tales of copper city

Andrew Sullivan gets Obama right

I've written my share of critiques of President Obama, but quietly, and over time, he has shown me how his style is absolutely spot-on for handling a restless and confused Democratic Party and a GOP that has become a train wreck. Here's the best thing I've seen on Obama's outstanding first-term record by Andrew Sullivan in Newsweek.

Some hair-raising beliefs

The theological unease with Romney, a recent NY Times story by Laurie Goldstein, reveals some rather unusual aspects of Mormon theology that make Evangelical leaders nervous.

God has a wife, for example, and Jesus was his son, but not divine. So much for the Trinity.

Carole has recently read When Jesus Became God, by Richard Reubenstein, the story of the creation of the Nicene Creed. I read parts of it some time ago. A violent, ugly story about how Jesus was elevated to "divinity" by warring bishops in Nicea. 

I wonder if the Evangelical leaders have read books like this on Christian origins.  The book is probably widely-read in mainstream Protestant seminaries but the seminarians have to promise not to utter a word about this story to any parishioner.

But apparently the evangelical hatred of Obama trumps that "religious" objection. Racism never dies.  

Is that fair? Well, it's likely more than racism; it's also a deep revulsion to what many evangelicals (and other Tea Party members) feel is Obama's socialist, Islamic plans for the United States.

 I suppose if you grow up believing rather stange and unusual things it's hard to stop.

Both "faiths" have some hair-raising beliefs and origins.

MLK, Jr. and The trip to a small town in Texas

I published this piece on April 14, 2010, and I thought I repost it, given the day, Martlin Luther King, Jr. Day, the day we remember our past: the Civil Rights movement to end segregation and before that there was chattel slavery and a Constitution and political order designed to protect slavery. 

But my trip took place in 1954, in Texas.

 

"Mister, do you think you could get the driver to slow down?  He's going to get us killed."

This from a worried young black man dressed in a suit who had been sitting in the back of the bus.

The young man had first asked the driver to slow down and was told to "sit down or ring the bell and get off the bus."  Then he turned to me.  I was sitting up near the driver.

Did I mention it was 1954? In East Texas?

Here we are

Here's a pic of Carole and me at a downtown party held by one of Bisbee's artists, Gretchen Baer, that we dearly enjoy and love.   She took the pic and sent a copy to Carole and hence...

Here's a link to Gretchen's Facebook page. Gretchen, more than any other artist in town, captures Bisbee in all of its outrageous independence. Here's another link to her work.

Carole, as usual, is beautiful, and I'm, well, tall and so forth.

 

Romney likes "firing people"

Well, finally Romney is catching some real hell.  Romey said he likes "firing people." He now says he meant firing insurance companies and "Obamacare"won't let him do it, which is of course false. And so in truth he's not telling the truth.

But also in truth the company he worked for was Bain & Company, a consulting firm and corporate raider, and finally the former governor of Massachusetts is being attacked by Republicans for being a corporate raider. Which he was. And corporate raiders love to fire people, all over the place.

Here's Matt Viser of The Boston Globe on Romney's response to his love of firing people statement. Ezra Klein at The Washington Post says that Romney's Bain & Company's figures of jobs added, "don't add up."

Why is this perspective on Romney just now breaking into news? We've known for months, years even, that he worked for a company that raids corporations and downsized them.  

More Tales of Copper City

For those who might want to read these blog entries another way, I have arranged some of my favorites (and other people's favorites too) into a separate blog, More Tales of Copper City.

You can also find the link to More Tales on the front page of the blog, in the upper right corner, under "Pages" and also under "Links."  I have grouped the topics under Texas, Bisbee, Acceptance, and "And Another Thing..." If you so browse there, please comment, or send me an email at danbeauchamp@mac.com. Give me your thoughts, your criticism, and what have you.  And if you really don't like it, or find it pretentious, let me down gently.

 

 

Krugman and debt

Today, class is in, and Paul Krugman explains how government debt works, and how and why we never paid off the massive WWII debt.  Our economy just grew faster than our debt. 

As Krugman puts it: "[F]amilies have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base." 

