Apples and Tennis Balls?

There has been a meme floating around for a few weeks, courtesy of the Tea Party News Network (TPNN). It tells a story about Laylah Peterson, a five year old white girl who was shot by "two black males" while she sat on her grandfather's lap. The meme then asks where Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were in that case, and asserts that they don't care "unless the victim was a person of color and there are television cameras pointed at them."

The meme does not disclose where it happened, only that the neighborhood is 77% black and 14% white. A quick Google search on the girl's name reveals that it occurred in Menomenee Falls, Wisconsin and that police throughout the Milwaukee region pulled out the stops to find the killers and that the local community's response to the family was overwhelmingly helpful and sympathetic.

So, is Laylah Peterson's death comparable to Michael Brown's or Eric Garner's or Trayvon Martin's, or John Crawford's or Amadou Diallo's or Oscar Grant's? Or is the meme comparing apples and tennis balls?

Let's stipulate a few things up front:

* Laylah Peterson's death is a national tragedy. A man should be able to bounce his granddaughter on his knee in any town or village in this country without fear that someone who has no business possessing a gun will kill the child with it.

* Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are headline hustlers and I am often  offended by the haste, with which they insert themselves before cameras in the middle of tragedies. Similarly, I am offended when people use tragedies such as the the Petersons' to perpetuate a logical (and racist) fallacy that tries to diminish the deaths of black men at the hands of policemen who are not later held accountable for their actions.

* Last, let's stipulate that Laylah's murder has this in common with the other killings: one party was white, one party was black, one party died, and one party perpetuated the death. There is not much else in common.

In the Peterson case, the police and community responded immediately. It was an all too common tragedy in our country; an innocent killed by feral creatures equipped with weapons that are all too available to them. TPNN's meme implies that, because Laylah was white in a majority black community that no one really gave a damn. The facts, as reported by a Milwaukee Fox network affiliate tell a different story of massive community grief and rapid police response.

The other cases tell a frightening tale of police misconduct and/or reckless disregard that is papered over by jurisdictions who are reluctant to give grieving families grounds for litigation, prosecutors afraid to confront police partners, and policemen and their fraternal organizations who confuse solidarity with abetting conduct that ultimately condemns them in the eyes of the communities they are entrusted to serve.

But here's the real difference in these cases. We--as a society--give police power of life and death over us. We trust them to exercise those powers with prudence and discrimination in circumstances of extreme tension, in which they must make snap judgements. We rely on their training, professionalism and integrity at a personal and institutional level to keep us safe. If police departments and their jurisdictions are unwilling to act responsibly and accountably in the Brown, Garner, Crawford, Rice, Diallo, Grant, etc cases can we really trust them to protect and serve all us middle class white folks? Ask Chey Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights MD. Or read Rodney Balko on the perils of militarized police departments and mindsets. Or ask journalists in Ferguson, MO who were assaulted for drinking coffee in a McDonalds near the riot zone last August.

The other day President Obama remarked, in the context of Eric Garner's death and the Grand Jury's finding that the NYPD officers committed no crime, that this was an American problem. He's right. African Americans have been referred to as canaries in our national coal mine. They are most sensitive to our nation's toxins of hate, discrimination by class or race or whatever, and the exercise of power without accountability or restraint. But the toxins will kill us all eventually. Be warned.

Words fail sometimes

Wow. The wingnuts never disappoint. Over the last couple of days, characters like Trump and Alex Jones have blasted the Obama administration for bringing American citizens home to be treated for serious diseases they contracted overseas doing the sort of work that would make Jesus smile. In fact they were doing the sort of work that would make small-government libertarians smile (helping a faith-based NGO combat a devastating disease outbreak), except that the decision was approved by President Obama. Therefore it must be condemned as nefarious and a mortal danger to our country.

Mind you, these are the same people who argue that we should invade Mexico to free a jailed Marine who admittedly broke Mexico's laws and whom Mexico is according protections under international law to consult with US consular officials; something the US has failed to do for Mexican prisoners in US jails, including ones that have been executed in the US.

