Fifty-nine year old Jim Ridings has self-published a new book (342 pp.) about a corrupt governor of Illinois, which includes statements like these:

• “He is so unscrupulous that his lack of principle gives him the appearance of audacity.”
• “Insufferable”
• “Small-minded”
• “Unprincipled”
• “Maybe his bad record is a help to him…It is so bad, it is unbelievable.  When the truth is told, people say it cannot be so, and that there must be a vicious reason behind the telling of it.” (Chicago Tribune editorial about this governor.)
• “The great game of politics is played everywhere, but nowhere with greater zest than in the state of Illinois.” (“Time” magazine article about this governor).
• First Governor of Illinois to be arrested while in office.
• “Is the worst governor the state ever had.  We believe he is the worst governor any state ever had.  He has contaminated everything with which he has come in contact in politics.” (Editorial from the Chicago Tribune)

So, who are we talking about here?

The question is valid, because, at this point, the book begins to outline how the governor of Jim Ridings’ book “did wickedly, willfully, unlawfully and feloniously embezzle and fraudulently convert to his own use” more than a million dollars in state money when he was Illinois treasurer in 1904, prior to becoming Governor of Illinois, a post he held from 1921 to 1929.

When arrested, this Governor refused to surrender to authorities for nearly 3 weeks, claiming that the doctrine of separation of powers protected him from arrest. He threatened to use the National Guard to place Springfield under martial law to protect him.

Prosecutors said the accused Governor had deposited millions into a fictitious bank to defraud the state out of interest payments, and that he had operated a money-laundering scheme. The defense maintained that the governor didn’t really know what was being done in his name and was the victim of his mean-spirited political foes. This Governor considered the Chicago Tribune to be chief among his “political foes,” as a current website about the governor and his family says, “The Chicago Tribune championed a cause against the Governor which impressed upon him the importance of hometown newspaper(s).”

I know you have all been reading this and thinking that the scoundrel’s name was Rod Blagojevich.

In reality, Rod Blagojevich was the second Governor of Illinois to be arrested while in office. The first was Lennington Small, a Republican from Kankakee whose offspring went on to found the Small Newspaper Group, and the SNG website says, “He established the integrity of the business through personal example.”

[After the list of charges above, I’m almost afraid to consider what that might have meant.]

Lennington Small, when brought to trial, was acquitted, but a juror and two Chicago mobsters were later indicted on charges that the jury had been bribed. Small, upon his acquittal and subsequent re-election bid (!), commuted the sentences of two other mobsters who had been jailed for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury investigating the circumstances of Lennington Small’s acquittal. It should be noted that Lennington Small lost a civil lawsuit and was forced to repay the state of Illinois $650,000. But he wasn’t impeached and—will wonders never cease—even won that second term in office.

Lennington Small died in 1936. His name was largely forgotten until his great grandson, Stephen Small, then 40, died after being buried alive in a botched kidnapping attempt in 1987.

The Small Newspaper Group began in 1913 with “The Daily Republican” in Kankakee (one of three newspapers in the town) and went on to acquire The Daily Times in Ottawa (1955); the LaPorte Herald-Argus (LaPorte, Indiana, 1964); the Daily Dispatch in Moline (1969); The Leader (Iowa Quad Cities) in 1978, (which has now ceased operations, although the SMG website does not note this); Star Publication weeklies in the south Chicago suburbs (1975-1995); SNG group prints 80,000 to 105,000 copies of “USA Today” in Kankakee (1983 to the present); “Family Weekly” magazine, which later became “USA Weekend”,  was sold to CBS in 1980; Rochester “Post-Bulletin” (1977), the largest afternoon daily in the state of Minnesota; “Times-Press” in Streator, IL (1980; current Daily Dispatch publisher Roger Ruthhart came to Moline from Streator); Palisadian Post in California (1981); The Rock Island Argus from the Potter family, “one of the state’s oldest continuously published newspapers” in Rock Island, IL (1995), which also ceased operations in the recent past; and, in 1969, brothers Len and Burrell divided the family’s holdings in print and broadcast properties, with Len taking the newspapers and Burrell inheriting such properties as WKAN,  in existence since 1947.

The SNG (Small Newspaper Group) website says of Governor Lennington Small, “The Governor is best-known for the 7,000 miles of hard roads he built in Illinois and for his support of the State Fair.”

Perhaps author Jim Ridings, who has written Len Small- Governors and Gangsters, a 342-page book about the “worst governor ever” would suggest other things for which Governor Small might be remembered, such as setting the bar so low that it took 90 years for someone (Rod Blagojevich) to lower it further.

SOURCES:  SNG (Small Newspaper Group) official website; “The Worst Illinois Governor?” by Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, Wed., July 21, p. 21; “Len Small: Governors and Gangsters,” self-published by Jim Ridings (342 pp., 2009).

In the wake of the “Rolling Stone” magazine article entitled “Runaway General” (by Michael Hastings, p. 91 in July 8-22 issue), I decided to read it for myself to see what kind of “fly on the wall” journalistic report—the first by this reporter for the magazine—could topple an active General 

What I learned is that General Stanley McChrystal was probably doomed from the get-go. For one thing, he was much admired by the Bush regime, who liked the fact that he cut corners to get things done. For another thing, he had been in trouble before. “By some accounts, McChrystal’s career should have been over at least two times by now.” (p. 96) 

McChrystal took part in the Pat Tillman cover-up, trying to pass off the death of the football player in April 2004 as being a death from enemy fire, rather than an accidental death. He signed off on a Silver Star, suggesting Tillman was killed by Taliban fighters. However, later, McChrystal sent a memo specifically warning President Bush to avoid any mention of the cause of Corporal Tillman’s death saying, “If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public, it could cause public embarrassment” for the president. Mrs. Tillman (Pat Tillman’s mother, Mary) wrote in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk, “McChrystal got away with it because he was the golden boy of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command.” (p. 96)

There was also a scandal at Camp Mana in Iraq that echoed the prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib, which occurred two years later, in 2006.

When comparing McChrystal to General Petraeus, who has now replaced him (and is 1 for 1 in having completed Iraq and gotten us through it), “Where General Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher’s pet with a Ranger’s tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a Jedi commander…He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official.” (p. 96) Either McChrystal or Team McChrystal talked s*** about Obama’s top people, including Jim Jones, who was called ‘a clown stuck in 1985, and the U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, as well as Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. Quote: “The Boss (McChrystal) says he’s like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have someone yanking on s***.”

He is also a Jedi commander (a term Newsweek coined) who vigorously supported the COIN counterinsurgency strategy, a doctrine attempting to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting long, drawn-out wars in failed states. With cultish zeal, the “COINdinistas believe that this strategy would be the solution for Afghanistan if they could just get a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it. 

It does not appear that McChrystal is going to be that general. He got off to a notoriously weak start with Obama, complaining that Obama didn’t have a clue about what his credentials for the job were, and, as he put it, “I found that time painful. I was selling an unsellable position,” to Beltway Insiders like VP Joe Biden. 

Biden, who does like to talk, is said to have taken the position that “a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan would plunge America into a military quagmire without weakening international terrorist networks.” In other words, Biden, who is demeaned by McChrystal’s men as “Joe Bite Me!” just might be on to something. As, too, might Douglas Macgregor, who attended West Point with McChrystal and said, “The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people.  The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.” This from a man who went to West Point with McChrystal where he graduated 298^th out of 855 and was once found passed out in the shower, drunk. Even McChrystal’s own wife of 33 years said, in the story, “Even as a young officer he seemed to know what he wanted to do.  I don’t think his personality has changed in all these years.” And his personality, as described in the magazine, is that of a highly intelligent badass who wanted to transform systems he considered outdated and was “open to new ways of killing.” A former Special Forces operative who disliked McChrystal’s directives about “courageous restraint” in not killing innocent civilians said, “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts.  His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing, bottom line.” (p. 97) A three-tour man named Hicks says, “F***! When I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our f****** guns on. I get COIN. I Get all that. But we’re losing this thing.”

A senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who served as a political adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq in 2006, “They (the administration) are trying to manipulate perceptions because there is no definition of victory—because victory is not even defined or recognizable. That’s the game we’re in right now. What we need, for strategic purposes, is to create the perception that we didn’t get run off.  The facts on the ground are not great, and are not going to become great in the near future.” (p. 121) The article quotes those closest to McChrystal as saying that ‘the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn’t begin to reflect how deeply f***** up things are in Afghanistan If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.” (p. 121) 

Then there is a mention of how, “There’s a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here,” from a senior military officer in Kabul. (p. 121). Yet, in its closing paragraphs, the controversial article on General McChrystal that caused Obama to show him the door and send him to Tampa, Florida says, “Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency.  After 9 years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack.  The very people that COIN seeks to win over, the Afghan people, do not want us there.  Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse.” (p. 121) Not encouraging. Not encouraging at all.