Why is it that clarity is so quickly dismissed in the nation's Capital?

Listening

Listening as a discipline and practice came up at our church here in Bisbee, last Sunday, and I decided to post again a piece I wrote on listening back in 2009.  I need to read this frequently, maybe once a week, to remind myself of how poorly I listen, and how much I need to change that. Listening can become a practice, much like meditation is a practice to Buddhists and others. Perhaps that's my New Year's resolution.  Here's the piece:

 Yesterday, on the Fourth here in Bisbee, 2009, we had a large crowd at our house, watching the parade, eating, and talking. It was a fun day all around and the fireworks last night were spectacular. 

Our house is on the parade route in Warren, one part of Bisbee.  When we lived in Bisbee for 10 years before, from 1996 to 2005, we lived in "Old Town" or old Bisbee up the road and on the canyon walls. Now we are down in the flatlands, still at 4000 feet or so in the high desert.

Religion is poetry

Today is Christmas and I'm a little disappointed that I started out with bloviating about liberalism.

On this day, after a Christmas Eve celebration at St. John's with so many people I love, Carole and I find ourselves talking about what we believe and what we don't, and I nearly always wind up with one person, James Carse.

Carse is a student of religion generally, which is why I think he goes further than anyone else in capturing the dilemma of those raised as Christians or Jews but who balk at a lot, a whole lot, of the theology (in the case of Christianity).  Here ia a recent interview with Carse on Salon that captures where he's coming from.  

And what's missing from that interview is his profound spirituality, a spirituality of everyday life.  I have written a lot about him in the past (see the entries under "Carse" as a category, listed on the first page of the blog), and he has helped me enormously, encouraged me to keep on trying to make sense of things "religiously", when the conventional ideas of "God" just don't help anymore.

 

Ending Loser Liberalism

I am really learning from Dean Baker's The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.  I have long read Baker's columns on economic policy but his book really spells our how narrow and how uniformed we liberals are in national and state policy debates. 

I once spent about a "New York Minute" in a doctoral program in economics and I soon saw it wasn't for me. To plow through a doctoral program and survive as a policy and social liberal takes all kinds of endurance and courage.  You have to hang on to your convictions in courses on price theory, money and banking, economic development and on and on.  The same goes for law school.  I dropped out of both, for much the same reasons.

Shadows

I wrote this early in the year but never put it up.  But somehow I think I should, to honor Callie, our wonderful dog who suffered a lot at the end, this time real suffering. But this time she knew she had us to be with her.

I've mentioned our dog Callie, who's been with us for almost two years.  She's a wonderful and very affecting dog, especially since she had a really rough first six months. She had spent her early months in a "hoarder house" with a large pack of stray dogs and she must have been constantly insecure and anxious.  And then she was placed with an older and disabled man and he abused her, and she was taken away.

When she arrived she was in shock.  I remember her being brought to our mayor's shop, Jack Porter's place, the Bisbee Bug, and she tried to crawl away from all the big people who were waiting to see her. When I picked her up, she peed. I think now that she simply had never been around people very much, which is very damaging to dogs. She's soon stopped the peeing when we handle her up and now she's fine with us most of the time. Carole has worked with her tirelessly, patiently for months but she still spooks easily and is always alert and vigilant, as if expecting the worst.

Food, football, and the federal government

This story was sent to me by my good friend for so many years, Jim Brown, from Austin, or near abouts.  We went to college together at UT in Austin. Jim is a fine steel guitar player who played out at Threadgill's before Janis Joplin made it famous.

The story Jim sent me is about a football team in Georgia, a triple AAA team, from a poor rural county. The players couldn't get enough to eat...literally. The area is so poor that many, many living there simply don't have enough food to put on the table, certainly not enough for their kids to go out and play football hard and fast.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Georgia-school-overcomes-hunger-to-claim-state-t?urn=highschool-wp10283

It's a wonderful story about some terrific kids, a smart coach, and, guess what, the federal government.

The team went on to win the state championship...

