Peace Tree Farm http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/index/ en ptf@peacetreefarm.org Copyright 2010 2010-07-24T19:44:33-08:00 A progressive economic vision http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/a_progressive_economic_vision/ As I type, I’m surrounded by a couple thousand other committed lefties in a large meeting hall at the Rio in Las Vegas.  We’re finishing up our box lunches (sponsored by the UFCW) as a number of speakers address the issue described in the title of this post. Our luncheon guests are, in a word, impressive.  Leading off was a true rock star of financial reform—the damn-well-better-be first leader of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau created by the just-passed banking bill.  Yep, Elizabeth Warren in the house!  Standing O at the beginning and the end of her talk.  Ditto for the next speaker, birthday boy (yes, we sang) Rich Trumka. 

And now, we’re listening to Congressman Alan Grayson, perhaps the unlikeliest rock star in history!

I’ll have more reports from Netroots Nation, including my interactions with a couple of freshman Senators (probably including pictures), in the near future.  But now I need to get up and offer still another standing O for Grayson…

]]> 2010-07-24T19:44:33-08:00 Way back when, when Robert Byrd joined the Senate http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/way_back_when_when_robert_byrd_joined_the_senate/ Upon the death of Robert C. Byrd late last month, many commentators marked the remarkable length of his tenure in the Senate by pointing out that Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House when he took office.  Byrd served in the Senate for more than 51 years, having eclipsed the record previously held by Strom Thurmond more than four years ago.  Interestingly, last month Daniel Inouye of Hawaii also passed Thurmond’s mark to take second place.  Inouye also supplanted Byrd as the Senate’s President pro tempore, traditionally reserved for the majority party’s longest-serving Senator ... and thus he now stands third in presidential succession, behind the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. While the Ike metaphor has been widely noted, I’ve seen next to nothing about the makeup of the Senate into which Byrd arrived.  When the 86th Congress convened on January 3, 1959, it was a very different body than what we see today, but it was also remarkably changed from the legislative body that had closed its second session of the 85th Congress on August 24, 1958.  Herewith, a few observations about the United States Senate when Robert C. Byrd first joined the world’s greatest deliberative body™:
  • The 1958 election was an unmitigated disaster for President Eisenhower’s party.  When its activities for the 85th Congress were completed, the United States Senate was narrowly Democratic, 49-47, continuing a status quo of razor-thin majorities that had existed since 1950—48D-48R in the 82nd Congress (Democratic majority only because Vice President/President of the Senate Alben Barkley broke the tie), 48R-47D-1I in the 83rd (Wayne Morse was the Independent), 47D-47R-1ID-1I in the 84th (Thurmond called himself “Independent Democrat”, Morse still Independent, Dems in the majority).  In a sharp break from that deadlock, the 86th Congress’s Senate convened as a body with 64 Democrats and 34 Republicans.
  • If you sum the above counts, you’ll see that the Senate had gained two members at the start of the 86th Congress.  That’s Alaska, which had become a state in 1958.  It elected two Democrats, Territorial Governor Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening (later to gain respect as one of two Senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution).  Hawaii, admitted to the Union in 1959, would elect its first Senators in the late summer of 1959, and they (one from each party) would take office immediately thereafter.
  • Not only was the 1959 freshman class large—17 members (14 D, 3 R), along with West Virginia Democrat Jennings Randolph, who filled a vacant seat in a special election and was sworn in immediately after the 1958 election—it was also very distinguished.  Among those joining Robert Byrd in taking the Senate’s oath of office for the first time were Philip A. Hart (D-MI), Edmund Muskie (D-ME), Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT), Hugh Scott, (R-PA), and Eugene J. McCarthy (D-MN).
  • Except for the two Alaskans, every single Democratic freshman filled a previously-Republican seat, and all but three did so by defeating the incumbent Republican Senator.  The three GOP freshmen all succeeded retiring Republicans.
  • In addition to the newly-elected Senators already discussed, the class of 1959 included (alphabetically by state):
Several of the freshman Senators in the 86th Congress became the first Democrats to hold that particular seat in a long time.  For example, the California seat won by Engle had been Republican since 1899.  He defeated the sitting Governor in that 1958 Senate race, replacing a Senator who had retired to run for Governor(!).  Engle’s Senate predecessor also lost his race, to Pat Brown, Jerry’s father.  The Minnesota seat taken by Gene McCarthy had previously been occupied by Democrats only twice, 1858-1863 (the seat’s first occupant after statehood) and for six weeks while the Senate was in adjournment in 1900-1901.  Ed Muskie’s seat had been Republican since 1917.  For the record, Maine’s senior Senator was Republican Margaret Chase Smith, the only woman in the Senate at that time.