And, in one of the article’s final paragraphs on page 121, Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan says, “Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem…So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war.” 

Last line? 

“Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.” 

And, for my final line, not even with General Petraeus (now) in charge.

President Barack Obama traveled to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida today (April 15, 2010) and addressed the scientists, engineers, astronauts and others gathered at NASA about his goals for the space program of the future.

Noted Obama,”It was here that NASA lunched Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the Hubbell Telescope.” Obama, reminisced about being held on his grandfather’s shoulders in 1961 in Hawaii to observe the return of astronauts from space. He said, “I have been part of that generation inspired by the space program…As president, I believe that space exploration is an essential part of our nation.  So, today, I’d like to talk about a new chapter in space exploration.”

BACKGROUND OF SPACE RACE
Recapping history and the space race we ran with Russia back in the day, Obama tried to explain that we are no longer in the position that our cold war with Russia put us in back in 1957 and beyond.  He did not, however, repudiate the space program, but, instead, repeated his commitment to NASA, pointing out that it was Bush the younger, 8 years ago, who decreed that the next 3 launches of the Challenger will be its last, due to cost constraints. That was not Obama’s decision, but George W. Bush’s.

Obama said, “I am 100% committed to the mission of NASA and its future. Because, if we fail to press forward we are ceding our imperative to press forward, and that’s part of our national character.”

Obama also went on to say, “People, for years, have neglected NASA’s mission.” He cited a reluctance to set objectives and to allocate funds and said, “All that has to change.” Therefore, Obama announced that, at a time when budgetary constraints are causing most programs to be cut or frozen, the budget for space exploration would increase by $6 billion dollars over the next 5 years. He went on to say, “NASA’s budget has risen and fallen with the political winds,” a practice which he decried.

NEW INITIATIVES

Some of the initiatives that Obama announced for NASA included ramping up robotic exploration of space, going to Mars, launching a successor to the Hubbell Telescope and extending the life of the International Space Station.  The president announced that, at a time of freezes, NASA must work hand-in-hand with an array of private sector corporations and said, “NASA has always worked well with the private sector.” Obama said that, with new companies competing, the pace could be accelerated and that “we must build on the good work already done on the Orion endeavor.  Orion will be readied for flight right here in this room.”

Another pledge was $3 billion for research to develop a new vehicle to reach deep space.  He announced the plan to “finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it.” This is at least 2 years earlier than previous plans, Obama noted. He announced that research should be made into ways to live and work in space for longer periods of time.

Said the president, “These are the questions that we can and will answer. We will not just continue on the same path, but leap into the future.”  He referred to these goals as “transformative strategies.” Noting that the Constellation program was not fulfilling its goals, he declared that the administration would take a look at it and try to improve it, but repeated, “Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am.” He pledged, “We will actually reach space sooner and more often,” with the partnership between NASA and the private sector. “We will send many more astronauts into space over the next decade.”

Obama pledged to invest in groundbreaking research, to set a course with achievable milestones.  “By 2025, the first ever missions beyond the moon and into deep space” will take place. He mentioned potentially visiting an asteroid.  By the mid 2030’s he said that the United States will journey to Mars and back and noted, “And I expect to be around to see it.”

Been There/Done That:

Obama downplayed the idea of going back to the moon, saying, “Some say, moon first. We’ve been there before.” He pledged, instead, that the development of deep-space propulsion systems would be critical to the space program he supports. In poo-poohing a return to the moon, he said, “I believe it’s much more important to ramp up, and that’s how we’ll insure that our exploration will be much more in the next century than it was in the last.”

Jobs Creation for Space Exploration:

Obama pledged, 2,500 jobs along the space coast, more than under his predecessor, George W. Bush. He furthermore pledged to modernize the Kennedy Space Center. Third on his list was the promise of (potentially) 10,000 more jobs in the private sector that would be allied with the government’s space program. He did note, “Some will see their jobs end (a decision made 8 years ago) when the Constellation program comes to an end, but I have directed a $40 million initiative to develop a plan for regular job growth to be on my desk by August 15^th of this year.”

THE NEXT CHAPTER IN SPACE EXPLORATION

Said Obama, “So this is the next chapter that we can reach together, right here at NASA.” He encouraged a “step-by-step push of the boundaries.” He urged a push for ways for people to live in space, calling it “humanity’s role in space.”

To the rhetorical question, “Why spend money on NASA, on space exploration, at all?” Obama answered:  “You and I know this is a false choice.  For pennies on the dollar, space exploration has inspired generations of Americans, creating jobs, etc….I want to say clearly that is exactly why it is important that we push limits,” but he urged “clear aims” and “a larger purpose.”

Obama called the moon landing achieved under President John F. Kennedy in 1969 “one of the greatest achievements in human history.”

BEGINNING OR ENDING?

He added, “Is this a beginning or an ending of the space program? I choose to believe that this is the beginning of something, not the end of something.” He repeated that the race into space helped define the United States and  that the decision to retire the space shuttle after 3 more missions was made by “W” some time ago.

I watched the live speech on the Fox news channel, and I expected to hear derision and nay saying after the inspiring speech. The paid talking head was remarkably positive towards the president’s message. However, the  “expert” that Fox hired to be interviewed (Homer Hickam, supposedly a former NASA engineer),  upheld Fox’s anti-Obama bias almost to the point of being ludicrous and laughable. Hickam said, “If you want to talk about dinosaur bones, I’m your man” as the segment wound down, which had little or nothing to do with the issue of Obama’s speech on space exploration.

Hickam’s comments included these: “I just hope the people in charge don’t mess it up so bad that we can’t fix it.” (Oh. You mean like Bush did for 8 years? We’re all familiar with that strategy.)

He claimed that Obama has “a bad team” in John Holderin, his space expert. (I was tempted to ask, “There are worse team than those assembled by “W” when in office, including Brownie and Rumsfeld?) Hickam added, “They don’t have the ability to organize a Boy Scouts’ Jamboree,” which seemed, even for Fox, to be  hyperbole. After the additional comment that, “I think the people he’s got in charge don’t have a clue,” the Hickam person held up his handheld GPS, his cell phone ( he would have held up a microwave and a flat screen televison, if he had been given more time and ones that were small enough), claiming that all of these developments came to us courtesy of NASA.

Hickam  said, “That GPS saved my life when I was out there in the desert looking for dinosaur bones” (?) and went off on a conversational tangent about dinosaur bones. I am unsure where this so-called “expert” came from or under what conditions he left NASA, but the Obama speech was really inspiring and, in direct contradiction of Hickam’s later accusation that it was “so vague,” the speech set actual deadlines for many of these space initiatives, which is something I do not remember hearing from any president since JFK. Four of them are mentioned in the paragraphs above. The speech was interrupted  by spontaneous applause by the NASA scientists and engineers on several occasions.

I spent 3 weeks in Florida in January and February. NASA workers there were understandably concerned about their futures.  This speech went a long way towards reassuring top-notch current NASA workers (Homer Hickam is not among that group).  After this speech, they should feel more reassured that their jobs are not going away. This will help prevent a brain drain of our top researchers.  Obama’s commitment to the cause of space exploration, just as his commitment to passing a health care bill, seemed real and genuine during today’s speech.

Don Blackford,, Federal Government Employee from Omaha (originally from Logan, Iowa): “I’m just here for the Constitution…what is right…what is wrong…” The protester below stood outside the University of Iowa Fieldhouse with his sign, which correlates with the fact that 13 states are attempting to sue to stop the new Health Care bill.

Judy Holle of Davenport, Iowa, an Obama supporter, wears a shirt that says, “I voted for Obama and all I got was this historic victory on health care.” On the back of the shirt was a message supportive of cancer survivors.

President Barack Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast at the Hilton in Washington, D.C. today, February 4, 2010. His remarks on civility are worth repeating, although I am only sharing excerpts, with commentary. . The entire transcript appeared in the Washington Post under the title “Politics and Policy in Washington” in an online posting made at 10:55 a.m. on Thursday (Feb. 4, 2010).

After the normal “welcomes” and reference to how “prayer can bring sustenance to our lives” Obama said, “But there is a sense that something is different now; that something is broken; that those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should. At times, it seems like we’re unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate.  And this erosion of civility in the public square sows division and distrust among our citizens.  It poisons the well of public opinion.  It leaves each side little room to negotiate with the other.  It makes politics an all-or-nothing sport, where one side is either always right or always wrong when, in reality, neither side has a monopoly on truth…Empowered by faith, consistently, prayerfully, we need to find our way back to civility.”

Obama went on, “Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable…We forget that we share at some deep level the same dreams—even when we don’t share the same plans on how to fulfill them.”  The president urged a way “to make an impact in a way that’s civil and respectful of difference and focused on what matters most.