Jim came from a poor part of Texas, which back in those days was not just a few areas, and he says this story has a lot of meaning for him. We were both born as the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl was ending, so our families were just escaping the damage the 1930s  did to Oklahoma and Texas. My family managed to make it to the oil fields of East Texas where there was work. Others weren't so lucky.

Thanks, Jim, and I'll pass the story along to our mutual friend in California, who's struggling again.

The 'Say Anything' Party

Mark Schmitt, in the recent New Republic has a wonderfully trenchant analysis of Newt Gingrich's politics: "Say Anything."  Gingrich doesn't really try to explain his flip-flops; he just says what he needs to say to fit the politics of the eternal now he lives in, which is a parody of the "One Day at a Time" of A.A. fame.  Their "One Day at a Time" is to find themselves; Gringrich's is to endlessly counterfeit himself.

The wonder of life!

I don't know why, but somehow this picture of a young Pygmy goat, captured by Carole at the Cochise County Fair a few months back, captures the miracle of life, in all of its wondering faces.  

Food, Inc.

The scariest movie I have seen in years is "Food, Inc."  I think a lot of people have seen it.  I had not. If you want to see what happens when capitalism comes to agriculture, and who wins (big, big business) and who loses (nearly everyone else), then see this movie. The treatment of animals alone, and the workers, brings tears to your eyes.  And the story of Monsanto and genetically-altered seeds, and what this does to the farmer, is just a devastating story of political power and a craven Congress and Administration.

There is a short segment on workers who make minimum wage and who have to choose between cheap, cheap fast food, and vegetables, and they can't afford vegetables because of the price.  Sugar, salt, and fat is what we're wired to notice in food, and fast food contains these three in abundance.  No wonder we are fat.

No wonder so much of our land mass is devoted to the production of corn. No wonder cattle feed lots are actually factory feed lots with cows standing in feces all day long and slaughtered, crippled or injured.

This movie goes a long way to convince me that capitalism is a disease.  The whole idea of democracy in a capitalist regime is that capitalism has a place but it must be kept in its place.  And that isn't happening in the food industry.

It's economic power, not military power, that carries clout in the world

Leslie Gelb, calling attention to a fine speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, notes that in today's world, when it comes to power and influence, it's the economy, not the military.

China has military might but it is largely confined to its borders; China's clout comes from its economy.  European powers spend far less on the military as a percentage of GDP than the U.S.  Turkey is becoming a regional power because of its economy, not its Army.

And yet, there is a good chance that the country will turn back to the party that has brought us to the brink of economic ruin, partly because President Obama was not resolute enough in meeting the financial crisis and the plundering of banks and Wall Street, and partly because he tried to negotiate with Republican leaders who wanted to ruin him, even if it meant ruining the economy.

And the media keeps itself busy focusing on daily polls so that they don't have to tell the public what's actually going on and thereby unleashing Rush Limbaugh and the power of talk radio.

Krugman and Down the Rabbit Hole

If anyone wants to know how the U.S. is preparing to run off a cliff, they should read Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times today, "Rabbit Hole Economics."  This column sums it up in so many ways. But Krugman leaves one big thing out: every major newspaper, on their front pages and their editorial pages should be warning the American public of the dangers of letting the party back in power who drove us to the wall, in the first place.  

And, yes, they had the willing cooperation of President Clinton and his "triangulation" of traditional economics and market fundamentalism.

But we have had the Great Recession and if, in 2012, we let a party back in power determined to wreck the accomplishments of the Great Society and the New Deal, then the American voter is not the only ones to blame.

Our media, our other institutions and think-tanks, and anyone else with a deep and abiding concern for a democracy that runs on facts and truth, will also be among those to blame.

Russ Douthat, Sports Announcer

Russ Douthat, the New York Times's conservative, in today's column, "Romney the Inexeroble," exemplifies the very worst of today's journalism: reporting on politics as "who's on first? Who is rounding third?"...political analysis as sports writing.  

You don't have to have go very deep to write like this, you don't have to really dig down and show what a candidate' s's position really means for their party or their country, all you have to do is report on how well they play the game, and why they are ahead...apparently.  And of course you have to root for your side, because that's why they pay you the big bucks.

