – something that we cannot say of Hilary. As a youngster, Laura Welch was involved in an auto accident that killed another teenager. She could have taken that tragedy and used it to advocate for youth driving reforms. Instead she internalized it.

Michelle Obama is the first first lady actually born in my lifetime. I actually remember January 1964, because it was when Joseph Fielding Smith dedicated the church building I attended as a boy.

Monday, July 4, 2011

AN EDITORIAL COMMENTING ON A DENIAL EDITORIAL

This editorial has that Ukrainian Easter Doll quality, for it is an editorial comment on an editorial comment.

First the credits where credits are due:


The Never, Never Land of denial

© 2011 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705375545/The-Never-Never-Land-of-denial.html
By Timothy R. Clark Deseret News
Published: Monday, July 4, 2011 9:13 a.m. MDT

Timothy R. Clark, Ph.D., is an author, international management consultant, former two-time CEO, Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University and Academic all-American football player at BYU. His latest two books are The Leadership Test and Epic Change.

“After civil war and the beheading of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell rose to power and became Lord Protector of England. As a leader and reformer, Cromwell commands intense controversy concerning his legacy. Some have castigated him as a ruthless dictator. Others have enshrined him as a founding father of England’s commonwealth and parliamentary democracy. Regardless of the view you take, it’s impossible to dismiss the power of the speech he made when he dismissed the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653. It cuts to the heart of leadership intent and the tension between stewardship and self-interest.”


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

Clark then quoted only parts of it. I prefer to quote for my editorial all of Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump Parliament, since it is THE classic denunciation in the whole history of classic denunciations. It is the type of public address, depending on one’s political view point, that one wishes President Obama or one of his political adversaries, say Jon Huntsman, would blow in and say right to the collective pusses of the current House of Representatives, and then the Senate.


Oliver Cromwell's speech dissolving the Rump Parliament
delivered at London, England, April 20, 1653.

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”


Clark comments on the tone of this dismissive.

“Now resist the temptation to dismiss the speech as puritanical nonsense, moralistic high-mindedness or pious rhetoric. Even if you think it’s sanctimonious and even if Cromwell was a hypocrite, ask yourself this question, “Does this man have a point? Is the point relevant in our society, in our organizations, in our families?"

“I had finally stopped reeling from Anthony Weiner’s mockery of public service when I had to endure yet another episode of embarrassment, courtesy of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois. Blagojevich has just been convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including attempted fraud, extortion, bribery and conspiracy. That’s not a surprise to anyone; the evidence was overwhelming. But then came his unchastened response: “Frankly, I’m stunned.” Then came the even more fantastic response: “Among the many lessons that I’ve learned from this whole experience is to try to speak a little bit less.” It made me think of a phrase by George Eliot from her novel, "Middlemarch": “Taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.”


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

It is fascinating how many conservatives get utterly indignant at Anthony Weiner’s . . . Well, Anthony Weiner’s weenie. It is not a crime for a married man to flirt. Nor is it a crime to lie to tabloid journalists. Many if not most find the climate in Washington – whether meteorological, political , or sexual -- poisonous these days. Whether the members of Congress live as single or married, monogamous, or adventuresome persons, Washington’s sexual climate has been of the kinky variety for a decades. Washington’s climate remains a perk or hazard of the federal public service profession.


Clark Continues:

“Isn’t it interesting that the human mind has an infinite capacity to rationalize? When reality doesn’t meet our expectations, we can escape to Never, Never Land. We can accept or deny. We can embrace reality or fashion a new version. Because humans hate discord between ourselves and reality, we always do one or the other, or perhaps a little of both. We can change ourselves or pretend to change reality. We can tell ourselves a soothing story. We have become very good at telling ourselves soothing stories, and we tend to spend an enormously long time doing it. In fact, we often wait for the impending crisis to hit before we are ready to throw away our soothing story. Public policy is the place where soothing stories abound.”


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

I refuse to be intimidated by "reality." What is reality? It is nothing more than a collective hunch.

Inevitably when someone tells us, “You have to face reality!” What someone is really saying to us is that we have to believe his view of reality, or better put, his fantasy world view.


Clark continues

How long did it take us to admit that smoking is a bad idea? How long will we persist in the denial that violent video games are harmful to children? How long will we contend that pornography is benign? How long will we argue that lotteries are not a regressive tax that preys on the poor? “We may each be entitled to our own set of opinions,” as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “but we are not entitled to our own set of facts.”


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

Countless people can prove Facts accurate through their five senses. Humans, however, always interpret the facts. Many places, Washington for example, do believe they have a right to their own collection of factual evidence.

I find Clark’s paragraph on the problems interesting, but arbitrary. He wrote a short article, so I expect that. If I had written it, I would have an arbitrary list as well, but I would include denial of the growing problems of

Ignoring the problems of alcohol.

Classifying prescription drug abuse as good and all other drug abuse as bad.

Continuing to burn fossil fuels at cheap prices

Spending trillions of dollars on the illusions of national and personal security

Relying on the Second Amendment and collecting guns to re-enforce the illusion of personal safety

Continuing to ship in foods, vegetables, and fruits from around the world at cheap prices.

Thinking that just because one has a job and makes money one is productive.

Believing that the American dream means self reliance, when in fact Americans have always purchased the American Dream on borrowed money and sent the debt two generations down the line for payment.


Clark concludes his editorial this way:

“Let me quote two men who were fast friends, then adversaries and friends again because they finally threw away the soothing stories that justified the bitterness that separated them for so long. Thomas Jefferson said, “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” His colleague and friend, John Adams, offered these words, “I sleep well, appetite is good, work hard, conscience is neat and easy. Content to live and willing to die. Hoping to do a little good.”

Let's try to spend less time in the Never, Never Land of denial.”