Obama quoted three great leaders in making his point(s) on civility:

1)      Abraham Lincoln, who said, on the eve of the Civil War, “We are not enemies, but friends.  Though passions may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

2)      Martin Luther King:  “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

3)      President John F. Kennedy: “Civility is not a sign of weakness.”

Obama said, “But progress doesn’t come when we demonize opponents.  It’s not born in righteous spite.” He added, “It seems like the very idea (of civility) is a relic of some bygone era.  The word itself seems quaint—civility.”

All of the above excerpts from our president’s February 4^th speech are so true and so sad. I have bold-faced the last line, because I think that President Obama may not realize how true it is: civility and politeness are, indeed, values no longer abroad in the land. Civility is a quaint word and a quaint concept in 2010.

It seems that only the older generation—those who grew up in the age of Truman and Eisenhower or before— have even a dim memory of how it used to be in society.  Children were taught to be polite; rudeness towards one’s parents, peers or teachers was not tolerated. The longshoreman language we hear spouted by even first-grade students in schools was non-existent in those “happy days.”

In today’s schools at every level, teachers are lucky if they are merely called profane names. Educators are fortunate if they are only assaulted with idle threats and profane insults when things don’t go the students’ way.  The teacher is no longer always right. Mom and Dad—if there is one— (and, often, the administration of the school) will very often side with Junior and undercut attempts at enforcing standards of civility and polite discourse. In some noteworthy cases, Junior may become violent, a threat to himself, his teachers, and his classmates. These outbursts, this impolite, dangerous behavior did not happen in the days of civility and polite discourse.

Not just schools and government, but all of our institutions are under attack; none of our institutions are totally trusted any longer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fireman, a policeman, a teacher or a politician. Whatever form of authority you represent, even if it is simply the owner of a store, handling customer complaints is a nightmare in this age of out-of-control anger and uncivil behavior.

What was most telling, for me, about President Obama’s eloquent words, were the three quotes he selected to illustrate his very valid points about civility in 2010. Obama quoted John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the martyred president of Camelot lost; Martin Luther King, Jr., the murdered Civil Rights leader who preached nonviolence to his followers; and Abraham Lincoln, whose enemies chose to still that Illinois president’s voice of reason with a bullet to the brain

I found the words of President Obama’s speech true and moving.

However, I fear that he is pleading for something that is perhaps gone forever, like the dinosaur, or, if not gone, in very short supply.  Quoting three murdered leaders only makes me fear more for our president and for our country, which so badly needs polite and civil discourse and both sides working together in civil harmony, rather than radical rants and unreasonable stone-walling.

Something is broken, Mr. President, not just in Washington, D.C., but also in the United States of America. Can chaos give way to order? Can the bell of rude behavior be unrung when it’s been pealing for decades?

Many things are definitely broken in America. I wonder if they can be fixed?

Today’s big gaffe by the Obama administration was made by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood—-coincidentally, my former neighbor in East Moline, Illinois, and a great guy (also, a Republican, most recently residing in Peoria, Illinois and representing that district in Illinois before his decision to retire.)

Ray was testifying before Congress about the sticking pedal on certain Toyota models, a number of which have been recalled by the company for fixing. The problem seemed to be that Ray was not speaking officially…or he didn’t think that he was, at the time he was testifying…but the man-in-the-street heard Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, telling them to quit driving their Toyotas and drive immediately to the nearest Toyota dealership for a fix of the problem. (Oh, oh.)

In Ray’s defense, he corrected himself within 2 hours and admitted he had “misspoken,” but the harm was done. In Florida, where I am now, various channels had Floridians from all walks of life saying things like, “How will I get home from work?” (I’m not making this up, Folks. One of the interview subjects actually told the reporter this, with a very worried look.)

I am the proud owner of 2 Toyota Prius vehicles (I’ve written on this subject on AC before). I also owned a third, which is now in my son’s possession in Chicago. Of course, currently I’m not in Illinois, where my green Prius (the grasshopper) is sitting in the garage, waiting for me to make the final five payments to say that I own it. But I can assure you that I would not be panicking at the thought of driving that car home from work (if I had work to drive home from, that is.)

I read, elsewhere, that the co-founder of Apple says that his Prius will automatically escalate up to 97 mph when he uses his cruise control. [My answer to that would be, “Don’t use the cruise control.”]

Where has common sense gone in all the hoopla over the really unfortunate, although isolated, incidents involving (some) Toyota vehicles? The Lexus accident that precipitated the recall (of floor mats, initially) was truly horrifying, and it did take an inordinate amount of time for Toyota to own up to the fact that there was something going on with their vehicles, but things seem to be getting out of hand.

As I type this, I’m watching a satirical take-off on “American Idol’s” auditions on Jimmy Kimmel.  I watched the young man talk about how his father was eaten by an alligator (leg shown sticking out of alligator’s mouth) and, on the way home from the funeral service, someone threw a bucket at his mother from a bridge overpass as she drove underneath in a convertible. She had to be buried with the bucket on her head. (Okay…questionable taste and graphic there, but it was Jimmy Kimmel, not me.)

Given the panic that a simple misstatement by our current Secretary of Transportation (Ray LaHood) caused on February 3^rd after his inadvertent remark before Congress, the Toyota Tempest caused by Ray’s remark today (not the need for a fix for a real problem, but the foot-in-mouth comment) is ripe for a “Saturday Night Live” skit. I can see it now:

First, a shot of LaHood telling people not to drive their Toyota vehicles, but to take them immediately to dealerships.

Next, a shot of hordes of screaming villagers jamming the entrances to Toyota dealerships, nationwide, demanding the chip or floor mat or whatever it is that is supposed to end this madness, and demanding it RIGHT NOW! Maybe some of them could be carrying torches. Or, failing that, discarded rubber floor mats.

Next, a scene depicting those wusses who are still at work as the hour grows late, sitting there staring timidly at their parked Toyota vehicles but too afraid to climb in and drive 3 blocks home.

I’m obviously watching too much television while on vacation in the Sunshine State, where a shark ate a surfer today. (New Smyrna Beach is “the shark bite capital of the United States.”) To quote David Letterman, “Hep me! Hep me! I been hip-no-tized!”  watching this Toyota Tempest play out on television.

 And, Ray: I mean no disrespect. You’re doing a great job. Just get us that railroad paralleling I-80 (Chicago to the Quad Cities to Des Moines) and all is forgiven. I’ll even ask “Saturday Night Live” to call off the skit.

Today is a good day to write this for my daughter, who lives in Nashville and attended college  (Belmont University) in Nashville. It may (or may not) enlighten her to an anniversary being hailed by USA Today in their Monday, February 1, 2010 issue, in a front page story entitled “How a Demand for Lunch Fueled a Push for Rights.” The story, written by Larry Copeland, references the 50-year anniversary of a sit-in by black students and their white friends at the businesses along Fifth Street in Nashville, Tennessee.

Although Nashville’s sit-in protesting racial discrimination at the city’s lunch counters like Woolworth’s (then a staple) was upstaged by an impromptu sit-in the day before, [on February 1, 1960], at North Carolina A&T College, by four black students (all freshman African American students at AT&T College)—Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond and Franklin McCain—the Nashville protest movement involved many more students, both local residents and many who were urged, as I was, to get on buses and travel South to be part of the protests. Many of these Freedom Riders, as they were known (or trouble-makers, if you were a local in the Southern community being visited), were organized by SNCC (the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee).

SNCC was organized in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1960 to help coordinate sit-ins and freedom rides and marches. Most were unpaid volunteers, but some were paid $10 a week to help the organization. Initially, the organization was meant to be non-violent. In its later incarnations under Stokely Carmichael, when the Black Power salute came into being, etc., the organization’s leaders said, “I don’t know how much longer we can remain non-violent,” and, indeed, it did not stand fast to Martin Luther King’s original nonviolent protest principles and passed out of existence in the seventies. However, during the hey-day of the sixties, SNCC was instrumental in helping organize protest movements in the United States, both by raising funds and by recruiting sympathetic students from across the northern part of the United States, who traveled South to help win civil rights for the black residents.

One of the most influential, in fact, would be an English major from Chicago, Diane Nash, who emerged as a key spokeswoman and ultimately confronted Nashville’s Mayor, Ben West at the height of the city’s sit-ins of 1960 (.

Nashville, Tennessee in 1960 was still a segregated city in the South, although it prided itself on being “the Athens of the South,” with its model Parthenon in the park and what officials felt was an enlightened attitude. But the black students who could not be served at Woolworth’s, S.H. Kress, McClellan’s, Grant’s, Walgreen’s and Cain-Sloan along Fifth Street didn’t quite see it that way.