And if they're not ahead and you called it wrong, "Well that sports for you," and then you just pick up your check and write another column another day with another sports story about our national pastime. That's politics for you...our national spectator sport. 

George Will "Misunderstands" Liberalism and Elizabeth Warren?

William Galston, a former Clinton advisor, a political scientist, and a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, starts off a column on George Will, claiming that he and George Will have something in common, they are trained to be close readers of political texts.  (What a self-promoting way to start a column!"

And then Galston goes on to say that Will "misunderstands" the point that Warren makes about "there are no self-made people."  Will says this is an attack on American individualism, and is standard for liberalism.  Galston patiently shows us why Will is simply wrong.

Krugman and "Panic of the Plutocrats"

Every now and then Krugman drifts away from his own economics brilliance to social and political commentary.  This column, on Occupy Wall Street, is wonderful.  The protestors, far from being engaged in class warfare are protesting class warfare, the warfare of the plutocrats against the rest of us.  And the protests are forcing a normally complacent and docile and amnesiac media to finally pay attention to how totally pissed are that the system is rigged for the super rich and there is nothing anyone seems able to do about it.  Eric Cantor openly calls the protestors a "mob" while his wife is an excec on Wall Street.  

Some liberals say, "Forget about Wall Street", but they are crazy; the Street symbolizes the decline of an America with a common sense of fairness for the middle class and the poor. And the attacks on Elizabeth Warren are startling; the Right Wing is bringing out the big guns to oppose someone in the Senate who might actually force that august body to defend ordinary Americans.

The paperboy in the driveway and other philosophical issues

For some reason I am writing about deep philosophical quandries that have bugged me, over the years.

Because I am in public health, and because public health has "community" built into scientific dna, I write a little about how community works in our democracy and health policy.  Some years ago I submitted an article for publication and within two months or so, I got a note from the editor, whom I knew, at least to say hello to at professional meetings.

The letter was rejecting my article, because, as the editor wrote, the "criticism was devastating.'

Some of my best friends are philosophers....really

My life as a teacher and a health official and as a small-town mayor has brought me many friends, many friends from very different backgrounds and walks of life.  From teachers, to epidemiologists, to political activists, to bureaucrats, to state and local politicians, it has been something of a parade.  One group that has always been very interesting to me has been philosophers.

In Memoriam: Callie Jean

Callie Jean:

I remember so much and so many wonderful things about you, Callie.  We all miss you so very much and are so sad that your wonderful life was cut far too short.  These are a few of my “remembering” about you: 

I remember first of all, how much joy and laughter you brought into our lives, …even though you were a Border Collie, we thought you were part coyote…the way you looked and the way you talked,

…how you were opinionated and sometimes stubborn, …how you were puzzled of the need for an education, and finally, …how you responded to and trusted Rocky Boatman, the trainer,

…how you let me know when it was time to go for your walk, …your excitement when I put your leash on, …your joy at seeing another dog, especially one you really liked,

…how you talked to us, especially when we returned from having left you alone with Harry, telling us that wasn’t right,

…how you gained confidence in yourself and in others, how you learned to trust us,

…how you slept with your head on the bottom step of the our den (the Cave) and …how you and Harry sat on the landing to the “Cave” waiting for the next move, and how you loved each other (most of the time),

…how Harry wasn’t so sure of you when you first came to live with us,

Blockheads, Eggheads, and Clown Cars

Maureen Dowd is getting to be the best observer of the clown-car show that is the Republican Party these days.  I don't watch the Republican debates but I do catch the brief snippets of the opening, when they all come stumbling out of the little, right-wing Crosley called today's Republican Party.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's one thing to have dumbed-down voters but dumbed down candidates?  

Texans love jokes on themselves, up to a point. But Rick Perry's record at A&M is really and truly proof of a dumbed-down, for-real past.  Did I add that I am a University of Texas graduate and that we love to poke fun at A&M?

The best one I've ever heard about A&M  is this:

Q: "What's printed on the bottom of coke bottles at Texas A&M?"

A: "Open at other end."