Even more information about the Senate in 1959 follows…

There were quite a few political family connections scattered through the members of the Senate as the 86th Congress convened:

  • One of Robert Byrd’s colleagues when he joined the Senate was Democratic Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts ... Senator John F. Kennedy.
  • Connecticut’s senior Senator in the 86th Congress was Republican Prescott Bush, whose son and grandson may be more familiar to us, over half a century later.
  • And of course Connecticut’s newly-elected junior Senator was the father of today’s senior Senator, Christopher Dodd.
  • Tennessean Albert Gore Sr. was, as you are no doubt aware, the father of Senator/Vice President/Nobel Laureate Al Gore.
  • After first-term Senator Richard Neuberger (D-OR) died in 1960, his widow Maurine Neuberger won the special election to replace him.  She continued by serving one full term in the Senate.
  • Russell B. Long (D-LA) was a scion of his state’s pre-eminent political dynasty.  He remains the only Senator whose father (Huey, the Kingfish) and mother (Rose) were both former Senators.  Many other Longs have been elected to many other offices in Louisiana.
  • Maryland Republican J. Glenn Beall was the father of another Republican Senator from Maryland.  Oddly, J. Glenn Beall Jr.‘s first name was John, whereas the father’s was James.  How can he claim juniorhood with a different first name?
  • Wallace F. Bennett (R-UT) was soon-to-retire Bob Bennett‘s father.  The younger Bennett is also a Utah Republican.
  • When ebullient Hubert Humphrey, later the VP and nearly President, died during his second time in the Senate, his widow Muriel Humphrey was appointed in his stead.  Unlike Maurine Neuberger, who was elected rather than appointed, she served only until a special election was completed.
  • Harry Flood Byrd (D-VA) was not related in any way to Robert C. Byrd.  He was, however, the brother of aviation pioneer and polar explorer Richard E. Byrd and the father of his Senatorial successor Harry Flood Byrd Jr. (D/I-VA).  At age 95, the younger Byrd is currently the oldest living ex-Senator.

In 1959, the United States Senate was replete with men (and, as noted above, one woman) of great renown in the history of the body.  For instance, the Senate’s current page of Featured Biographies displays profiles of (along with the aforementioned Hart, Kennedy, Scott, Smith, and Thurmond):

  • George Aiken, R-VT (1941-1975), who famously suggested that we should “declare victory and leave” Vietnam.
  • Dennis Chavez, D-NM (1935-1962), the nation’s first Latino Senator.
  • John Sherman Cooper, R-KY (1946-1949, 1952-1955, 1956-1973).
  • Norris Cotton, R-NH (1954-1974, 1975-1975).
  • Everett M. Dirksen, R-IL (1951-1969), Minority Leader who helped invoke cloture on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  • Sam Ervin, D-NC (1954-1974), chairman of the Watergate investigative committee.
  • J. William Fulbright, D-AR (1945-1974).
  • Theodore F. Green, D-RI (1937-1961).
  • Carl Hayden, D-AZ (1927-1969), who was elected Arizona’s very first Congressman in 1912 and served 15 years there before becoming Senator.
  • Mike Mansfield, D-MT (1953-1977).
  • Wayne Morse, R/I/D-OR (1945-1969), the other anti-Tonkin Gulf vote.  “R/I/D” means Republican (through 1953), Independent (through 1957), Democrat.
  • Richard B. Russell, D-GA (1933-1971).