Today, with the benefit of looking back from the vantage-point of 50 years in the future, it is apparent that the Nashville protest for civil rights was far better organized than many of those being staged in 112 Southern cities by October of 1960 (as documented in Juan Williams’ book Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil rights Years, 1954-1965).  Of the 112 sit-ins and other demonstrations staged, many were ineffectual. It is a tribute to the preparation and planning of leaders like Chicago’s Diane Nash that Nashville’s sit-ins and protest movement yielded fruit that today’s college students benefit from, even if they cannot remember and, sometimes, cannot believe that this sort of unrest occurred in their fair city.

While Joseph McNeil, one of the original sit-in demonstrators at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, had simply “had enough” and did what he did with little preparation or forethought, simply because, “I didn’t want to see my children have to face the same problems.  We just felt that this certainly was a time to act. If not now, when? If not my generation, what generation?” others spent more time preparing and planning. McNeil is now 67 and a retired Air Force Reserve major general who lives in Hempstead, New York. He adds, “My parents grew up and carried the scars of racial segregation.”

Lest readers think that Nashville, with its reputation as the Athens of the South, was so much better than Greensboro, North Carolina, let me quote 82-year-old John Seigenthaler in the USA Today front page article (Feb. 1, 2010) who was then the weekend city editor of The Tennessean, Nashville’s leading newspaper. Said Seigenthaler, “It (Nashville) was as segregated by race as any city in South Africa during apartheid.” Seigenthaler went on to become the first editorial director of USA Today, after serving as editor and publisher of The Tennessean.

When 124 students who had been coached in non-violent reaction by groups such as SNCC, dressed in their Sunday best, marched quietly, 2 abreast, from a nearby church to Fifth Avenue in Nashville and entered Woolworth’s, S.H. Kress, and McClellan’s, stores that, today, we would describe as “dime stores,” they were told by a waitress, “We don’t serve niggers here.”

The students waited quietly while other shoppers stared.  The protesters sat for a few hours and then left. However, the students returned over and over again during the next 2 weeks and added a fourth store, Grant’s, and a fifth, Walgreen’s.  (None of these stores remain on Nashville’s Fifth Avenue, today, except Walgreen’s, which hasn’t had a lunch counter in decades, as that particular American cultural phenomenon has been supplanted by fast food places like McDonald’s and Burger King.)

Each subsequent sit-in grew larger, attracting more students to the cause, but each subsequent sit-in also attracted supportive, idealistic white youths of the era. Protesters were heckled, beat, and spat upon the protesters and all this has been documented on film. By February 27, 1960, Nashville had decided to crack down on the disruption(s) to the local businesses and 81 students had been arrested.

Seigenthaler remembers, “For the white community, there was shock, anger, overwhelmingly negative feelings. The business community adopted a very steel-backed approach, rigid and very negative.”

I remember that, in my own case, I only took part in demonstrations that were held on the campuses of the universities I was actually attending. My parents decreed that there would be no bus trips to Southern cities for this college co-ed. But the colleges I was attending during the years outlined in Juan Williams’ book (see above) were the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. (If you think things were “all quiet on the western front at Berkeley,” you have not read many history books about “Berzerkley” in the sixties.)

I remember that all the bookstore windows were broken out during demonstrations, to the point that the bookstores on both campuses replaced their previously glass windows with a bricked-up substitute. I remember the (repeated) occupation of Sproul Hall (the administration building) on campus at Berkeley and many protest rallies and concerts by such luminaries as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and, in one memorable poetry reading, Alan Ginsberg.

Ginsberg, the much-acclaimed author of “Howl” and one of the Beat Poets (like Jack Kerouac of “On the Road”) was so high on something that the janitor had to be summoned to actually physically lift the man, (squatting cross-legged in yoga lotus position onstage with finger cymbals), and remove him from the stage (stage left, as they say). I remember Mario Savio, now deceased, who was constantly rallying the student demonstrators, and just as constantly being hauled off to jail. [Imagine my surprise on a return trip to Berkeley recently to discover a life-sized statue of this leader of the Free Speech movement and civil rights activist right on campus. (“The times, they are a’changin’,” for sure.)]

But back to Nashville, so that my daughter, born in 1987, may read some reminiscences of others more central to integrating the city she now calls home.

Sit-ins had been tried in more than 12 cities, beginning in Wichita, Kansas in 1958, but the one in Greensboro, North Carolina described above ignited the most passion and reignited Dr. Martin Luther King’s movement, which had flagged after the Rosa Parks bus incident in Birmingham, Alabama, faded from memory. Without the students leading the way, Dr. King’s movement might well have faltered, but the unbridled enthusiasm of youth—harnessed again in Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008—rescued a flagging Civil Rights movement back in the sixties.

By February, 1960, sit-ins had taken place in 31 cities. By March, 1960, sit-ins had taken place in 71 cities (USA Today article of Feb. 1, 2010, by Larry Copeland, p.2A). By October, 1960, sit-ins had occurred in 112 Southern cities. The movement was growing and, in Nashville, at least, students from all over the country and all over the world were feeding it.  Said Representative John Lewis, (D, Ga.) who was then 19 and among those in the Civil Rights movement in 1960, “Students would come to Fisk to watch films and plays, or come to the Fisk Chapel to listen to unbelievable music, but they could not eat together downtown in racially mixed groups.”

For 2 years prior to the Nashville movement of 1960, Lewis was among a group of students learning non-violent tactics from James Lawson, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. (Again, at Iowa, the group was SNCC, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). This is where Diane Nash from Chicago, mentioned earlier, studied the movement and where Bernard LaFayette, who later became a college president, would take part. C.T. Vivian, who later became an Atlanta city councilman was there and Marion Barry, later the Mayor of Washington, D.C. whose antics in office earned him a less-than-stellar reputation for drug use and womanizing, decades afterwards.

All these disparate people came together and planned, for 2 years, to hold mock sit-ins and studied how NOT to respond if attacked or arrested. Test sit-ins were held in late 1959 at 2 Nashville department stores, Harvey’s and Cain-Sloan. All this was in preparation for “the real deal,” which rolled out on February 13, 1960.

Says LaFayette, today, “There was an ongoing debate between the students and their parents.  They (the parents) feared for our safety, because we were going up against a system that was not known to be very sympathetic or humane, particularly law enforcement in the South.”

I had grown up in the lily-white town of Independence, Iowa. I did not have…then or now…. one shred of prejudice towards any other ethnic group. It isn’t that I can claim any moral high ground. I just had had no bad experiences of any kind (nor good, for that matter) with the students referenced as “colored.” Basic human decency and logic would dictate that people are people, no matter what color or religion they are, and should be treated equally well. Isn’t it the Bible that says, “Do unto others as ye would have them do unto you?”

It didn’t take me long to decide where I would stand on this issue, but how active I could/would be in the movement was dictated by my conservative Midwestern parents who controlled the purse strings. However, when I was on campus where it was all happening (as at Berkeley and Iowa)…(finish that thought). My parents were completely clear that I was NOT to sign anything, NOT to get arrested, and NOT to get on a bus heading south.

However, as long as I didn’t sign anything (“Do NOT sign anything,” said my stern father.) nor get on a bus for parts unknown, like the hapless college students whose short lives and brutish murders are so compellingly portrayed in the 1988 Alan Parker film “Mississippi Burning” (Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe), I could take part in protests on the campuses I was actually attending without repercussions that would cause trouble with the authorities (and, in that group, I include my conservative parents). I remember particularly vividly giving blood to be thrown on the steps of Old Capitol in protest, but the protest was an anti Vietnam War protest, not a Civil Rights protest.

 This period of time stretched from 1963 to 1968, later than the period (1960) being discussed in the USA Today story. Still, I remember that the beacon burned bright in those years of the sixties, especially as anti-war protests against the Vietnam War, fueled by our nation’s draft system, began to become part of the mix.

As for sit-ins, perhaps 100,000 participated in them, according to historian Clayborne Carson, and 3,000 were arrested in 1960, alone, so demands that you “not get arrested” were reality-based when delivered by a worried parent to an idealistic would-be participant.

The sit-ins in Nashville carried on in to April of 1960, costing local merchants money. Easter was approaching and the large black middle class in Nashville organized a “No New Clothes Easter.” “Jim Crow” laws in at least 11 Southern states prohibited inter-racial mingling between blacks and whites, but, in 1954, the Supreme Court had ordered the schools desegregated. Ordering it didn’t make it happen, however, and there have been books written about the integration of the South’s most revered black institutions (colleges, universities, public schools), including a famous Norman Rockwell painting depicting a small black girl walking into a previously all-white school.