But I digress. Being outraged that an American President has approved bringing American citizens home to give them a chance at life -- citizens who risked their lives in an endeavor that should fill every American heart with pride -- is stunning in its hate-filled insanity.

Two Parties; Inevitable and Desirable

American Dissatisfaction With Everything Is Reaching Historic Levels - http://huff.to/1qCE9he

Reference the above article discussing results of a recent poll by Pat Caddell:  I agree with Caddell's conclusion but not his solution. I think the two-party system is an inevitable and desirable political framework that is a legacy of our constitutional system. The problem, ultimately, is that the electorate are not keeping up their end of the deal. The two-party system is inevitable because of the electoral college and the 12th Amendment. It is desirable because it confers a degree of stability lacking in most parliamentary democracies.

Look at the root meanings of "congress" and "parliament." A congress comes together to pursue a common good. In a parliament, the parties talk (parle) about their differences, and then the ruling party or coalition of parties does what it wants while the opposition fields cat-calls from the back. Parliamentary systems are set up so that the opposition is really out of power. They cannot frustrate the ruling party or coalition.

In our system, Congress must work together and seek compromise because our constitution and the legacy of house and senate rules dictate they do. If one party decides to act as the opposition in our system, they have the power to bring government to a grinding halt. That creates openings for executive overreach that imperils our democracy. I, for one, do not believe that our current President has overreached with his use of executive orders and actions. But what about future presidents? How will they respond to obstructionist Congressional parties? Has the die been truly cast during these last congresses?

What can the American people do? I noted above that the electorate hasn't kept up its end of the deal. There are any number of pundits and paid loudmouths ready to tell you that you have no voice (Caddell is one of them). They will insist that all politics is corrupt, that "Washington" is the problem, and that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties. And, if you believe their cynicism and accept their prescription of apathy and abandon the political field to them, then they will be right.

Today, roughly 20 - 25 percent of registered Democratic or Republican party voters vote in the primaries that select our candidates. That means that less that 15 percent of registered voters in this country decide who will actually compete for office.  We need to reclaim our ownership of the parties and the process. If we don't the meaning of this day -- July 4th -- will truly be diminished to hot dogs, beer, and sunburns; and the lives, fortunes and sacred honor of the men in Philadelphia who gave us this country, will have been given in vain.

For Ben

We look at you and muse; whose nose, smile, eyes?

We do that; grandparents, aunts, uncles, ancestors.
We know you are just you, and quite perfect.

We look for ourselves and to our pasts.

We are for you, with bonds of blood and love.
You are a new river. You spring new from the earth,
You meet our streams.
We seek you, tributaries.

We, "Flying Dutchmen" and "Frenchified Jews,"
Englishmen, Irishmen, Navigators

Younger sons and pilgrims,
Seeking land and freed souls.

We skipped an ocean and washed ashore;

Wandered inland, built railroads, piloted boats;
Miners and roughnecks, millworkers,
Chambermaids and scouts,
Airmen and scholars, lumberjacks, engineers.

We are for you.

Rivers grow, and seek the sea,
Meet rivers as they flow.
Some loud and joyous, rambunctious,
Some meander and eddy; 

Deep pools, deep life lie within.
Rivers enrich,
Sweet bright boy.
And rivers endure.

The Lost and Lonely Article

I propose a new word: historoidy, or as a variation, historoidical. Like factoids, which look and feel like facts, historoidy looks and feels like history but is, well, BS.

Of course if someone else has already coined the term, I apologize and thank you at the same time.

I have been thinking about historoidical fantasy for a couple of weeks now. I was in a discussion group recently, in which a fellow who professes a "conservative" and "originalist" view of our history, argued that the "militia" supporting Cliven Bundy in his standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) were on sound Constitutional and historical ground. Rather than suggest he is an idiot who listens to nutjobs like Glenn Beck and reads too many Cleon Skousen novels, I wrote back "You're wrong," and proceeded to explain why.

