One lump, or two?

There’s no accounting for people’s taste in matters of tea, or parties, or especially “tea parties.”

Last week saw the astounding uprising of dozens of people all across our country in a movement that could only be called, truthfully, “astroturf.” That is the term generally applied to activities pretending to be grass-roots movements that are not, really.

In this case, the leadership of passionate folks like Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich and the talking heads on Fox News was hard to ignore. Towards the end, Governor Perry and even ol’ Joe Barton inserted themselves into the act.

In search of a hook upon which to hang their objections to all things Obama, and apparently lacking the imagination to come up with something new, those good folks had decided on tea-and-taxes.

Back in 1773 tea-drinkers in the colonies, specifically in Boston, were really upset to learn that the British Parliament had decided to levy an import tax on tea shipped to the colonies. They were outraged, in fact, and told the captains of the three ships that were waiting in Boston Harbor to take their doggone cargo back to England. Wasn’t fair, they said, to have to pay taxes they had no hand in levying.

It was taxation without representation, they said. And that was wrong.

The ships didn’t budge, and things heated up to the point where angry colonists stormed the docks and dumped all that tea into the harbor.

Reports have it that Samuel Adams was a leader of the movement.

According to the account in Wikipedia,

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

Inquiring minds want to know: What’s the connection?

Last week’s events had nothing to do with tea, Americans are no longer subject to taxes levied by King George, and Samuel Adams is now associated with a more interesting beverage; Congressional representatives were everywhere to be seen at the “tea parties,” so you could hardly claim lack of representation was the issue.

The organizers managed to turn out clumps of participants all around the country, some wearing teabags, some tossing them into waterways (littering!), many carrying or wearing signs objecting to high taxes, more taxes, and taxes in general.

Given that it was April 15th, the subject had to be pretty fresh on their minds, though it looked like they were having a pretty good time anyway.

Yet the reality is that most of the folks who were demonstrating, from the looks of it, are actually getting a tax cut because of Obama; of course, some of the loudest, like Armey, Perry, Barton, and the stars of Fox News, are probably in that select group of people with income over $250,000 who will see their taxes go up (would that be why they are so passionately involved?).

Lost in the noise, interestingly, is that in the latter case, the projected increase will still keep their rates below what they paid under Clinton. In some cases tax rates will be lower than they were under Reagan. Were they complaining then? Remind me.

A reporter went to one of the rallies and asked around to see how they felt about the fact that their taxes were going to be reduced. Some demonstrators said that didn’t count, because they were sure their taxes were going to go up later.

Well, yes, some people always complain about taxes. They just don’t like them. For that matter, neither do I, but I am very fond of having a government, a military, first responders, national parks and public schools. Just for starters.

Anyway, I don’t think it was really about taxes. I suspect it was more about the economy, and we Americans can be an impatient lot, as is often noted.

Even so, is it reasonable to expect that Obama, after three whole months in office, should have fixed it by now?

Originally published in the Waxahachie Daily Light, April 20, 2009.

A couple of bones to pick

Most folks have heard, at least in passing, about the the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card check,” working its way through Congress this week. And most of what we seem to hear is basically negative. Lies, even.

If you tell the truth you may not get what you want, I guess.

So here we have this great hullabaloo of worry about secret ballots, something the worriers know the American public cherishes above practically everything else. But it’s all a fraud.

What are the worriers worried about? They say they are worried about the process by which employees of a business decide whether they want to bargain as a group for things like hours, wages and benefits.

Who’s doing the worrying? The employers. That should tell you something.

But the employers aren’t worried about the outcome, not at all. They say they are just trying to be sure that their poor dumb employees aren’t denied the right to a secret ballot.

That argument is what’s dumb. The legislation in Congress right now, the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card-check,” provides for each and every employee to receive a card with the following choices:

The employee can sign up in favor of joining a union, or not. Or he can choose to have a secret ballot on the matter. The employees get to choose.