Amazingly, even after running through the numerous distinguished names in the above lists, we still haven’t talked about many of the great Senators who were already serving on the day Robert C. Byrd arrived in 1959.  Consider, for example, the 86th Congress’s Senate Majority Leader, one Lyndon Baines Johnson.  In 1972, in addition to voting for George McGovern as President I proudly cast a vote for New Jersey’s senior Senator, Republican Clifford P. Case, and had I ever resided in New York I would have been just as proud to pull the lever for Republican Jacob K. Javits.  The last Democratic Senator from Idaho, Frank Church, was in the Senate when Byrd arrived.  Tennessee was represented by two-time Vice Presidential candidate C. Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore Sr.  Ralph Yarborough wasn’t the last Democratic Senator from Texas, but he was certainly the last liberal one.  Wisconsin’s William Proxmire had just been elected to a full six years after filling out the late, unlamented Joe McCarthy’s term.

As for my current home state, Washington was represented by two exemplary Democrats.  Sure, Henry M. Jackson was a Cold War liberal, claimed as a progenitor by the neocons of the 1990s and 2000s.  But he was also a passionate and powerful friend of the environment.  And “the Senator from Boeing” did a great deal of good for Washington’s businesses, industries, and people.  As the longtime chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the state’s senior Senator, Warren G. Magnuson, may have been even more effective in supporting the development of Washington’s infrastructure.  Magnuson made money available for dams and highways, backed the Park Place Market against the forces of “urban renewal”, brought the 1962 World’s Fair (and the Space Needle) to Seattle.  He pioneered consumer protection legislation, championed research in healthcare and science, kept supertankers out of Puget Sound.  Between them, “Scoop” and “Maggie” were major players in the United States Senate when Robert C. Byrd began his lengthy and meritorious service in that body.

My original plan for this post was to extend it to a consideration of how many Senators filled the seats of Byrd’s original colleagues during his tenure in office.  It’s a topic that still interests me, and I intend to present it sometime soon.  Fact is, I’m a bit surprised myself at the length and depth to which this one ran, but I had huge fun with the 1958 election and the composition of the Senate in the 86th Congress! 

]]> 2010-07-11T22:12:00-08:00 Filing Week follies http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/filing_week_follies/ Last week saw one of Washington’s annual exercises in political action.  It was Filing Week, the five days during which all potential candidates for office in the year’s election make their decisions known to the public.  There’s always some suspense in Filing Week.  Used to be a lot more, back when filing had to be done in person in Olympia or at King County Elections.  For reasons that always escaped me (extra publicity, perhaps?), candidates routinely waited until Friday to file their papers.  Every year, it seemed, somebody showed up at the designated office just before they closed the doors.  Or they’d arrive a few too many minutes late, and be denied the opportunity to file.  Now that they’ve gone to electronic filing, whatever point someone thought they were making by hurrying in at the deadline is moot.  These days, the only potential suspense is at the State Representative level and in some judicial races—which of the equivalent offices will the person file for?  In Washington, unlike most other states, Senate and House districts are identical.  Each Legislative District has one Senator (elected every 4 years) and two Representatives (both elected every 2 years).  So a candidate can choose either of the two House seats to contest.  One of the incumbents might be more vulnerable than the other, or perhaps there might be an open seat.  Those usually draw bigger crowds. Now that the odious Top Two primary is firmly entrenched, and even being idiotically copied by California, there’s more suspense in the political party nomenclature than in the office selection.  In his (highly questionable) wisdom, the Secretary of State permits each candidate to write whatever he/she wants, limited only by character count and propriety, in the
(Prefers _______________ Party)
portion of the candidate listing.  Inevitably, as Goldy noted last week, a few Democrats forget to switch to the adjectival form of their party’s name; thankfully, all of those mistakes were corrected.  At least, that’s what the SoS says ... King County Elections shows a few (Prefers Democrat Party) candidates on its website, as well as a few other differences from the SoS listing.