Apparently "You're wrong" is inflammatory, insensitive and -- curiously, to a group that claims to despise political correctness -- politically incorrect. So, next time I'll eschew such elitist devices as apostrophes and contractions and go with "Your wrong." Maybe that will sting less.)

But I digress.

My correspondent pinned his contention that Bundy's thugs were doing the founding fathers' work on two arguments. The first was that the BLM isn't mentioned in the Constitution and therefore violates the 10th Amendment, which says:

    "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

(Notice that it says "powers not delegated," not words not said. It also follows that if a power is delegated to the United States (by which it means the federal government, elected by the people directly and through the States) or is prohibited to the States then the 10th Amendment doesn't apply. We'll come back to that.)

The other argument my correspondent advanced was that the right of the States to own and control public lands is rooted in the Treaty of Paris, signed between the King George III's ministers and Commissioners appointed by the United States of America in September of 1783 and ending our war for independence.

The Treaty of Paris argument is historoidical.

But let's start with the 10th Amendment argument, and talk about the lost and lonely Article IV of the Constitution. 10th Amendment enthusiasts make much of the Amendment reserving to the States those things that aren't reserved to the federal government or prohibited to the States. Of course Articles I, II and III lay out the powers and responsibilities of the Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary, respectively. Where does the Constitution say what is delegated, or prohibited, to the States.

That would be Article IV -- listing the rights, responsibilities and limitations of the States -- which includes such jewels as:

    "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. [emphasis added]" --Article IV, Section 3

So, in the case of public lands certainly, the Constitution explicitly reserves to Congress the right to dispose of and regulate the use of lands that don't belong to private owners or States. Obviously, should a new state put language in its Constitution that recognizes federal control over public lands within its borders (like, say Nevada), then that settles the question that much more.                   

Curiously, States' rights advocates who seem to live by the 10th Amendment, rarely mention Article IV, without which any further discussion of the 10th Amendment is basically meaningless.

It's as if it's, well, inconvenient.

Well what about the historoidical argument about the Treaty of Paris? I would normally snort with derision as it is utterly irrelevant. However, since it sounds and feels like there might be something there historically, it must be dealt with.

As I noted, the Treaty of Paris was the agreement between Great Britain and the United States of America that ended our war for independence. In the agreement, Great Britain gave up sovereignty over some of its former American colonies, listed as

    "New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia..."

The treaty furthermore describes the the entirety of land transferred to the sovereignty of the United States, from which the new nation intended to carve future States. That area included what are now Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.

The Treaty of Paris Argument runs thus:

1. The "United States of America " referred to in the Treaty is not the unitary government of later years but the collective States who had not conceded any autonomy to a central government and were thus negotiating independently with the Crown.

2.  By enumerating the "free and independent states" with which the British Crown is negotiating, the parties to the treaty agreed that the States are independent of each other and free to do whatever they want; therefore invalidating later innovations in governance such as the Constitution. Indeed, with this interpretation, the Constitution usurps the States' power and any laws passed under the Constitution are only as valid as the States allow them to be.

Oh, where to begin...

The Treaty of Paris was signed five years before the Constitution was completed. That much is true. However, the American Commissioners were empowered by an American Congress that was organized under the Articles of Confederation (signed in 1777 and enacted in 1781). The Articles listed  the powers and limitation of the States (as does the Constitution a few years later).

Article I lists the States that form the new nation, and lays out the process by which new states may be admitted. The process was fairly rigorous and required two-thirds of the States consent, with one exception, Canada. Article XI gave Canada a free pass to get in whenever they wanted. This puts another cast on why the British crown enumerated the States to which the Treaty of Paris applied; to make clear that it did not apply to Canada.

Article II states "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled" (echoed later in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution). Article VI clearly stipulates one of those powers not given the States; " No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State."

