The Grape 2009 Tea Party

As many of us finished our taxes, there were “Bipartisan” groups who told us we were wasting our money. These groups, who were mostly conservative, demonstrated anywhere they could find a camera. They called the gatherings tea parties. I find the allusion to the actual Boston Tea Party both scary and a disservice to the real patriots who participated in the historic event at their peril. The question in 1773 was being taxed without the ability to elect the representatives who would levy the tax. The last time I checked, everyone who wished to vote in the last election voted.

Did they serve a side of sour grapes at the tea party in 1773?

Conservatives seem a little sour right now. They told us everything from bailing out banks to healthcare reform was a waste of money. They told us the deficit the Obama Administration proposed in this budget was obscene. They told us we were mortgaging our children’s future. Did they have a tea party during President George W. Bush’s Administration? Many conservatives continue to defend President Bush’s optional war which ran up over a trillion dollars in deficits. Did they forget about the Reagan deficits? I guess, if you’re buying bullets and lasers, deficits are ok.

Conservatives are trying to get some free press on a day which is painful but necessary. They want to tap into the usual angst which accompanies tax day. Conservatives like Senator Judd A. Gregg (R-NH) send us mixed messages which they to try pass off as philosophical differences worthy of a tea party.

“The budget is reasonably honest, and in fact, I give them credit for having brought on line and made clear the costs of the war,” Gregg told NPR’s Melissa Block.

“But the budget itself has some real serious problems, in my opinion, because it is a massive expansion in spending and a massive expansion in taxes. And the real problem is that in the out years, not only does it increase spending in taxes, but it passes on to our children a government that can’t be afforded, and that’s a big problem.”

One of the major items of the budget is the 650 million dollars set aside for health care reform. This might be our best hope of reducing entitlement costs which balloon the very out year deficits Gregg and others have mobilized the tea parties to fight against.

The irony is that Gregg is probably more interested in killing the set aside than the actual deficit. It turns out his number one contributor in the 2006 election was Blue Cross Blue Shield. In a career, his top three donor industries have been insurance, pharmaceuticals and health professionals. This is the kind of thing right wingers do.

Right wingers like to drag out a bunch of poor kids with their piggybanks on tax day and tell us the evils of deficits. They want us to starve the budget of any chance of real reform. They want us to demand this so their fat cat contributors can continue to make obscene profits. Americans got to vote. They decided Gregg and others needed a little break from power. They can whip up all the tea parties they want but, America has voted. Fifty-two percent of us want to spend a few bucks more today to keep from paying later.

The New York Times Should Stick to Its Knitting

The New York Times sold my paper today and one of my friends lost his job. My paper was the Times Daily in Florence, Alabama. I will keep my friend’s name to myself. I call it MY paper because I have subscribed, bought or stole it for more than 26 years. I, for a brief time, even delivered it. My wife did too. A paper route is a character building experience full of life’s lessons. You learn people will turn off their lights and stay quiet to keep from paying the paper boy. It was also a lesson in advanced finance. A paper carrier has to do a credit risk calculation before he throws every paper. Customer service, you find, is the key to a Christmas tip. My paper and those tips helped pay for my Volkswagen.

The stages of my life have been, in part, defined by my paper. At first I looked for my name on the honor roll. I looked and looked. The next stage of my life was seeing who got married followed by seeing who had a baby. Now regretfully, a few of my friends are showing up in the obits. My paper, and the M*A*S*H reruns mom sent were the hottest commodity in my Army barracks in Germany. However, I think my buddies really only wanted to see the commercials dad didn’t delete on the M*A*S*H videotapes. The paper was a unique resource for the cost of everything from a used Chevy to who won a ball game. When I ran an engineering business I wanted to know if my firm got the contract at the council meeting. Since I have begun blogging, I am always interested in what and how the professionals are writing. In general, the paper has been a part of my whole life.

Life is what a paper is all about. I guess when the New York Times bought my paper and sent a new guy to help run it, I was concerned. Turns out however, the last guy was a pretty good egg. He began going to my church and his unassuming nature made he us instant friends. You could tell he loved the paper business. He knew how important a human touch was to my paper. He wrote a column each week which usually dealt with some mundane part of everyday life. Invariably, the column was a situation my family and I had experienced. The column was a break from all bad news. I think my friend understood we needed a break. He probably told his editors the same thing from time to time.