Said a Nashville student who was part of the protest movement of 1960 (Mitchell) of the “No New Clothes Easter:” “People were very serious about this.  They didn’t shop.  Anyone who had new clothes that Easter stood out.” Naturally, this hurt local merchants and Mayor Ben West proposed a compromise whereby a 3-month trial period would allow blacks to be served in a separate area of the local restaurants (Remember “separate but equal?”). This angered the black students and it was rejected. The sit-ins continued.

On April 19^th, the home of the students’ attorney, Z. Alexander Lobby, was bombed. Thousands of people, both black and white, marched in silence to City Hall later that day, where spokeswoman Diane Nash (the Chicago convert) addressed Mayor Ben West, saying, “Mayor, do you recommend that the lunch counters be desegregated?”

The Mayor—who had always been viewed as a moderate and who was a white man presiding over an integrated city council—hesitated briefly and then said, “Yes.” (This version comes from Seigenthaler, who was present.) Says historian Clayborne Carson, “The sit-ins were the real starting point of the protests of the 1960s.”

By May 10, 1960, six Fifth Avenue stores (Kress’, Woolworth’s, McClellan’s, Grant’s, Walgreen’s and Cain-Sloan’s) seated black customers at lunch counters for the first time. When Reverend Martin Luther-King came to Nashville mere days after the confrontation between Chicago’s Diane Nash and Mayor Ben West, he told a capacity crowd in the Fisk auditorium, “The Nashville sit-ins were the best organized and the most disciplined in the Southland.” (Parting the Waters by Pulitzer-prize winner Taylor Branch).

As a sometimes Chicagoan who participated in protests during the troubled decade of the sixties, it is difficult for me to explain to my 22-year-old daughter, who lives in the very city where much of this occurred, how it is conceivable that a white minority would or could attempt to keep down a black majority. One has only to look to apartheid in South Africa with the Dutch colonial settlers (and this year’s “Invictus” film by Clint Eastwood) to realize that the history I lived through and participated in (to a lesser extent than these pioneers, but to the extent that I was able to do so) really did occur.

As Seigenthaler put it, “It’s really tough to understand how a city could be so insensitive, and, in some ways, so dumb, but Nashville’s ability to resolve it within a relatively short period of time and put it behind them is worth considering.” Says Mitchell, “Nashville, today, is a city that’s very respected in race relations. It’s a diverse, international community.  The present generation is often shocked when we refer to the sit-ins. They see a very open and urban community, and they don’t believe that that happened here.”

As you drive down Fifth Avenue in Nashville, today, little remains to remind of the history that took place in these streets. There are no signs or memorials and, although the sign is still up at the old Kress store, it’s been converted into loft apartments.  Walgreen’s, the only store of those mentioned that remains, has no lunch counter, and has had no such amenity in decades.

Nashville residents, like my daughter, can sit together and eat lunch wherever they want with whomever they choose, today. But they owe that freedom to Freedom Riders (as they were known), youths like me, who often boarded buses and traveled South (at considerable risk) to join their oppressed fellowman, in the hope of assuring “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” just as our Constitution has assured our citizens since the 1700s. It was justice and equality for all under the law, regardless of race, color or creed that the children of the sixties stood up for.  I hope today’s youth and tomorrow’s youth-yet-to-be-born remember this history 50 years from now.

Two-thirds of the President’s State of the Union address on January 27, 2010 was expected to focus on the problem of creating jobs in the country, and it did. A gay person’s right to serve in the military would also earn mention, and there would be a stinging rebuke to the United States Supreme Court for a recent decision of theirs allowing corporations to contribute as much as they wish, financially, in elections. This latter comment was said to be a frontal assault on the Supreme Court Justices. Commentators said you’d have to go back 70 years to find such a thing, back to Roosevelt.  (Judge Alito was seen visually shaking his head and, —also an unusual thing—he was seen mouthing words to the effect of “He’s wrong,” this year’s version of “You lie.”)

The decision to let corporations contribute to political campaigns, previously prohibited by the McCain/Feingold bill, seems a dangerous one. President Obama planned to take the matter of what he views as their poor decision up publicly during his State of the Union Address, which is also extraordinary.

OPENING

Obama entered, shaking hands with those along the pathway. The cheers seemed sincere. Bob Schieffer, CBS Chief Washington Correspondent, said, “What an ego-boost,” in commenting on the claps and cheers. Harry Reid (Majority Leader) was seen directly behind the president to his right. The Republicans were told to behave themselves during the State of the Union address. [No “You lie(s)!” tonight, in other words.] The President hugged Timothy Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury) and the camera roamed the room, focusing on no one in particular.  No doubt the recent Massachusetts loss of Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat weighed heavy on the minds of the Democrats. For Republicans, it seemed that the loss of the longtime Democratic seat was like blood in the water to a shark or a piranha.

“In fact, they (Congress) need to move on to jobs,” said Katie Couric before the speech began. Half of the party wants him to pivot to jobs and the economy and half likes the fact that he went ‘all in’ (as they say in poker) on Health Care Reform, which Obama said would help the economy and the job situation.

With Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden behind him, the thought was that, tonight, Obama would try to re-connect with the American people and regain his political capital, perhaps squandered on Health Care (and never to be regained?)

“I think we can expect a fiery speech,” said Katie Couric in anticipating the speech’s commencement, noting criticism of Obama for being dispassionate and disconnected. Shots of Michelle Obama in the balcony clad in a deep plum-colored ensemble and surrounded by some outstanding students preceded Obama’s remarks.

“Our constitution declares that, from time to time, the president shall give to America details about the state of our union…they’ve done so in times of prosperity and tranquility, in moments of great strife and great struggle. It’s tempting to look back and assume that our progress was inevitable and America was always destined to succeed,” Obama began.  Obama then moved on to mention many of our nation’s flashpoints, dates and times that live on in infamy: Black Tuesday, civil rights workers being beaten, Bull Run and said, “These were the times that tested the strength of our Union. America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation and as one people. Again, we are tested and again we must answer this call.”

RECAP OF STATE OF UNION UPON ASSUMING THE PRESIDENCY

Obama then recapped the state of the nation when he took over. (Summation: really, really bad and on the verge of a Depression.)  “So we acted, immediately and aggressively…One in ten Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. For those who already knew poverty, their burden has become that much harder.’ Working harder for less was already the lot of many, said Obama, adding, “So I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They’re not news. That’s why I ran for President.” He then mentioned Galesburg, Illinois by name, a small town not far from my own home base (although I listened to him give this speech from Florida, where the locals were wondering if he would mention the Space program (alive or dead?) and where he spent today in Tampa announcing a $3.5 million-dollar rail initiative that will link Miami and Orlando and many other Florida cities in between. (Sure hope the rail system between the Quad Cities, Chicago, and Des Moines is not far behind).

“For these Americans and so many others, change has not come fast enough. Some are frustrated. Some are angry. They don’t understand why what seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded while hard work on Main Street is not.” The president then added that citizens are tired of the shouting and pettiness. “So we face big and difficult challenges,” said Obama, understating the situation. He urged cooperation in the face of the problems we face and urged that we strive to provide citizens with “a job that pays the bills…Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life.” He declared that our people share (d) “a stubborn resilience in the face of adversity.” One woman’s letter was quoted, as she called herself, “Strained but hopeful, struggling, but encouraged.”

“I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight,” said Obama approximately 10 minutes into the speech, to applause from the gallery. (One was tempted to mutter, “That makes one of us.”)
”Despite our hardships, our Union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit. In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that embodies their strength.”

ECONOMY

“Tonight, I’d like to speak about how, together, we can deliver on that promise. It begins with our economy.” Obama then spoke about the banking crisis that occurred as he entered office. He said, “I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal. But when I ran for president I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular; I would do what was necessary.” The president sketched a scenario where things would have been much worse if the financial rescue had not been implemented, citing the transparency that the Democrats put in place upon assuming office. (McCain would later disagree about this transparency of government on Larry King’s late-night show).

“We’ve recovered most of the money we spent on the banks, most but not all.” He then mentioned the fee on the biggest banks he proposed to recover the rest still owed. (Joe Biden was smiling like a shark at this point.) “If they can afford big bonuses, they can afford to repay the consumers who rescued them in their time of need.”

“As we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to stabilize the economy: extended unemployment benefits, COBRA uptick, 25 different tax cuts for 95% of working families, for small businesses, for first-time home buyers, for 8 million American paying for college,” said Obama. (“I thought I’d get some applause on that one,” said Obama, as a small joke towards the non-applauding Republicans.)

INCOME TAXES

“As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend, “ and he talked about how income taxes have not been raised ‘by a single dime.” Two million Americans working right now were cited, 200,000 in construction and clean energy; 300,000 teachers; many first responders and firemen and police officers were mentioned as proof of the bill’s efficacy. “The Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill.  Economists on the left and the right say this bill has helped save jobs and avert disaster.” (I saw a recent television investigation into the making of signs in Ohio that seemed to suggest no jobs were created by making the signs, but many dollars were spent.)