Okay, I know A&M has changed and has become a great university, especially in the sciences, but that's not the A&M that Rick Perry attended.  And Perry drinks Cokes, or so I've heard.

What if the Tea Party Wins?

We spend way too much time paying attention to who's ahead in this race or that, including fhe race for the presidency.  

For example, there's too little attention to specifically what radical and noisy Tea Party members really want.

Here's a report that lays it out, from the Center for American Progress, a report that opens with a feature on Scott Garrett, (R-NJ).  Garrett believes that the federal government ought to get out of education entirely, as it is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.  I wonder how many times the media actually mentions this rather radical position of Mr. Garrett?

The Two Tragedies

On this 10th Anniversary of 9/11, I can only remember two tragedies, and the difficulty, indeed the impossibility, of speaking of both together.

When that awful morning came, a friend called and said, simply, "Turn on the television."  And we did.  And ss we are three hours behind New York , in the Mountain Time Zone, sufficient time had elapsed for the television commentators to know what we were witnessding: a terrorist tragedy. 

For me, the great tragedy visited on those almost 3000 individuals in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania is forever caught in scenes of couples, holding hands-and individuals too-jumping to their death.  What else can we say about such an awful but brave death by people entirely innocent of what befell them?

 

The second tragedy cannot be really spoken of in the same breath, but, for me at least, I must.

This was the decision, many months later, to invade Iraq, and the awful decline into the national insanity of a war that  need not have happened, but did, and the many, ways, that needless, foolish war led us to our subsequent national decline into a state of fear, a decline that has changed us, and our democracy, but hopefully not forever. That decision led to the deaths of thousand of American GI, many thousands of Iraqi soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

How can we think of politics today and tomorrow without seeing how much of our steep fall into domestic political warfare is traceable to what happened at the Twin Towers, and to what we chose to make of it,  a decision for war that led us all into a suicide leap toward democratic  decline?

 

"Goodbye to all that..."

Here is a must read column, in Truthout, by a prominent veteran Republican staffer, Mike Lofgren, who served in Budget Commitees on the House and Senate side, since the 1980s, and who has finally "had enough."  I won't try to repeat all that he says about both political parties.  But he aims most of his critique at the current Republican Party, which he calls "an apocalyptic cult."

This column should make everyone in the United States who cares about sound public policy, about science, and about the future of the Republic, cringe. We have this terrible habit of using partisan rancor and "he said, she said" reporting to simply ignore the dangerous shift in our national politics to now include the crazy right, and to also include a deliberate attempt to wreck and discredit the Congress and the presidency.

If President Obama doesn't think he should go this far in saying these things, which I'm sure he knows, perhaps others who are prominent in our national politics can do so.  

And now the smear campaign against Lofgren will begin, and it won't be pretty. And the smear will include  Truthout, running an article by Noam Chomsky today. I'm sure that Lofgren knows that.

Remember labor?

On this Labor Day, we would all do well to read E.J Dionne's column on the decline of the idea and value of  labor as the producer of capital in our time.  President Obama could do a great deal by taking up Dionne's comments and wake the country up to the decline of the idea of labor, the working class, and the middle class generally.  He probably won't because he regards this as "partisan."  And when he doesn't someone like Johnathan Chait of The New Republic will materialize and tell us that we're just whining liberals again.

Callie, again, for the last time

It wasn't so long ago, maybe six months or so, when Callie would race from the back to the front of the house, and turn around and reverse course, doing this again and again, a kind of joy that only a dog can show.  She had come so far in the two years she was with us.  She was five months to the day, when we adopted her. She was born February 28, 2009.  She was raised in "hoarder" house surrounded by 30 or so other dogs, for most of the first months of her life.

I can only imagine what that was like, the constant anxiety and vigilance necessary for food, for a place to sleep without worry.  I can't be sure that this was what it was like. I only know that when we got her she was trembling with fear.  Shortly before she came to us, she had spent a month with a man who beat her, and the rescue people quickly took her away.