Sprinkled through the party designations are a number of, ummm, gems of creativity.  I’m not talking about the two (Prefers Green Party) candidates, since that’s a legitimate political party.  Nor do I refer to the five candidates who tried to mask their Republicanism by using some variation of (Prefers G.O.P. Party) ... even though that expands to “Grand Old Party Party”.  And (Prefers Independent Party), seen 12 times, isn’t much different from the 11 (States No Party Preference) listings.  Beyond those, however, we’ve got some inventive designations in the listings:

  • (Prefers Centrist Party)—Mohammad H. Said, US Senator
  • (Prefers Bull Moose Party)—Anthony (El Tigrero) Novack, LD13 House Pos.2
  • (Prefers Lower Taxes Party)—Tim Sutinen, LD19 House Pos.2
  • (Prefers SeniorSide Party)—Mike Huisman, LD21 House Pos.2
  • (Prefers Demo Party)—Jeremy Miller, LD22 House Pos.1
  • (Prefers Progressive Dem Party)—Steve Robinson, LD22 House Pos.1
  • (Prefers Prolife Democrat Party)—F.G. (Fred) Jensen, LD22 House Pos.1
  • (Prefers Reluctantly Gop Party)—Ray Carter, LD34 House Pos.1
  • (Prefers (R) Problemfixer Party)—Leslie Klein, LD36 Senator
  • (Prefers Happiness Party)—Doug (Yoshe) Revelle, LD40 House Pos.1
Oddly, in this year of the alleged ascendancy of the “Tea Party”, the only candidate who chose that identifier, Rex A Brocki, actually appears to be challenging antediluvian Doc Hastings in WA-04 from the right.  Crazy Will Baker hopped in at the last minute to run for the US Senate calling himself (Prefers Reform Party).  You have to admire the honesty of LD18 House Pos.1 candidate Jon T. Haugen, who notes that he (Prefers Neither Party).

Finally, there’s Christopher Hurst, the incumbent in LD31 House Pos.2.  If this Washington had Blue Dogs, he’d be one.  He’s apparently in such a snit at the House Democratic caucus that he refuses to use the real identifier.  Instead he’s calling himself (Prefers Independent Dem. Party).  When he made that announcement, hepromised (threatened?) that a bunch of other conservative Democrats would join his micro-protest by using the same moniker. 

So how many colleagues did Hurst recruit to his cause?  The answer, it would appear, is exactly zero.  Great move, Chris.

]]> 2010-06-14T06:47:59-08:00 Time flies... http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/time_flies/ John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States, would have celebrated his 93rd birthday today.  As I calculate it, the planet has spun on its axis 16,990 times since JFK was assassinated.  Which is almost exactly the number of days between his birth in Brookline MA and that horrid Friday in Dallas; Kennedy’s life was 16,978 days long.  On May 17 of this year, then, John Kennedy had been dead exactly as long as he lived. Five days ago on May 24, Robert Allen Zimmerman, far better known as Bob Dylan, turned 69 years old.  He’s been a professional musician for nearly fifty of those years.  Just 22½ in November 1963, Dylan was already a star of the folk/protest/civil rights community when Kennedy died.  Since arriving in New York City in early 1961, he’d released two albums on Columbia Records, Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and his third album The Times They Are A-Changin’ was already in the can awaiting release in early 1964.  Dylan and Joan Baez were so highly thought of at the time that they had been invited to play short sets at the August 28, 1963 March On Washington, where Dr. King gave his renowned I have a dream speech.  The other musicians who performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that afternoon were Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Below is a public domain photo of Joan and Bob on that day:

Public Domain: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at 1963 March on Washington by USIA (NARA)

I don’t have much of a point to make regarding this awkward juxtaposition of the birthdates of JFK and Dylan.  Merely acknowledging that tempus fugit, whether or not one is having fun.