Phoenix, Philadelphia, a single teacher who did not lose her job after having previously been riffed were all cited as signs of the Stimulus Bill’s success. Obama then cited slow signs of recovery. “But I realize for every success story there are stories of men and women who wake up not knowing where their next paycheck will come from. That is why jobs must be our Number One focus in 2010 and that is why I’m calling for a new jobs bill tonight,” said Obama.

JOBS BILL

“Now, the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America’s businesses,” said Obama.  “But government can create the conditions for businesses to expand and hire more workers.” He proposed that the focus be on small businesses, the kind where an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream and succeeds through sheer grit and determination. He cited Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Elyria, Ohio, saying that banks are mostly lending (again) to big businesses, not small ones. “So, tonight, I’m proposing that we take $30 billion of the money that big banks have repaid and use it to help small business get the credit they need to stay afloat.” Also, a Small Business Tax Credit was proposed for those businesses that hire new workers or raise wages. President Obama also pledged to eliminate all capital gains taxes on new equipment purchases.

NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS & ENERGY

“Next,” said Obama, “we can put the United States to work today creating the infrastructure of tomorrow.” Citing other countries that lead us, he noted that he is coming down where I am now (Tampa, Florida) tomorrow on a visit to announce a big rail construction project.  He proposed putting more Americans to work building clean energy facilities and giving rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient; he proposed slashing tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, giving them, instead, to companies that keep jobs here in the United States.

Obama remarked on the bill that the House has passed that creates some of these steps and urged the Senate to do the same, adding, “and I know they will.” “People are out of work. They’re hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay.”

He then added that these steps wouldn’t make up for the 7 million jobs lost over the past two years. “We can’t afford another so-called economic expansion from the so-called ‘lost decade’ where jobs grew more slowly than ever before, a time when prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation.”  Obama then cited all the things he’s been told since taking office: “How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold? You see Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse.” He then cited China, Germany and India as countries that are putting more emphasis on math and science and putting more emphasis on clean energy. “I do not accept second place for the United States of America,” he said, to tumultuous applause. Nearly all stood.

FINANCIAL REFORM

“As hard as it may be, as contentious as the debates ay become, it’s time to get serious about the problems that are hampering our growth. One place to start is serious financial reform. I’m interested in protecting our economy.” He went on to talk about the benefits of a strong financial system, but added that we must guard against the same recklessness that nearly brought down our entire financial system. “We can’t allow financial institutions to take risks that threaten our entire economy.” Again, he cited the House having passed a bill that addresses these problems, and said he would send the bill back “until we get it right.” (“We’ve gotta’ get it right.”)

INNOVATION

Next, we need to encourage American innovation.” Commenting on the investment(s) in cancer treatments and solar cells and energy, he said that we could see the results of last year’s investments in clean energy in both North Carolina and California. These were states that created clean energy jobs. The president called for “A new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country,”. Nearly everyone applauded when he said,  “It means making tough decisions about opening off-shore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in bio-fuels and clean coal technologies. And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill that will finally make clean energy the kind that will make it profitable in America.”

“The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

EXPORT

Obama then said he set a goal of doubling exports in the next five years, which, he said, would increase jobs in America. ‘We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations seek trade deals, we will lose the opportunity to create jobs on our shores. But, realizing those benefits means also enforcing the fact that our trading partners must ‘play by the rules.’” Obama suggested strengthening the U.S.’s Asian markets and continuing to increase trade with places like Colombia and Panama.
EDUCATION

Obama also urged investing in educating our people. He wants to reward reform that raises student achievement and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, nodded his head in agreement. “The best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education.” (Applause.) “And in this country the success cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential.” Obama said. “In this economy, a high school diploma no longer guarantees a good job,” as he urged the revitalization of the community college system. He talked about the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies to banks for giving student loans and said, instead, take that money and give $10,000 to parents for increased education spending. Students only must repay 10% of student loans and would have the debt forgiven in 20 years. He urged colleges and universities to start cutting their own costs, as well. VP Biden is chairing a committee to work on this issue for middle-class families. He talked about working to lift the value of homes and cited the $1500 (on average) savings on mortgage payments.  “And it is precisely to relieve the burden on middle-class families that we still need health insurance reform.”

HEALTH CARE REFORM

“Let’s clear a few things up,” said Obama to laughter. “I didn’t choose to tackle this issue to get some legislative issue under my belt and, by now, it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics” (Laughter). He went on to recite specific instances of people who are “just one illness away from financial ruin.” He stated that we are closer than ever to bringing health care to every American and explained how the reform bill would protect Americans from the worst practices of the insurance industry.  He thanked wife Michelle Obama, who is going to help tackle the problem of childhood obesity. (“She gets embarrassed,” said Obama, to chuckles from the audience, when he recognized his wife in the balcony, a First Lady whose approval ratings have been soaring even as her husband’s have been dropping.)

Obama talked about his health care program as cutting costs and cited the office of the budget as saying his plan would bring down the deficit by as much as one trillion dollars over the next decade. “Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated the more skeptical people became.” He went on to talk about the American people’s skepticism and cynicism and he talked about how premiums continue to go up and patients continue to lose their care. “I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this Chamber.”

“There’s a reason why health care workers consider this a vast improvement over our current system,” he then said. Throwing out a challenge to the Republicans who have stalled and refused to vote for reform, he said, “If anyone has a better plan, lemme’ know.” Senator Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader was seen applauding and on his feet. “Don’t walk away from reform, not now, not when we are so close. Let us find a way to come together to finish the job for the American people. Let’s get it done. Let’s get it done.”

GOVERNMENT SPENDING FREEZE/NATIONAL DEBT

“Now, even as health care reform would reduce our deficit, it’s not enough to dig us out of a massive fiscal hole we’ve dug ourselves into.” He started the discussion of government spending by saying that, at the beginning of 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion dollars. “By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next few years. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion dollar hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.” (McCain, in the audience, was seen saying something to the man to his right. It may have been what he said to Larry King on his show later that night, when he said that Obama must quit blaming Bush for the deficit(s).)

“We took office amid a crisis, and our efforts to avoid another Depression have added another trillion dollars to our national debt. I’m absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do.” He then cited belt-tightening that both individuals across the land and the federal government should do.

Specific steps to pay off the trillion-dollar economy rescue:

1)      Freeze government spending for 3 years (with some sectors exempted, such as national security.)

2)      Medicare, Medicaid, national security not affected, but other discretionary income will be affected. A budget will be enforced, and, if necessary, he vowed to enforce it through veto. He explained that this budget would be for next year.

3)      “We will continue to go through the budget line-by-line and page-by-page. We’ve already identified $20 billion in savings for next year. Oil companies, investment fund managers, those making over $250,000 a year will not continue to get tax cuts.”

4)      Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security: Obama called for a bi-partisan fiscal committee. He wants a specific set of guidelines by a certain deadline. “I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.” (Applause)

“When the vote comes tomorrow, the Senate should restore the pay-as-you-go law. That was a big reason we had record surpluses in the 1990’s. Some will argue that we can’t freeze government spending when so many are hurting. The freeze won’t take effect until next year. If we don’t take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it will have negative effects.” From some on the right, he said, he expected to hear arguments that our deficits will just go away if we maintain the status quo. “The problem is: that’s what we did for 8 years. That’s what helped lead to these deficits. That’ what led us into this crisis. It’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt…

DISTRUST & CYNICISM IN THE LAND

“Let’s try common sense, a novel concept. To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of values, we face a deficit of trust.” He cited the “deep and growing trust that government works” and asserted that we should do our work openly and end the effects of lobbyists. “That’s what I came to Washington to do,” said Obama. “It’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to corporations to spend without limit in our elections, said Obama (a direct slap at the recent Supreme Court decision overturning these limits). “I don’t think that American elections should be bankrolled by our biggest corporations or, worse, by foreign entities.” (Supreme Court Justices were seen shaking their heads.)

Earmark reforms were then earmarked for criticism. “Democrats and Republicans, restoring the public trust requires more.” He called on Congress to publicize all earmarks on a single website ‘before there’s a vote, so the American people can see how their money is being spent.”

Reform how we work with one another, said Obama. “I never thought that the mere effect of my election would usher in peace and harmony,” said Obama. “On some issues there are simply philosophical differences that will cause us to part ways.” He noted that those disagreements have been taking place for over 200 years. “What frustrates the American people is a Washington, D.C. where every day is Election Day.” A belief that “if you lose, I win” was derided. “Neither party should obstruct every single bill just because they can.” The confirmation of well-qualified public servants shouldn’t be held hostage, said the president. “Saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how lame,” is not fair game, said Obama. “So, no, “ said Obama, “I’m trying to change the tone of our politics. After last week, it’s clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual. We still have the largest (Democratic) majority in decades, “ he said to the Democrats in the room, “and the American people still expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.”