So, as far as the United States Commissioners were concerned, the Treaty was negotiated by a collective entity, empowered to speak for all under the Articles of Confederation, known as The United States of America. And, it really doesn't matter if the British ministers thought the were dealing with one government represented by five commissioners, or thirteen governments represented by five commissioners.

Five years after the Treaty was signed, the American Congress decided that the Articles of Confederation were flawed. Among other things, they didn't adequately address how the government would raise revenue in order to defend its against foreign powers or domestic insurrection. One of the problems had to do with the new lands to the west and how to carve new states out of them. The States were fighting over boundaries. Would-be new states like Franklin seceded from older States and were suppressed. And the question of who actually owned the lands in the new territories created new and dangerous tensions.

The States agreed to review the Articles and fix the flaws. In the Constitutional Convention that ensued, the State settled the issue of the new lands by surrendering claims to the territories. The federal government, holding the land in trust, sold it to citizens to raise revenue to pay off debts and perform its duties under the Constitution.

The current "Sovereignty" movement that cheers on guys like Cliven Bundy and his ruffians, portrays themselves as patriots and Constitutionalists. They have not read the Constitution -- certainly not Article IV -- and are not patriots. The best that can be said of them is that they are undereducated dupes. The worst that can be said is that they are traitors; according to the Constitution, mind you.

Caribou

I wrote this poem, Caribou, in the early 1970s. I take it out and massage it every so often. It's dedicated to the memory of those who built the silver town. Caribou wasn't much in modern terms. None of those towns were much. A loud noise, a hard road certainly. By the turn of the 20th century most were going or gone. Colorado owes much to them. They birthed a state.

The Road and the Visions

Trapped between the blasted rocks,
The pavement winds
And works its way through the hills.
Past Nederland
It finds an air of freedom,
Running fast and true
Toward the nearing peaks
And Caribou.

“Caribou is SILVER! Rivaled by nothing, this is where a young man's dreams come true. Presidents walk on Caribou silver bricks! With just a pick and a shovel, a man can work his fortune in a day!"

“Caribou? There is nothing there now but the wind. A few shacks, foundations and headstones. Nothing else.

"Once - I'd guess it was really something”


The Wind; Thoughts and Lessons

"The people who built this town didn't build to last out the first big payday. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. It was too windy"

Sometimes,
The wind will blow and howl
Through windows and cracks in wall.
I think then,
The wind is an old angry man,
Sweeping the dead leaves, branches,
And neighbor's trash cans.

We were kids,
And spread our coats as wings.
Leaned into the wind and wished
We would fly and hoped
We wouldn't fall.
So we knew Chinook;
And forgot our wasted matches
And lost hats.

The wind was more than that to Caribou.

“It was wind that killed this town. O, there were other things too. There was a plague and fires. But mostly, it was the wind. You can't keep a town where the wind won't go below ninety miles an hour."

 The Legacy

"The miner's did some pretty bad things up here, to themselves, their women, to the mountains. I wonder if the mountains didn't just get tired of it, summon up the wind, and blow all the people back to the flats. I guess not; the wind was here before the miners, wasn't it.

"The wind is the only thing left now”


The wind left hopes;
Or held them
And holds them yet -
Hopes not seen, though heard
On the wind,
And always felt.
The brawling hearty hopes
Of glory-holes and whiskeyed whores
Holler down canyons to land below.
Quiet hopes of peace
Seek peace,
Slip through rocks and knotty wood,
And slip away.
Desperate hopes
Shriek,
Fall to moans,
And fall away.
Silent,
Hopes of wishes lost and life regained,
Brush across the grass,
Linger,
And wander on.

.... Once

Once again winding,
The road goes to dirt
And roughly,
It comes to end.

Caribou.
A headstone there, a shack here,
Blasted and strafed by the wind
And dead many years.