 

The opposite of trust

In reading about the latest dust-up over the President's address to the nation on the problem of unemployment, and the Speaker's refusal to accommodate him, I was tempted to descend into my usual partisan rant.  But in truth, this looks to me a lot like a poor piece of staff work, at the least, and at the worst, yet another sign about how far we are from coming together on anything.

Coincidentally, my class on policy analysis and public health has just read an essay, "Sixties Civics" by Hugh Heclo, one of our leading political scientists, included in a terrific reader on the Great Society, The Great Society and the High Tide of American Liberalism, edited by Sidney Milkis and Jerome Mileur.  The book is a re-assessment, a generally favorable one, about the accomplishments of this unique period in our political history that most date from 1965 to 1972.

Could that public health revolution have happened today?

I am to begin teaching a course on advanced public health policy analysis at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona this Wednesday, a small class of 6 or 7 doctoral students and advanced master's students.

I have taught versions of this course at other places for years.  

I really look forward to it, and in the early sessions I will go over the Great Society years and beyond, from highway traffic safety to alcohol policy, HIV, and universal health care, and much else, to show how the public health perspective, or what some call the population perspective, was formed and how it has fared as policy analysis and politcal strategy.

The population perspective entails looking at problems in health as rooted in society and uses epidemiology to show how those problems attack our bodily health and how only societal change can restore health and safety to us together. I give the population perspective a larger political and democratic interpretation, calling it "body politics," a politics that joins public health and democratic activism. 

The resulting national public health establishment came into being during those important Johnson years and during the first Nixon administration and despite conservative opposition over the past decades much of it has endured and in the case of HIV, prevailed.  We will need a strong public health as democratic politics for the years ahead as we confront more dangers.

And recently a question has come to me: here we are in 2011, and I wonder... Could this incredible period of political, epidemiological and democratic innovation have happened during the present political environment, 45 years later?

The Pentagon: the real third rail of American politics

One of my favorite blogs is TomDispatch, the best thing out there to understand the nature and scope of the American empire in an era when most democracies are turning to domestic spending and the problems of daily life.  We, here in the United States, are armed to the teeth and helping other nations around the world, particularly poor nations, get armed up too. I spent three years in the Army just after the Korean War, in the 1950s.  

I don't have a brief against the military.  But the world has changed enormously since the Wall came down, but we just keep on trucking, taxing here and spending there, outside of the U.S.  As Chris Hellman of TomDispatch reports, China just launched a refitted Ukranian aircraft carrier from the 1990s. China is the only great power that potentially poses a threst to us.  

We on the other hand have 11 aircraft carrier task forces prowling the seven oceans.  

And already, that former commandant of the corp at Texas A&M, Governor Perry, the third or fourth most powerful politician in Texas, is boasting of his military service, with his chest full of hot air, proclaiming that's he's running so that the men and women of the armed forces will have a commander in chief that they can be proud of.  

 

Over the cliff with Fox News

I don't watch Fox News.  Last fall, I found the Fox New channel playing in a hotel in Albany, New York, and it was the first time I ever have looked at the stuff for over one minute.  I asked them to change the channel and they did.

I know that Fox News controls an enormous swatch of American television viewers, somewhere over 40 percent, I am told.  So, the case can be made that Fox News is leading American politics further and further to the right, and I think there's some truth to that. The Pew Research Center has a fascinating report on partisanship and news network watching here.

On the other hand, I also think that Fox News is destroying the GOP, creating an echo chamber of increasingly looney ideas which, with at least one news network, gets treated with a straight face.  When Chris Wallace asked Michelle Bachman why she thinks the mainstream media treats her as a "flake" it caused an enormous flap, and Bachman's handlers demanded an apology and got one, sort of.

Mexican food again

My brother Steve noted my "senior" moment in my earlier post this year about Mexican food, and he furnished the name of the Mexican restaurant on N. Zarzamora Street in San Antonio: Karam's.

A great restaurant, now gone.

"Its raining outside." A remembrance from my brother Steve

I got an email from my brother Steve, who lives in Granbury, Texas.  He was writing our cousin Brentye and her husband Don Linville in Albuquerque, reminding Brentye of a visit Steve and our parents took to Brentye's mother Jettie and her husband Bob's ranch near Santa Rosa, New Mexico.  Steve was reminded of the story when it started raining in Granbury.  Texas is about as parched as everywhere else. Steve writes just like he talks and he tells wonderful stories.