“If 60 votes in the Senate is required to do anything, that is not good politics. We were sent here to serve our citizens…So let’s show the American people that we can do it together.” Monthly meetings with Democratic and Republican leadership will be begun (“I know you can’t wait,” he said to laughter.)
”Sadly, some of the unity we felt after 9/11 has dissipated…I know that all of us love this country, all of us are committed to its defense. Let’s leave behind the fear and decision and do what it takes to forge a more hopeful future for America and for the world.”

TERRORISTS

Obama talked about the disruption of plots, about the failed Christmas attack, about prohibiting torture, and about the hundreds of Al Quaeda leaders who have been captured or killed since he took office. He pointed to the elevated troop levels in Afghanistan. He talked about supporting the rights of all Afghans, men and women alike. He talked about a meeting in London to reaffirm the common fight against terrorists and terrorism. “As a candidate, I promised that we will end this war, and we will have all of our combat troops out by the end of this August. We will support the Iraqi people…Make no mistake: this war is ending and all of our troops are coming home.” Then, Obama gave a shout-out to all the men and women in uniform around the world, citing the respect and gratitude they are owed and the obligation to support them when they come home. (Shots of the various generals showed Al Franken in the back right of the group.) He mentioned an increase in veteran benefits that took effect last year. Michelle and Joe Biden, he said, are working on support for military families. (Michelle stood up in her deep plum outfit to applaud at that point.)

THREAT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Obama said he would reduce our stockpile and launchers and work with Russia on the farthest-reaching nuclear disarmament agreement in 2 decades, securing all nuclear materials around the world in 2 years “so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.” He cited how these actions have helped “strengthen our hand,” using North Korea and sanctions against it and citing more isolation for Iran. “They, too, shall face growing consequences. That, too, is a promise,” said Obama of Iran’s nuclear policy. “That’s the leadership we are providing.” G20 was mentioned for a lasting global economy. Working with Muslim economies around the world. Fight against climate change: going from a bystander to a leader. Launching a new initiative to respond faster and more effectively to bio-terrorism or infectious diseases. “As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because these actions are linked to those beyond our shores, but we also take this action because it is right.”

HAITI

At this point, Obama mentioned our efforts to help Haiti recover and rebuild.  “That’s why we stand with the woman marching through the streets of Iraq…American must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity. Always.”

“We find unity in our incredible diversity. The notion that we are all created equal. If you abide by the law, you should be protected by it. We must continually renew this promise.” The president mentioned his administration’s civil rights division. Hate crimes were specifically mentioned as a target. Finally, he announced that he intended to repeal the law to repeal the right of gay Americans to serve the country they love. (John McCain didn’t like this part of Obama’s speech when interviewed on “Larry King: Live,” either.) “It’s the right thing to do.” We’re going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws. (Women getting paid as much as men for the same day’s work.)

SUMMATION

“Now use the drive…Every day, Americans take pride in their labor and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Democratic or Republican values. They’re American values. Unfortunately, too many Americans have lost faith in our biggest institutions…” Obama then went on to say that each of these institutions are full of honorable men, but continued by throwing stones at CEO’s taking huge raises, lobbyists gaming the system, or bankers rewarding themselves, as well as pundits (Rush Limbaugh comes to mind) reducing big issues into sound bites.

“Our citizens turn away.” He then said, “No wonder there’s so much cynicism. No wonder there’s so much disappointment. I campaigned on the promise of change. Right now, I know there are a lot of Americans who wonder if we can change or if I can deliver on that promise. I never promised it would be easy or that I could do it alone…When you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversies. Those of us in public office can respond to it by playing it safe to get through the next election, instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.”

“If people had made that decision 50 or 100 or 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans weren’t afraid to do what was necessary, even when it was uncertain, to keep this nation’s dreams alive for their children and their grandchildren…I wake up every day knowing that the problems we face are nothing compared to the set-backs that have faced Americans across the country this year. Despite all these setbacks, that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people prevails.”

“None of us are willing to consider even slightly that we might fail… We are strong. We are resilient. We are American.”  He personalized the issue of the American spirit by mentioning the 8-year-old boy who sent his allowance in by mail and asked the president to give it to the people of Haiti. “The spirit that has sustained this nation for 2 generations lives on in you. We have finished a difficult year….  We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment to carry on and to carry this nation forward.”

FBI Investigators are looking into the activities of retiring Rock Island County Clerk Richard Leibovitz and his office. Leibovitz has been in office 22 years. A probe of the Rock Island County Clerk’s office is long overdue. The current charges stem from Mr. Leibovitz’s profiting through  companies he founded,   (he  is registered with the Illinois Secretary of State as President of  American Election Systems, Inc.),  but Mr. Leibovitz never disclosed this business on required forms. Brad Ware of the FBI office would neither confirm nor deny reports of the investigation into illegal practices in the Rock Island County Clerk’s office.

Richard Leibovitz didn’t feel it was necessary to help a first-time office aspirant (i.e., me)  in any way, shape or form, either. He gave me inaccurate information about how to challenge a vote I knew to be bogus, a vote after a very close primary election that changed dramatically overnight and was announced as a “fait accompli” for the incumbent in the morning papers.

The incumbent was actually proven to have lost the popular vote during a recount. (It’s never a good sign when you leave your own “victory” party in tears, as Helen Heiland did.) County Clerk Leibovitz did his best to derail the challenge to 1^st Ward incumbent Helen Heiland,  every step of the way.

It was the rigged absentee ballots that tipped the scale in Helen Heiland’s favor, so that she could remain in office to this day, where she has been instrumental in supporting  the ambulance service that East Moline residents do not want and also is a member of the City Council that recently failed to get the downtown area of East Moline placed on “the Loop.” [The Loop is a  recently- announced  new diesel bus service which will  transport tourists around the loop of the Quad Cities…but not to East Moline. ](It’s now accurate to say, of East Moline, “We’re out of the loop.”)

I’m sure the business owners of downtown East Moline are really happy about that development, courtesy of incumbent Mayor John Thodos, 1^st Ward Alderperson Helen Heiland, et. al. Heiland and Thodos ran as a team and spent massive amounts of money with a firm in Iowa that campaigned for George W. Bush, all in the service of a very dirty campaign against popular incumbent Mayor Joe Moreno (who probably was also railroaded, but would have had a harder time  proving it.) Since then, Ms. Heiland has whined in print letters to the editor about not succeeding John Gianulis as County Democratic Chairman, despite the fact that Gianulis retired due to the ravages of old age, and Helen Heiland is not far behind him chronologically.

Now, during the heat of a three-way race for Richard “Dick” Leibovitz’s seat, a race between Larry Toppert, Nick Leibovitz (son of the incumbent), and Karen Kinney (scheduled to go before voters in a February 2^nd primary), comes the news that Liebovitz has been profiting mightily from his position as County Clerk over his 22 years in office. Invoices that bear Chris Leibovitz’s name (his son) have surfaced. Son Nick, who works in the County Clerk’s office  has been using campaign signs with just his surname in his bid to succeed his father. He was featured on tonight’s Channel 6 news reading haltingly from a typed statement about “restoring his good name and reputation.” At least he was reading—partially thanks to me. And one assumes, since he works for his father in the office, that he can also write (more thanks to his English teachers.) Perhaps I should have given the young Leibovitz boys poor instruction,  rather than working hard and honestly as I did for 17 and 1/2 years in the Silvis Public Schools, only to be given  poor and dishonest service (as my reward) by my elected county clerk, their father. (And the public wonders why teachers quit!)

Leibovitz’s company markets an Auto Poll Book, according to a website, and it is described as a computerized tool to make it easier for election officials to look up voters. Whether federal HAVA money was used to develop it will be determined. One thing is for certain:

The voters that were being looked up during my one-time-only run against long-time incumbent Helen Heiland were mostly “the lame, the halt and the blind.” If the voter was near death, someone in the incumbent’s camp raced out to get the nearly-dead to sign an  absentee ballot.  Some of those absentee voters, to whom I personally spoke, (who were undergoing chemotherapy at the time and were not totally “with it.”)  had little or no idea what it was that they had ostensibly signed. The count announced for absentee voters was totally wrong, and I knew this going in, since I was given almost no absentee votes, when my entire family group had voted for me absentee and totaled more than the number the Clerk’s office wished to give me credit for; and there were others, as a door-to-door search with an attorney to notarize their statements later proved. However, when each and every voter, who has signed a notarized statement that they voted for you, is required to show up in a courtroom the very next morning, with no time to subpoena and no time for some to return to town and some too infirm to leave their homes, the deck is stacked.