Beecher Island

Beecher Island is the site of site of an 1868 battle between Southern Cheyenne warriors and cavalry scouts from Fort Hays, Kansas. It was one of the legendary Indian battles of the old west, featured ficticiously in the 1936 movie The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper, and written up by Dee Brown in his book Action at Beecher Island.  

I wrote this poem after visiting Beecher Island in the the summer of 1975. I had just finished the Navy's Preventive Medicine School and was on my way to Camp Pendleton, California, which had just received 20,000+ Vietnamese refugees after the Saigon government collapsed. The weekend I arrived home, in Boulder, a former roommate got married and we all got trashed. After the hangover, I cajoled a friend and future brother-in-law to accompany me on a "fishing" trip to Beecher Island.  

Beecher Island is in the ultimate east of Colorado. In 1975 the Arikaree river contained enough water to make fishing plausible. Today the river bed at Beecher Island is silted in and grown over by wild grasses.


The prairie is more Kansas than Colorado here.
The road drops away from the corn stalks, grass,
and deKalb signs to a forgotten park.
We stopped the car to read the marker
and drop our lines in shallow water,
too shallow really.

We came here, leaving weddings and wars behind,
to say we fished, and drink beer,
and read the stone left behind in another year.
"I don't think we'll get a bite,"
Gary flicked his line and opened a Coors.
I left mine and heard a bee
and a young girl's horse crossing a wooden bridge.

Horses thundered and screamed, then,
and splashed through the shallow prairie river.
Fleeing Roman Nose, the white scouts holed up, here,
while the Cheyenne flung their arrows and youth at them.

Roman Nose and Sandy Beecher came to this place,
and an errand boy named Slinger, and fifteen men from Hays
and a hundred or so Arapaho who stayed
-- its all on the stone --
for nine long days.

And the horses clop on the bridge, the sun passes a cloud.

It Is Not About Religion

This essay began as a comment on something I shared on Facebook, regarding the Arizona Legislature passing their SB 1062, aka the "Hate the Gay Away" Amendment. The bill "protects" individuals' rights to refuse service to people they deem objectionable on religious grounds (mostly gays, but the bill would allow businesses to deny others as well). As I write this, SB 1062 has been passed by the Arizona legislature on nearly party-line votes (I think a couple of GOP State Senators voted with Democrats to oppose the bill) and is waiting for Governor Brewer to sign it.

I'm usually wary of comparisons to Nazis, but this one seems inevitable. Quite simply, how do you tell that someone is gay? Is it a "Good morning, welcome to McDonald's, are you gay?" sort of thing? Is a man holding hands with a another man gay? Because that makes President Bush gay. Or how about kissing; except Russians do same-sex kissing as a way of saying hello and I'm pretty sure they're mostly not gay. So, how do you tell? Or is it when someone feels uncomfortable around people who act and dress a little different than he or she, that we get to treat them differently?

The Nazis, after working to persuade people that Jews were a inferior and malevolent species realized that it was hard telling them apart from other Germans, so they made up "Jew Codes" and made Jews wear yellow stars on their clothes, which they billed them for by the way. I wonder how the Arizona legislature proposes to tell who is gay and who isn't, and do they plan to charge them for the honor of being singled out?

But all that deals with the practicalities of the bill. Let's get to the really important question, what is wrong with being gay? Some people insist that it violates their religious beliefs. Fine, if you believe that then don't be gay. But we have this thing in the United States called the First Amendment, and within that, called the "Establishment Clause," that says the government can make no laws regarding the establishment of religion. In other words, behaviors that are proscribed solely on religious grounds cannot be banned by government laws. If you were Catholic in the 1950s and couldn't eat meat on Fridays, it didn't mean your Protestant friends had to give up their hamburgers. It had to do with Catholic beliefs, and there was no compelling public good to be achieved by mandating meatless Friday; or harm to be avoided.