]]> 2010-05-30T00:01:31-08:00 (Faint) praise for Dino Rossi http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/faint_praise_for_dino_rossi/ Over the years, I’ve written many negative words about two-time Washington gubernatorial loser, and current US Senate dabbling ditherer, Dino Rossi.  Most of those negative words appeared during the 2004 recounts, in my extended WA Gov series of DailyKos diaries. I’ve called Rossi smarmy, sleazy, crooked, slimy, and odious.  I’ve likened him to a used car dealer and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BIAW.  I’ve noted with distaste his refusal to concede the 2004 election after his long, long court challenge was dismissed, with prejudice, after Chris Gregoire had already been Governor of Washington for nearly half a year.

But Dino is nowhere near the classless ingrate that is the newly-minted teabagger Republican nominee for US Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul.  While Rossi wouldn’t concede after losing his race, last night Paul wouldn’t talk to the candidate who was conceding to him!  Talk about a scumbucket…

Dr. Paul (he’s an ophthalmologist) is, of course, the son of US Congressman Dr. Ron Paul (dad’s an OB/GYN).  This rotten apple hasn’t fallen far from the crazy tree.  Father and son represent the ugly union of the worst features of libertarian xenophobia, the Tea Party/teabagger movement, and the putrefying remains of the Republican Party.  Unfortunately, the appellation Know Nothing Party was claimed by their forebears a century and a half ago.  That’s too bad, because it’s as fitting a name as there could be.

Paultards now have two avenues for their devotion and their dollars.  I wonder whether all the cash those wackos poured into Rand’s run in Kentucky, as well as Ron’s nutty presidential campaign in 2008 (FWIW, he’s already running for 2012), were backed by gold ingots buried in their backyards.  I mean, the Pauls want to take the United States back to the gold standard, don’t they?

So what’s my praise for Dino Rossi?  It’s that he isn’t as big a scumbag asshole as Rand Paul.

Faint enough for ya?

]]> 2010-05-19T18:09:41-08:00 The money game http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/the_money_game/ Dino Rossi may, or may not, be running for the US Senate against Patty Murray this year.  My pal Goldy’s most recent thoughts on the subject, posted this morning, indicates that the smarmy real estate huckster may be moving in the direction of running.  Apparently, the dulcet tones of Big John Cornyn, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have begun to entice Dino into taking the plunge. If Rossi runs, he’ll lose.  If Rossi doesn’t run, Patty will win big.  In other words, Senator Murray will definitely be reelected come November. As long as he dithers and ponders, Dino Rossi can’t raise a dime to run for the Senate.  Until he establishes a federal campaign committee, he cannot take in contributions.  Even if he could transfer funds from his Washington campaign committee (which he can’t, because it’s illegal), that would amount to a pittance.  According to his most recent PDC report in November 2009, his gubernatorial campaign had just under $9900 cash on hand.  That’s hardly enough money to buy a couple of computers.  And if Dino thinks he’ll be able to collect a pile of money from the NRSC, which Cornyn has undoubtedly promised him, he’s likely to find himself near the back of a long line of candidates.  After all, the GOP has a lot of seats to defend—Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio—and many Democratic seats that are far more vulnerable than ours—Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania.  With only $15 million in the bank, the NRSC isn’t going to open the vault for Dino.

So let’s say that Dino decides not to run, that he instead wants to make still another (losing) run for Governor.  That would certainly make for an entertaining 2012 as Rossi and Rob McKenna fight it out to face off against Jay Inslee or possibly Lisa Brown.  It would also make for a wide-open struggle among a slew of weak, unknown, and anonymous Republicans to be Patty Murray’s sacrificial lamb.