Dear Brentye, Don.

At long last it is raining outside -- not a downpour but a nice steady soaker.  My trusty rain gauge says we are approaching one inch of precipitation. The front seems to have stalled over Granbury and I hope it hangs around all day. Unfortunately, the forecast calls for a return to the same old, same old, 100 degree heat that has come to define north central Texas.

 The rains remind me of the time we drove out to see Uncle Bob and Aunt Jettie on their ranch near Santa Rosa, New Mexico.  I had never been on a ranch and had no idea of how isolated they were.  As we arrived, it came a downpour.  The rain beat against the tin roof and Jettie had to break out the pans to catch the leaks around the house. Uncle Bob was thrilled and credited Dad for "bringing the rain."  The story of our good fortune hung around a lot longer than the rains did.

I had no idea how important rains were to cattle ranchers trying to scratch out a living in New Mexico.  I remember Uncle Bob telling Dad it took a lot of acres to feed one New Mexico cow, maybe as much as a section. Uncle Bob, to my amazement, could call the cows with the honk of his horn.  Aunt Jettie could call the rest of us with the smell of her succotash.  Jettie was scared to death of snakes and told us how they sought the shade of an outbuilding where she gathered eggs.

While it rained, we stayed inside and played dominoes, until I got under Uncle Bob's skin. One day, I met Joe and rode around in his pickup while he put out hay for the cows.  Joe was not much older than I was.  He was Mexican or maybe Indian, as I recall?  He was the only ranch hand and worked for Uncle Bob until the draft caught up with him -- or so the story goes.  Another day, Dad and I were able to catch a few mud cats from one of the nearby stock tanks.  Fishing always seemed to be a part of our vacations.

 I still remember the sight and sound of a lone pick-up truck approaching Bob and Jettie's house. Take it from me, ranch life was a far cry from growing up on Vaughan Street in San Antonio, Texas: no neighbors, no YMCA, no baseball, and no sleepovers.  Just land as far as you could see, with an occasional clump of cows hanging around a stock tank waiting for Uncle Bob to drive up and honk.

Steve (Beauchamp)

 

 

 

Two Texans, one also from New York, both full of it.

This is my good friend Ransom Burke, Councilor Ransom Burke, of the Bisbee City Council. Ransom and I both are from Texas.  The sign behind us reads: Public policy made here.  

Every Saturday morning Ransom opens up shop at the Farmer's Market to visit with his constituents. That's retail politics with a vengance.

You may notice I'm wearing my New York Yankees cap, which is taking a chance in Arizona and Bisbee. And therein lies a story.

When I ran for mayor for the first time in 2000, in a debate at the Senior Center, a man stood up and said, "Do we want a New Yorker to be our mayor?"  I had mentioned that I had worked in public health for the state Department of Health and that this would be helpful in winning the millions for the wastewater project.  

I immediately jumped to my feet and said, "I'm not from New York; I worked in New York. I'm from Texas."

And a guy in the back yelled out, "You didn't help yourself very much there."  The crowd roared.  I laughed too.

Here we go....

Rick Perry is in and Michael Tomasky in The Beast has a chilling commentary.  Perry is Bush II.  The only problem is that the Bush people and Karl Rove do NOT like Perry.  But my guess is that the coporate money people shift to the Southwest and Midwest will force the Bush people to grudgingly accept him.

I'm a University of Texas graduate and I have the singular distinction of being at that famous 1955 football game when a lackluster Texas team beat the Texas Aggies in Kyle Field, 21-6, and the Aggies were number 1 in the nation. 

I was dating a twin, and my date, Carolyn, and I rode in the back seat, and her twin Maida, rode in the front seat with her date, a freshman member of the Texas A&M Corp.

We were quiet driving up, ready for the coming defeat, and we (or at least I) was insufferable riding back, rubbing the victory in on my Aggie friend. This was November 24, 1955, a day I'll never forget.