In the early 1960s, a future Georgia governor named Lester Maddox demanded that he, as a private businessman and restaurant owner, had a right to refuse service to anyone he wanted. Of course that meant black people back then. To emphasize the point, Maddox offered pickaxe handles to white patrons who wanted to help him refuse service. The federal government's point of view was that a person entering a business that was open to the public had an expectation and right to the same services as any other patron, as long as they weren't doing anything against the law or -- within reason -- disturbing other patrons (the fed maintained that just being there was not -- within reason -- disturbing). Interestingly, this is the same argument that gun rights advocates use when they pack heat in Starbucks and other public businesses.

I'm a straight guy, why do I care? Because liberty isn't divisible. This bill, which is billed as protecting religious freedoms, does nothing but mock and undercut them. It empowers individuals to deny services to people on the purely subjective basis of not liking something about them. Wrap it in religious language all you want, but we in the United States have settled law that says that is bunk. Can I refuse to serve people who aren't dressed for church on Sunday, on the grounds that they disrespect the Lord's day? How about refusing someone wearing a yarmulke? How about someone wearing a gun? Am I allowed to refuse someone sporting a Confederate flag on his T-shirt because I object to celebrating treason against my country?

As I noted, SB 1062 is on Governor Brewer's desk for signature. She is under intense pressure from the business community to veto it. Tourism dollars and things like the Superbowl hang in the balance. Tweeting your opinions to @NFL and @NBC about holding the Superbowl in a state that sanctions hypocrisy and hate would add clarity to her decision.

Labor, and the GOP's Betrayal of Conservative Principles

Last night workers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted on whether the United Auto Workers would play a part in their plant. The vote went against the UAW by 712-626. This has been characterized by some as a devastating loss to the union. I think that is the wrong judgement.

It matters that the vote happened at all. That is pretty impressive in a part of the country where anti-labor forces are allowed to obstruct organizing efforts and otherwise violate federal and state labor laws at will. In this case, the UAW didn't even initiate the effort. Plant workers, with the apparent blessing of VW, courted the UAW. As the drive took shape, Tennessee's Republican Governor and junior Senator went on a blitz to stop the unionization effort. The Governor and Senator were joined by a host of usual suspects; Grover Norquist led the charge.

The various opposition parties made dark mutterings about communists, intoned about "foreign influences" (German labor unions) penetrating their state, and generally tried to scare the bejesus out of the 1,500 plant workers. Images of Detroit abounded, and President Obama's name was thrown about with wild abandon.

It worked, this time. The victory may be Pyrrhic however. The GOP has to own an anti-worker blitz at a time that workers are hurting and concerns about income disparity have achieved traction. This will come back to bite them.

Interestingly, VW had asked "third-parties" to stay out of the union vote effort.

Before getting into the question of why the GOP and the political right are so opposed to labor unions in general, its helpful to look at the ways that unions are a boon to business, industry and conservative politics (here I ask readers to note that I use conservative in its correct sense. When I refer to what the wing-nuts have coopted I use the word in quotes ["conservative"]).

First of all, the American labor movement has been overwhelmingly conservative. While today's GOP wants you to imagine Wobblies storming the factory gates (or Winter Palace), in fact the AFL/CIO for years was the mainstay of conservative Democrats. They rallied their forces against FDR's preferred 1944 VP candidate Henry Wallace and we got Harry Truman instead. In the 1950s and 60s they largely drove the Democrats' anticommunist wing occupied by the likes of JFK, LBJ, and Hubert Humphrey. Labor put the brakes on the Democrats as they courted marginal constituencies in the late 60s and 70s. Look, in retrospect, slow-rolling minorities seeking a place at the table is nothing to be proud of, but it kind of meets the essence of conservatism; go slow, be deliberate, think about unintended consequences.

In the early 80s, labor poured money into Solidarity, the Polish dissident labor movement that did a damn sight more than Ronald Reagan to end the Cold War. When Polish workers struck in 1980; first in the Gdansk shipyards and, then, through the entire country, it ripped away whatever shreds of "rule by the proletariat" were left of the old Soviet system. And America's house of labor was front and forward with money and moral support.