While money isn’t the be-all and end-all of politics, the campaign-funds gap between Patty and her putative opponents is so vast that it’s almost humorous.  According to the Federal Election Commission, 13 people have filed to challenge Patty Murray for her Senate seat.  (No, Dino Rossi isn’t one of them.) Of those, 11 indicate that they are Republicans, one says he represents no party, and one is shown as “unknown”.  Nine of them are serious enough as candidates that they submitted 1Q/2010 financial reports to the FEC.  To give you an idea of the seriousness-gap between Patty and her opponents, consider the following table, showing cumulative numbers for the entire group:
Candidate Name Party Through Contributions Own funds Cash on hand Debt
Paul Akers Republican 1Q/2010 $276,323 $237,528 $89,970 $237,528
Don Benton Republican 1Q/2010 $120,929 ----- $103,694 -----
William Chovil Unknown ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Arthur Coday Jr Republican 1Q/2010 $61,606 $18,025 $26,313 $18,025
Richard Curtis None 1Q/2010 $5,853 ----- $1,549 -----
Clint Didier Republican 1Q/2010 $351,518 $4,800 $151,072 $834
Daniel LeBlanc Republican 1Q/2010 $100 ----- $100 -----
James Mercer Republican 1Q/2010 $3,599 $1,644 $1,473 -----
Patricia Murray Democrat 1Q/2010 $5,471,308 ----- $5,916,995 -----
Rodney Rieger Republican 4Q/2009 $15 $15 $15 -----
Sean Salazar Republican 4Q/2009 $52,998 $24,462 $96 $5,644
Edward Torres Republican ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Chris Widener Republican 1Q/2010 $56,614 ----- $12,308 -----
Craig Williams Republican 1Q/2010 $18,753 $8,250 $2,626 -----

“Motley” doesn’t begin to describe this bunch.  Only ex-NFLer Didier and State Senator Benton have over $100K in cash-on-hand, and Didier’s bankroll is a mere 2.5% of the pile Patty has amassed.  Akers is completely self-funded, and both Coday and Salazar have put in a serious chunk of their meager funds. 

Were Rossi to join the crowd, he would certainly finish second in the Top Two primary.  After all, he’s the only one in the bunch who’s even slightly known beyond his own family circle.  But he’d still lose to Senator Murray, and he’d undoubtedly cause the NRSC and corporate scumbags to flush some of their money down the toilet of his campaign.  He’d lose (semi)respectably, which would place him quite a bit closer to Patty than any of the rest of them.

]]> 2010-05-01T05:35:00-08:00 Practice, practice, practice http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/practice_practice_practice/ This post’s title is the punchline to an old joke.

An elderly New Yorker (often identified as Polish-American pianist Arthur Rubenstein) is approached by a tourist, who asks him, “Pardon me, sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

"Practice, practice, practice..."

And that’s how it came to pass that, last Sunday evening, my nephew and his oboe debuted at the Isaac Stern Auditorium / Ronald O. Perelman Stage  --  the nation’s most renowned classical music performance space since its opening in 1891  --  at the corner of 57th Street and 7th Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

No, it wasn’t a solo debut, or even a featured debut.  As he continues to progress as an oboist, those may happen at some future date. 

He and dozens of his fellow members of the Garfield High School Orchestra performed as part of Carnegie Hall’s Spring Instrumental Music Festival.  The other performances at the evening’s concert were by the orchestras from Delaware, Ohio’s Rutherford B. Hayes High School and Kirkwood (Missouri) High School.

Alas, I’ve seen only one review of the performance thus far:
They were magnificent  --  my sister
I’m sure I’ll hear much more about the trip, the stage, and the performance when my nephew, sister, and brother-in-law return to Seattle tomorrow night.  In the meantime, to get to Carnegie Hall either “practice, practice, practice” or take the F, N, Q, R, or W train.