Secret ballot. There it is, right there. If the majority of the cards come back with the secret ballot choice checked, there you are, it’ll be a secret ballot.

But if 50%-plus-one come back checked in favor of having a union, the employees get to have a union. That’s a majority, but it would appear the employers who are fighting this are afraid a majority of their workers might actually want to have a union. The dirty little secret is that employers don’t want it to be simple.

Gotta wonder why.

* * *

Good ol’ Newt Gingrich is back, maybe getting a good start on 2012, and has been on various TV shows holding forth on just about everything under the sun, or at least everything Barack Obama is doing. Which he opposes.

In the context of the leadership struggles within the Republican party, Newt comes across as the sane elder statesman, according to some.

So, last week he suggested that Obama should have taken out the North Korean rocket test with some kind of laser weapon, an idea perhaps intended to show how high-tech he thinks; “high” might be the operative word here because we don’t seem to have such in our arsenal.

On at least one Sunday show he shared his opinion on health care reform, or at least what he perceives as Obama’s plan taking us down the road to “putting everyone on Medicaid.”

Now, I can’t be sure he meant to say “Medicaid,” though he said it several times, because I know the comparison that’s been drawn to one of the options being proposed for a national health care solution is “Medicare,” a very different breed of cat.

Medicaid, a form of health care coverage for the working poor, might as well be unavailable so far as Ellis County residents are concerned. Most doctors can’t afford to offer it because it pays so poorly.

Medicare, on the other hand, which most senior citizens have, is agreed by all but the unfeeling to be good coverage, cost-effective and efficient. A government plan that lets you choose your own doctor and make your own decisions, by the way.

And no, Obama’s plan is not “socialized” medicine, nor is Medicare for that matter; however, that’s the favorite term of argument for those who prefer that private insurance companies continue to make your decisions, choose your doctor, deny coverage when you most need it, and make lots of money in the process.


Originally published in the Waxahachie Daily Light April 13, 2009.

Stirring the pot

President Barack Obama did something new the other day, though it should have been expected given what we know about him and his administration; he conducted a virtual town hall meeting with Americans.

Using the Internet, in other words, he took questions from just about everywhere. According to the White House, 92,927 people had submitted over 104,000 questions; in order to reduce them to the workable number of a dozen or so that he’d actually have time to address, the online participants were told to vote for the questions they thought most important. In the end, over 3.6 million votes had been cast.

In an array that included questions about the auto industry, universal health care, mortgages and education, the top vote-getting category was “jobs.” And the top vote-getter within that category asked “whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation.”

The President looked at the question for a moment. “I don't know what this says about the online audience,” he remarked with that grin.

“But, seriously,” he added, “no, I don't think this is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

But the question and ensuing buzz about it did stir discussion in some quarters, and that’s a good thing.

I could go on at some length about the advantages that might result were we to make an honest woman out of Mary Jane; the salient argument might be the predictable reduction in our prison populations.

But I want to narrow the focus here to the matter of medical marijuana, for it has special significance to me.

Back in the late 1980s my Dad was diagnosed with leukemia, in a form that mainly attacks the elderly.

Aside from fatigue, the most devastating effect of the illness was a devastating loss of appetite, and it’s hard to do well if you don’t eat.

This is when I learned to shuck oysters; I don’t do oysters myself, and found that prying them open is a real challenge. But he really went for Blue Points, so shucking got easy. He loved lamb chops, too. But that was about all that appealed.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t eat, you see; it was just that the appetite was gone.

Now, we knew somehow that ingesting marijuana in any form generates a keen, almost relentless, appetite, and we were certain that if we could bake some loaded-up brownies for him, for example, he would then eat great plates of food and bowls of soup and it would help. He liked brownies, too.

We talked about it some. I remember so clearly wishing, wondering if, we could get our hands on some. Not that we were afraid of breaking the law; we just didn’t know how to get it. Didn’t have the right connections, you could say.

Dad died in 1990. If he'd had an appetite maybe he could have made it through just a couple of years more, long enough to receive the new treatment discovered in 1992 that might well have worked for him.