Organized labor is good for business, in part because it relieves a lot of businesses of the cost of administering health and retirement programs. It is popular to point out the ruinous expense of maintaining pensions and health care for retired auto workers; I won't debate that they were costly, but the auto manufacturers did not have to pay the cost of administering those programs, that was borne by the UAW.

Labor is also good for business and industry because it provides standards for workers to train to, and follow. Workers who are trained through union sanctioned apprenticeships to the journeyman and master level know what they are doing. I know I always feel safer  knowing a union electrician fixed the wiring in my house.

Labor does push business and industry to pay workers better. But even that is conservative and good for business - as long as you define "good" as good for the long haul and not good for next quarter's balance sheet so you can churn your stocks and make a quick buck at your company's expense. Henry Ford figured out years ago that if he paid his workers well enough to buy the cars they were building that they would work better and he would get richer. Ford was not a bleeding heart. He understood enlightened self-interest.

Similarly, a nation that pays its workers well invests well. Such a nation wants workers to be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise; so they can fully participate, be invested, in the life of the nation. And those too are conservative values.

So, why the GOP opposition? It is partly historical. Reflexive GOP opposition to union efforts in the 30s opened the door for Democrats under FDR to lock up the labor vote as a key element of the Roosevelt coalition. In zero-sum politics anything that hurts your enemy helps you.

Going back to Henry Ford, who bitterly opposed unionization, he thought that the union diluted the workers' sense of loyalty to him and his company. He may have been right. The workers may have liked Henry's wages and paternalistic views, but they also knew that Henry was getting on in years and would not be at the helm for long. Would another generation treat them like family, or would they become expenses in a ledger? A modern comparison is Walmart. Sam Walton was a latter-day Ford in many respects. He took pretty good care of his workers and looked poorly on unions. His heirs have not done well by their workers and are one of the contributors to rising welfare and medicaid expenses because they refuse to pay a living wage and expect taxpayers to subsidize their paltry wages.

Labor remains a core piece of the Democrats' coalition, although private sector unions have been on their knees for decades. That makes any UAW inroads into the South particularly troublesome. Southern states have been historically hostile to organized labor and have also -- historically -- had the most poorly paid workers. In the worst economy since the Great Depression, the GOP probably does not want workers in the GOP's geographical base putting two and two together and starting a regional push to unionize.

GOP hostility to labor has been a feature of the party's right wing for a century. Republican moderates realized the value that labor brought to the table and worked with them. George Romney had the labor vote in Michigan pretty well locked up. Richard Nixon was endorsed by the Teamsters in '72, and the AFL/CIO refused to campaign against him that same year.

Democrats haven't always been there for labor either. I suggest that labor's decline and the dearth of conservative Democrats that started in the 70s are related phenomena and not good for the Democratic party.

But, given the GOP's current rank hostility toward labor, Democratic diffidence is tolerable and acceptable. Labor's attitude toward the two parties reminds me of Jean Seberg's line in Paint Your Wagon: "Well Joseph, I may not know what I'm getting, but I know what I've gotten."

Double Dog Dare

So, for the last week or so, I have heard TV and radio journalists discussing the President flipping the bird, rhetorically, at Congress in the State of The Union address.

Here is what the President said:

" ...what I offer tonight is a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class. Some require congressional action, and I'm eager to work with all of you. But America does not stand still, and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do."

That really does not translate to "screw you, I'll do what I want." However, I have pretty much given up on the media's ability to 'get' nuance and understand -- and report -- the difference between telling Congress, "I want to work with you but I also have a responsibility to the people who voted for me and I will meet that responsibility however I can," and saying "screw you."

My mother once pointed out that FDR's "court-packing" proposal, decried by the GOP as unconstitutional, was anything but. My mother really liked FDR by the way. FDR proposed and defended a constitutional amendment to modify and fix the number of justices who sat on the court. It was debated and voted down and FDR dropped it. Where was the constitution violated?