So, this was your County Clerk’s office in action under incumbent Richard Leibovitz for the last several years, years dating back to 1988. Rock Island County Board Chairman Jim Bohnsack has been subpoenaed to appear in Peoria on February 27th before a Federal Grand Jury to testify in the ongoing investigation.

One area of concern is  the possible  of federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grant money by Leibovitz to develop computer software which his private company then marketed and sold for a profit, according to assertions made by Larry Toppert, who is currently running for Leibovitz’s seat.

There are invoices bearing Chris Leibovitz’s name and checks written to American Elections, Inc. dated between April and October of 2008, although the company was allegedly dissolved on September 7, 2007. [American Elections Systems, Inc., was incorporated on May 19, 2009.] The HAVA funds were established in 2002 to aid states in improving the running of federal elections. They distribute millions in grant money each year and those funds are distributed to counties for use in improving their election processes. If my experience is typical, the funds were used to keep the rightfully elected out of office and maintain the status quo desired by then-incumbent Democratic County Chairman John Gianulis, now retired.

According to Friday’s Quad City Times, state records list three officers and directors for American Election Systems, Inc.: Richard Leibovitz; his son Christopher of Lenox, Illinois (listed as director); and James Harmening of Orland Park, Illinois, company secretary.  Harmening is also president of a Chicago-based information technology company called Computer Bits, Inc., which has provided “consulting services” to the County Clerk’s office. Computer Bits, Mr. Harmening’s company, was paid $48,969 since 2008 by Rock Island County, including $35,280 in federal grant funds.

When I ran against 1^st Ward (East Moline) Alderperson Helen Heiland, there were numerous documented irregularities in the election. In fact, Democratic insiders (who know the story to be true) told me at the DNC in Denver, on condition of anonymity, that it was quite well-known (behind-the-scenes) that strings were pulled to defeat me when I had actually won.  Absentee votes were the weapon of choice, although there were also irregularities at both polling places, including 3 people entering the voter’s booth together, in one instance.

I had run as a newcomer to politics, a naïve idealistic person who thought that elections in Rock Island County would be run fairly. I soon found out differently, as I went door-to-door speaking with every single absentee vote cast and uncovering fraud at many levels, including a non-existent male voter at one duplex in East Moline where the young girl who answered my question about whether someone with this name had voted absentee from this address told me, “Oh, nobody by that name lives here. Only my mom and I live here, and she wouldn’t vote absentee because she works for John Gianulis at the Courthouse.” (Interesting).

Then there were the people bussed in from the retirement home that is not in my district (two of them the parents of the man who was then Kaplan College’s President) and those voters whose absentee ballots were secured while they were dying or close to death.

When I decided to challenge, I had to work with the County Clerk’s office. First, I was given wrong information about how long I had to file a challenge. I was told in a phone call to come file much later than the deadline. Luckily, I followed my instincts and went down immediately.

When I showed up, in person, to secure the necessary paperwork, the form was mysteriously unavailable and they offered to “mail it” to me. (They said they had to “retype” it).  I asked for the form and told them I’d retype it myself. Ir was after this that I really learned how low the Clerk’s office would really stoop  to defeat someone that then- Democratic County Chairman Gianulis had decided was not going to be allowed to win.  I was given paperwork that contained the wrong statutes. It was by the merest of coincidences that I ran into a lawyer friend on the way home, who, in looking over the challenging petition, informed me that I had been given paperwork with all the wrong statutes. If I had filed them as they were given to me, the challenge would have been thrown out on a technicality.

I was able to file the correct paperwork with the corrected statues but no thanks to the County Clerk of Rock Island County. All election experts in the state told me I must gain access to the absentee ballots because “that’s where they cheat.” Mr. Leibovitz  refused to give me the list of absentee voters (where the cheating mainly took place) and made this verbal refusal while television cameras turned. (I had to ultimately hire Nelson, Keys and Keys Law Firm and get a court order to secure the absentee voters’ names).

I was particularly shocked to be treated so dishonestly and so uncooperatively by the clerk’s office, as I taught at least one of Mr. Leibovitz’s sons in school when a teacher at Silvis Junior High School.

This is your current Rock Island County Clerk’s office in action, Folks. If you want more of the same….(finish that thought).

When I was in St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention in the fall of 2008, my blog guy, Phil, insisted that I had to take myself over to the Target Center to attend the Ron Paul Rally for America that was going on there, at the exact same time that the old-looking, white, Republican hordes were nominating John McCain and Sarah Palin in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota.
What I knew about Ron Paul you could put in a pea and it would rattle, but I had seen him on television during the caucus season, and I felt he was getting the short end of the stick most of the time. He often seemed the only Republican up there who actually made a little bit of sense. And soon after he was allowed to appear for a few debates, the PTB shut him down and we saw less and less of old Ron, although his supporters became more and more vocal and active, appearing at nearly every big campaign event.

Dr. Paul doesn’t make sense all of the time, but he certainly got my attention with his comments about spending more than you take in being a bad thing.  He could was eloquent when talking about the crime that he thinks was committed when America left the gold standard (for backing our currency) and began printing money up like worthless scrip. I even remember my banker father taking a few gold dollars (uncirculated) and putting them away in a safety deposit box, telling me that these would, some day, become collectors’ items. (And, boy, was he ever right!)

When I entered the Target Center in Minneapolis (St. Paul’s twin city), which most people had paid $17 a head to enter (press got in free), I was amazed at the fact that the place was full and, also, at the diversity of the audience members. There were many spectators walking around wearing delegate badges to the “real” Republican convention across town in St. Paul. When I asked one of the delegates to the RNC why he was here (Minneapolis) rather than there (St. Paul) he said, “This is where the real action is.” And I felt he was  right. I got a sense of enthusiasm, of supporters who were not just rich fat cats or old white men, but a diverse group cutting across all segments of the nation. Why, I hadn’t had a feeling like that since I was present in Denver at the DNC at the Pepsi Center!
Now, the Ron Paul Rally for America action was odd action. I was sandwiched between 2 economists from Germany who tried to give me a crash course on Libertarianism and seemed to think that Ron Paul represented the second coming. (I was afraid one of them might accidentally give an unfortunate salute at any moment, such was his unbridled enthusiasm.)  I felt I was having an out-of-body experience when, onstage, appeared (at one time) Barry Goldwater, Jr. (looking just like dear old Dad), Tucker Carlson, Jesse Ventura (former professional wrestler, actor and Governator of Minnesota), and Ron Paul. When the conversation took off on legalizing hemp, I began to really feel I had wandered into an alternate universe. It was surreal.

But the one thing that you could say for and about the St. Paul “Ron Paul Rally for America” is that it had youth. It had vigor. It had action. It had a feeling of some life and some commitment to the cause. I had some hope that the elephant might survive, IF it could find a way to get these radical rascals back into the herd.  And I don’t mean the herd of old white fat cats with no visible diversity at all. This year, in Bush Jr.’s absence the party had even given up the display of token inclusion they attempted during the second of “W’s” conventions.

Imagine my surprise to pick up the December 14 (2009) issue of Newsweek magazine and belatedly read Howard Fineman’s article “Is There a Doctor in the House?” in which he says (among other things), in a discussion of Ron Paul, “No one thinks Ron Paul is going to lead the G.O.P, let alone be president.  He’s 74 years old and just too…out there.  He is an obscure guy who waited patiently (if not quietly) for the cycle of history to come back around his way, and finally it did. We have been arguing about money, credit, and banks since the first days of the republic. Paul is a bargain basement Jefferson for our time.”

Wow! My ears perked up at these words of praise for the old warrior.  I read on, because what Howard Fineman said next is what I have been telling everyone everywhere since the Republican National Convention in Minnesota and I want to thank Phil (my blog guy) for making me go hear Ron Paul and the Libertarians, who seem(ed) to much more fully capture the zeitgeist and spirit of America than the Gestapo-like horde of old white guys downtown in St. Paul.

Said Fineman in his article: “Still, the GOP needs to study Ron Paul and learn.  No one has better captured the sense of Main Street outrage over secret insider deals and Wall Street bonuses.  No one has been more consistent about sticking to core conservative values—including the one that says the government shouldn’t spend more money than it takes in.” [At this point, I’m sure, were my own dear father alive, he’d be chiming in, shaking his head in assent and saying, “That’s right!”]

Fineman went on to say, “If the GOP is going to appeal to independent voters, it has to confront its own corporate allies…The good doctor, of all people, is showing Republicans the way.  What they need is a candidate who embodies the spirit of Ron Paul. Just so long as it isn’t Ron Paul.”

Hear, hear! I’m beginning to think that I do make some sense once in a while, because Howard Fineman has come around to my way of thinking roughly a year after my Eureka moment in Minneapolis.