]]> 2010-03-31T22:16:50-08:00 That was some Summit http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/that_was_some_summit/ Suffering at home with a head cold, I had the opportunity to watch today’s White House Health Care Summit in real time.  As is obvious from the commentaries careening around the airwaves and the blogosphere, observers saw in the event that which they wanted to see.  To my mind, what happened today was actually more a case of greasing the skids for passage of a bill on both sides of the Capitol Building, of the President telling the House and Senate “You will work this out, period.” He reminded the legislators, time and time again, that going ahead with the construction of a more rational healthcare system is an exigent national necessity. Many of my progressive and liberal brethren have taken to excoriating the President and the Democratic majority for not magically creating the sort of system that we’d like—if not single-payer, at least a robust public option.  At the risk of being accused of Blue Doggery or Conservademism, or selling out to the corporate elite, I’ve understood all along that the sausage-making legislative process can be frustratingly slow, heavily laden with deals and compromises.  To say nothing of the appreciable differences between the House and Senate versions of the HCR bill. Political newbies, those millions of Americans whose only real experience with the system had been participation in the 2008 primaries and election campaign, had and have no familiarity with the nitty-gritty of developing and passing legislation.  I’m no grizzled veteran of the political machine, but for almost 10 years I worked closely with a federal agency (CMS, née HCFA) and with the lobbyists for the national association of Medicare QIOs.  Several posts here focused on my QIO jobs—“Have a magical day..." (February 2003), Scully ... The X-Administrator Files? (August 2003), Medicare flim-flam from the Orwell Administration (September 2004), Wi-Fi on the beach (June 2005).

So I’m more than passingly familiar with regulations and legislation.  In addition, I cut my primary/elections teeth one Presidential cycle earlier, with the Dean campaign in 2002-2004.  Whether that makes me knowledgeable or jaded (it could, of course, be both) is a conclusion I’ll leave up to you, the viewer.

My catch-phrase in the HCR saga, through all the highs and (more numerous) lows of its meanders through the halls of Congress, has been Lao-tzu’s

The longest journey begins with a single step
There have been federal efforts to create a more rational healthcare system for decades and decades.  Whether you trace it back to Theodore Roosevelt or his cousin Franklin, there has been only very limited success.  In actuality, over those many years no HCR legislation has made it through Congress except Medicare and Medicaid in 1966.  In the 40-plus years since, those programs have been slightly expanded and somewhat tweaked, but no new programs or real system modernizations have been seen.

In 2010, then, with a teetering world economy, the still-festering lesions of the poisonous Bush years, immense deficit spending, a Republican Party devoted solely to obstructing anything proposed by the Democrats (even provisions originally proposed by Republicans), corporatist conservative Democrats, Senatorial timidity, and tactical errors by the Obama Administration, it’s astonishing that we’re on the brink of taking that hugely-difficult small step.  But after the Summit today, I’m increasingly confident that the House and Senate leadership will be able to collaborate to build a reasonably strong bill for the President to sign.  IMHO, during the Summit Obama regularly schooled the GOP.  And several Democrats (Tom Harkin, Dick Durbin, Charley Rangel, Nancy Pelosi) made strong, albeit emotional and anecdotal, remarks.

For me, though, perhaps the most meaningful speaker was this one, especially in his closing statement:

John D. Dingell, Jr. has represented Michigan’s 15th Congressional District since 1955 (well, it was renumbered to the 16th for much of those 54 years, but he had this number at the start and in the present).  He is, in fact, the longest-serving Representative in the history of the House.  Dingell was there when Medicare was crafted and passed.  Even more remarkably, Dingell won the seat upon the death of his father, John D. Dingell, Sr., who had served in the House for 22 years ... ever since MI-15’s creation in 1933.  Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Inkster, Romulus, and their environs have been represented in Washington by a John Dingell for over three-quarters of a century!

Dingell’s Biblical reference directly addresses another of my favorite aphorisms for this Session of Congress, from Voltaire:

The perfect is the enemy of the good
I bet he’d find common cause with the one referenced earlier.  Heaven knows he’s been there, looking for a way to take that single step, for a long, long time.