Similarly, Obama proposes to use his executive powers to effect changes he thinks will improve things for Americans. His executive orders have effect if Congress let's them stand. They can legislate them away. No constitutional crisis here folks. Keep walking...

But, if Congress -- the GOP in particular -- wants to vote Obama's executive orders out of existence, then they have to go on record as voting to screw over American workers, something they go to great pains to avoid by legislative devices like the filibuster and distractions like "repealing Obamacare." The President has double-dog dared 'em. Let's see what happens.

And let's see if the media start paying real attention.

"...you go to the box, you know. Two minutes by yourself, and you feel shame, you know."

The title of this essay is taken from an early line in Slap Shot, the hockey movie with Paul Newman. It was one of my favorite movies when I saw it back in 1977 and though I haven't seen it in decades I always remember it as insanely funny, if perhaps a bit crude. Last night it was on satellite TV so I recorded it on the DVR and sat down this morning with my coffee and breakfast to enjoy it.

Things change in 37 years.

The movies was the template for many of the sports movies that followed: There is the old veteran seeking a last season in the sun; and a team of plucky losers determined to show up an unfeeling owner who is out to sell the team and could care less about the people themselves. How many sports movies have we seen since the late '70s that echo that plot?

The movie also depicts the plight of the rust-belt towns of the northeast, in this case Charlestown, Massachusetts. Charlestown, you may remember, saw its economy fold in the late 70s, while simultaneously being ripped apart by busing riots. A background theme is  the despondency of those towns as their industrial bases fled overseas and their work forces faced recession, unemployment and a future offering people shopping carts and a pleasant greeting.

And then there is this: The movie is incredibly misogynistic and homophobic; jarringly so. Indeed, as I watched it again, I recalled that I was taken aback by the language and sexism when I first watched it in 1977. I wasn't particularly shocked by the homophobia at the time. Actually both the term and concept were largely unknown. Only five years earlier the then Democratic front-runner Edmund Muskie, was doing everything he could to avoid meeting with a gay caucus during his campaign for the White House. 

I recall thinking at the time of a question I'd heard some old Navy Chiefs ask their young sailors when they trash-talked women around the base or on liberty: "Would you want someone talking to your daughter like that?" But that question by itself isn't enough. It should be asked along with: "Would you want your son talking to anyone else's daughter or son like that?" If it isn't it may do more harm than good.

But in 1977, we were getting "liberated." I wasn't entirely sure what we were being liberated from in 1977. Now I suspect the people getting liberated were the ones who ran Hollywood studios and had previously been expected to adhere to certain decency standards. They were definitely liberated from those things. But in the process, they popularized and celebrated behaviors that were -- well -- unconscionable. 

So back to that question: "Would you want someone talking to your daughter like that?" Of course not! Not my daughter! But as with many questions, this one, left by itself, contains a "yes, but." But, what about someone else's daughter, someone I don't know, someone that doesn't look like me, doesn't earn as much, doesn't do things I approve of, etc? What then?

The message of the movie is that it is okay to treat people shabbily or cruelly because of their gender or orientation. Excuses as to whether they "joined in the fun" or that it reflects an ethos of another era are beside the point. Reducing men or women to their body parts or what they do with those parts is as wrong as reducing people to the color of their skin, the pattern of their speech or the balance in their bank accounts. When you strip off the dignity to which a person is entitled simply by the fact of their existence, their personhood, you hate them in the classical sense of the word.

Slap Shot, funny as it seemed when it came out, does exactly that. It reduces people to something less, and permits other people to do the same. 

The title of this essay comes from an early line in the script. The team's goalie is being interviewed and is explaining what happens when you foul another player: You go to the [penalty] box where you spend two minutes by yourself and feel shame. This morning, I felt shame or mortification that a movie I once thought funny should, years later, turn out to be vile.  The shame lasted longer than two minutes, long enough to reflect on and type this essay. 

I won't watch it again..