It should not be surprising that I absolutely support making marijuana legal for medical purposes. In California and other states where the law now permits it, the Obama justice department has indicated that state law in the matter should be respected.

Hysteria over marijuana needs to be tamped down across the board, and not just in the minds of those who talk about how bad it is over their cocktails.

Can’t let sleeping dogs lie

Comments by readers of the online version of my column generally run the gamut from praise to potshots; if it were otherwise I’d wonder if anyone out there was paying attention.

For the record, I don’t usually comment on readers’ comments, but when serious misinformation is put forth, I can’t just leave it hanging out there. This is important stuff for voters to know, even if it seems like nitpicking. Especially if they are wondering about the current Republican effort to pass a law requiring further and redundant identification at the polling place.

Specifically, a couple of readers have insisted that our present law does not require a voter to present a voter registration certificate or in fact any ID at all, in order to vote, each separately recounting experiences where merely giving name and address was all they had needed to do when they voted.

If that were the case, which I respectfully doubt, then the Election Judge at their polling place would have erred, for our Election Code Section 63.001(b) states that:
“On offering to vote, a voter must present the voter's voter registration certificate to an election officer at the polling place.” And there’s a whole litany of procedures that the Election Judge must follow after that.

If, as can happen, you’ve forgotten or lost your registration certificate, you may still be able to vote under Section 63.008:

(a) A voter who does not present a voter registration certificate when offering to vote, but whose name is on the list of registered voters for the precinct in which the voter is offering to vote, shall be accepted for voting if the voter executes an affidavit stating that the voter does not have the voter's voter registration certificate in the voter's possession at the polling place at the time of offering to vote and the voter presents proof of identification in a form described by Section 63.0101.

How do you read that? Clearly, simply stating your name and address won’t cut it.

Section 63.0101 lists the acceptable forms of identification that will allow you to vote provided you complete the affidavit; the list includes driver’s license or other photo ID, birth certificate, or even a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, “or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter.”

A third reader agreed with the others, saying, “I see absolutely no problem with requiring ID for voting.”

Well, fine. But here’s the truth: We already require an ID for voting. It’s called a voter registration certificate, and if you don’t have it with you, see above.

Now, stop a minute and think: In order to get a voter registration certificate, you have to . . . wait for it . . . produce your ID!

According to Elections Code, Section 13.002(c)(8)(A), in order to register to vote your application must include:

(A) the applicant's Texas driver's license number or the number of a personal identification card issued by the Department of Public Safety or a statement by the applicant that the applicant has not been issued a driver's license or personal identification card; or
(B) if the applicant has not been issued a number described by Paragraph (A), the last four digits of the applicant's social security number or a statement by the applicant that the applicant has not been issued a social security number.

Lots of hassle to go through if you want to cheat, and it doesn’t look like there would be many folks left to commit voting-without-ID.

Somewhere in all the comments one gentleman assured me that this was all moot because “Texas law requires people to carry identification on their person.” Well, that sent up shivers of déjà-vu for the libertarian in me, back to the whole national debate about the idea of a national identity card – you know, like all those bad communist governments out there.

So I did what any red-blooded American would do: I called the cops.

Speaking to one of Waxahachie’s finest, I put it to him directly: Does Texas law really require a person to carry identification? His answer:

“No, ma’am.”

He went on to explain that if you are driving a motor vehicle, you must have a driver’s license with you; if you are packing a pistol, you’d better be licensed for that. And the same goes for any other activity for which a license is required: If you need a license for what you’re doing, be prepared to show it.

But you won’t break the law just being out and about, walking the dog, or even walking to the polling place, because America is still the land of the free.

I know this has been an awful lot of detail without much comic relief, especially if the nuts and bolts of our democracy don’t fascinate you as they do me, but if you’ve gotten this far in reading perhaps that means you’ve found it useful.

Here’s to the nuts, and bolts!

Originally published in the Waxahachie Daily Light on March 30, 2009