]]> 2010-02-26T05:43:27-08:00 Seven years ... and counting http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/seven_years_and_counting/ Seven years ago, to the day, I wrote the first post on Peace Tree Farm.  It included the following: Whatever I happen to discuss, my viewpoint will be one of seeking rationality, of following the subject to its logical conclusion ... even if that logic sometimes takes us to a reductio ad absurdum.  It’s a viewpoint tempered by 50-some years of living, by two years residence in the Pacific Northwest after spending most of my days in the Northeast, by a career of research into healthcare and the quality thereof, by Woodstock and the assassinations, by close observation of governments in action, by Herman Melville and Bill James, by Bob Dylan and Dan Bern, and by much, much more.My viewpoint remains pretty much the same, even as I approach 60-some years and even as I close in on nine years as a Seattlite.As for the examples of what I might opine about, I haven’t written very much about healthcare quality (nor do I work in that particular field any more).  Woodstock was my subject on its 40th anniversary, and also an important part of my post on the 30th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation.  The murder of John Kennedy has been recalled on four anniversaries thereof—2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008.
Except for the reference on Opening Day, I haven’t said a word about Melville.  Moby Dick is on my re-reading list, but I can’t promise that its author will be on my topic list any time soon.  Though I’ve written often about baseball, particularly in the recent years of Phillies ascendance, Bill James has made only a single, peripheral, appearance in a blog post hereabouts.  In contrast, Dylan has graced these pages regularly.  I marked his 64th and 65th birthdays, expressed my amazement when he did some bizarre TV ads, and referred to him or his lyrics any number of times over the years.  Finally, I was surprised how rare were my mentions of Dan Bern.  Though I wrote a post extolling one of his finest songs, there hasn’t been all that much more about Dan.  If he ever comes back this way on tour, I’ll be sure to put up a post about it.

In any case, the Peace Tree Farm blog now moves into its eighth year of existence.  I won’t pretend to suggest that my words have been of any great value to the world at large.  After all, although this was the Pacific Northwest’s first liberal blog—Dave Neiwert wrote the first entry on Orcinus six days after PTF’s debut—it may also be its smallest and least significant.  Hell, in these seven years I’ve drawn about as many visits and page views as DailyKos gets in two or three hours.  Insignificance ‘R’ us!

]]> 2010-01-03T06:05:51-08:00 Good riddance to the Not-Aughts http://peacetreefarm.org/index.php/weblog/good_riddance_to_the_not_aughts/ In just a few hours, we’ll be ringing in a new year.  Hanging on my kitchen wall will be a new Ansel Adams calendar, replacing the just-completed edition, awaiting events and appointments to be filled in over the next 365 days. It’s not just the year that’s ending, though.  We’re about to start a new decade as well.  Now, I’m ordinarily of the xxx1-xxx0 school of decade-counting, mostly on account of the no Year Zero rule.  Until this fall, that rule also conveniently placed the most recent World Series victory by the damnYankees in a previous decade ... and in a previous century.  It was fun to say of the Yanks, “oh, they’re just so last-century.  Unfortunately, that snark doesn’t work any more. But let’s face it—the decade of the 2000s, defined here as 2000-2009, really, really sucked.  No need to enumerate the disasters, both natural and man-made, that befell our little planet over the last ten years.  Even if switching over to a 2000-2009 decade marker results in Yankee bookends on the decade, we need to put this one behind us ASAP.  So, good riddance to the first decade of the 21st century.  Don’t let the calendar hit your butt on the way out. It was such a sucky decade that we never even named it.  I mean, I’ve lived through the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and ... what? The equivalent decade of the 20th century was unambiguously known as the Aughts.  In my childhood, older people would often speak of, say, the Wright Brothers’ first flight occurring in “nineteen-aught-three”.  But nobody ever used, or uses, “aught” in describing the years of the decade we’re finishing. 

It’s also quite unusual to hear anyone use such constructions as “twenty-number”, or even “twenty-oh-number”, for years in this century.  The latter was assuredly the common terminology for the 20th century analogue of the last decade, and the former was the standard for the remainder of the century.  Instead, what we’ve heard over the last ten years is usually in the “two thousand-and-number” format.

Most likely, the rest of the 21st century will follow the conventions of previous centuries.  “Twenty-ten”, “twenty-eleven”, and such roll off the tongue much more naturally than either “"twenty-oh-nine" or “two thousand-and-ten”.

So, as indicated in the title, good riddance to the Not-Aughts.  Happy New Year, all! 

And, coming up in just a couple of days, Peace Tree Farm marks its seventh blogiversary…

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