Only time will tell if the group who bought my paper will give it the same love and care as my friend. Love and care seems to be the first casualty of the national trend of sagging circulation. The papers seem to only respond with consolidation and the elimination of people like my friend. My friend bucked what I am sure was a hallmark of the New York Times papers. He really tried to find out what living in the Shoals was all about. He hired reporters and editors who cared about how to serve people like me.

Serving might be the key to the crisis in newspaper circulation. Instead of transferring papers to the internet, maybe papers should look to the people who grew up reading and printing the dead tree version. Maybe the newspaper business should look into the things which make a daily paper useful to the people who buy the subscriptions and not people who would rather read two lines of a story on the internet. Maybe they should keep people like my friend who are older but, have lots to give before retirement. Instead of spending time on the business of papers, maybe they should spend time on the art of the paper business. They can blame it on circulation and money if they want. Part of the problem however, might be papers are getting rid of people like my friend.

Alabama Bingo and California

What does an obscure lawsuit surrounding the gay marriage ban in California have to do with the current bingo question in Alabama? Maybe more than you think. Recently, there was an attempt to keep the names of donors a secret in the fight over gay marriage in California. Some argued that donors to the campaigns in support of a ban could be threatened if their names were made public. Furthermore, they argued it was a free speech issue. They told us publicity and sunshine were limits on speech. People would not speak out with their money, they said, if they had to identify themselves. I personally believe this argument is a stretch. I think the framers of our Constitution had stump speeches on the town square and handbills on trees in mind when they wrote our First Amendment. This idea has little to do with the obfuscated political action committees and slick TV commercials that are our political system today.

So what does this have to do with the latest tiff in Alabama over electronic bingo or slot machines?

Well, we already have a problem with sunshine in our state. Our problem is with the political variety of sunshine and not thermonuclear radiation. Once again, Alabama ranks 49^th in campaign disclosure by the respected campaigndisclosure.org. So along with being ranked 45^th in education, 29^th in being safe from crime and 43^rd in highway conditions among all states, Alabama may also be near the bottom in political sunshine. We already have de-facto secrecy among political donors. We have this situation without a court’s ruling. The political sun doesn’t shine in Alabama.

So what does political sun have to do with Bingo? Well, if history is our guide, Alabama voters may be voting counter to their wishes. Voters could be confused because they are not able to associate donors with causes or candidates. A great example might be a 1999 push for video poker in a few counties. Polls showed in the August before the vote that 61 percent were in favor of video poker. By August only 51 percent were in favor. So what changed?

One of the things that changed was media blitz by Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. The Coalition pointed out moral issues associated with gambling and went on a state-wide get-out-the-vote campaign. This is where sunshine in funding and the messenger become important. If Alabamians had known the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were funding the Christian Coalition’s moral outrage about video poker, Alabamians may have been a little less receptive to Coalition’s message. A congressional report on the subject outlined how Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Relief were used by the Choctaws to insure their casinos in Philadelphia, Mississippi would not have Alabama competition. There were even plans to use Jim Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a multi-media Christian group, in ads bought with over a million dollars of Choctaw monies.

You can bet, pardon the pun, the Choctaws and other gambling interests are gearing up as we speak. They won’t contact you directly over slot machines or bingo. They will use someone you trust like Jim Dobson. What’s worse, we won’t know the difference because Alabama politicians don’t want you to know. Some of the people in those issue groups like the Christian Coalition won’t know either. The money will be transferred from political action committee (PAC) to PAC, washed and laundered through so many people we won’t know where it came from. Websites which easily hash out who gave how much to whom in other states won’t be able to make sense of the Alabama system. In the upside down world of Alabama politics, the politicians and groups most adamantly against slot machines may be ironically taking the most money from out-of-state gambling interests.

Editor’s Note:

I went to the Focus on the Family website and asked for a response to this article. I will leave it you to decide if the question was answered.