Texas v. Texas A&M rivalries are punishing and long-remembered.

The Texas Observer on Rick Perry and "The Army of God"

I am a long-time fan of The Texas Observer.  I had the honor of spending 15 minutes with Willie Morris who at the time was the newly-elected editor of The Daily Texan.  Morris changed my life. This was in 1955. Morris went on to serve as an editor of the The Texas Observer, founded by Ronnie Dugger.  Morris later became editor of Harper's Magazine. Mollie Ivins was an editor of The Observer and Larry McMurtry and Bill Brammer are among the many famous writers for the newspaper.

I learned from Morris and Dugger that there is no greater pleasure on this earth than reading a scathing expose about the insanities of right-wing politics, especially Texas right-wing politics. 

Here is a wonderful article by Texas Observer writer Forrest Wilder on Governor Rick Perry and his embrace of "The Army of God." This is truly crazy stuff, about a right-wing evangelical movement that most of us normal human beings have never heard of. It seems that Governor Perry has been anointed a prophet-politician and Texas the Prophet State.

Here is more on the Army of God movement from Paul Rosenberg of Alternet. Read it all and laugh, and then weep.

"What happened to Obama's passion?"

This New York Times Op Ed article by Drew Westin, a professor in psychology who specializes in political communication, has written a scathing article about Obama that is a must-read.  It's harsh but most of it wrings true to me.  The main point is that Obama simply refuses to adopt a "narrative" that explains what he's trying to do as president.  As a consequence, this leaves most in the public with the need to "fill in the blanks."   

Westin's book The Political Brain is terrific; he thought hard about how to communicate politics with the public. His diagnosis of the phony "centrism" of Obama, based on a false rendering of just what "independent" voters want and need is perfect.  Obama believes that if you chastise the left, and occasionally chastise the right, most people will deduce that you are a centrist. But that's way too timid. Obama needs to talk about practical policies that people want and will support, even if Fox News calls him a "socialist."   

Obama needs to stop worrying about Fox News and he especially needs to stop taking liberals to the woodshed.  The president needs to stop pulling punches when he explains his policies.  He needs to say, over and again, that he inherited a disaster of an economy because that was true and important to remember.  He needs to try for more spending to help the economy and the unemployed.  He needs to fight for the working class. He's going to be attacked for waking up in the morning by the GOP so he should stop worrying about their slogans.

Above all, he needs to stop trying to win the approval of the "powers that be" on Wall Street and the major banks.  They nearly took us all down....and instead he named people to fix things that participated in, or facilitated the take down.   

Westin comes scarily close to wondering if Obama's over his head.  I think the better choice of words is that he is too timid, too lacking in courage when it comes to doing things that gets him whacked by Fox News. He spends way too much time worrying about the polls and too little time trying to do what's right, and taking the consequences.  

How we seek and see

When I first moved to Washington, D.C. in 1967, on my first morning there, a hot Saturday morning, I went for a walk up near DuPont Circle and I found a bookstore there (I've forgotten the name and it's surely gone) and I bought a prominently-displayed book called The Paper Economy, by David Bazelon. 

The main idea of the book is that we have become confused about how we see the differences between paper, the paper instruments and paraphernalia of capitalism, and the capacities of capitalism to produce goods and services that could benefit all together.  

Because we spend so much time on the paper side, worrying about it, gambling with it, hoarding it, and misunderstanding it, we ignore the productive capacity of what we have on our hands, a capacity for full employment and far more equality than we have today, and hence far more equality and public happiness, and far less misery and suffering. 

Bazelon's book was yet another addition to our "anxieties of affluence," our growing unease with the poverty and want in the midst of a booming economy. Bazelon was a well-known social critic of the day and his book was popular. Todat his book is out of print. Bazelon died in 2005 at 82. 

Some of the details of Bazelon's critique have changed but the essential insight, the failure of our seeing is still true. We could be so much better off, as a nation, if only we could come to see  the reality behind our Paper Economy, to see what is in front of our nose. And as George Orwell said a long time ago, seeing that is often the very hardest thing.