Vote! If you don't vote will you get even worse candidates?

 I'm still here.  But I don't get to see much about the traffic here.  I just haven't figured out just what I have to reset.

 We have settled into senior housing after selling our house.  We are in a location where we can walk to almost all the places that we need to go. 

We have cast our 2020 ballots at city hall.  We were surprised that we had to wait, not long, but it sure beats standing in line on November 3.

We are also happy that we live in a state that honors vote integrity.  We can see this by the way parties keep switching around.  I would like to vote Republican, but I haven't seen any real Republicans since Arne Carlson replaced a child molester on the ballot for Governor.

See also Dave Durenburger's book When Republicans Were Progressive.

As for the title of this article: Hilary Clinton may have won the popular vote, but would she gotten the Electoral College vote if 90% or more had shone up?  The less than 70% vote was not worthy of a democracy.

If you are an American be sure to vote.  Sorry, you don't get to vote twice this year for not voting in 2016.

Letter to Rep. Pete Stauber - MN-8

What would Republicans like Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Ronald Reagan think of Donald Trump and how he has taken over the Republican Party?  I can just hear Ronald Reagan saying, “There you go again.”

I would think they would be appalled.  Instead of Res Publica (public things) he has turned the party into Rex Donald.  It’s all about him, the public be damned.

I was a Republican precinct finance chair when Reagan was nominated, I voted for John Anderson.  I kept my party position next year (coming in third again in money collected).  But I haven’t voted for a Republican since except Arne Carlson twice.

I really don’t care to vote for Democrats, but the current Republican Party doesn’t give me much choice.  Staying away is not an option.

Real conservatives don’t use “liberal” as a pejorative

Probably the last real conservative on the national stage was Dwight Eisenhower.  In his farewell address he did not use either liberal or conservative.  See http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html.

The most famous assertion he made was his warning about the “military-industrial complex”:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Just like Washington’s “Farewell Address”, so-called “conservatives” completely ignore the advice of two of the most prominent, believable, and thoughtful conservatives.

I hope you can take the time to read Eisenhower’s farewell address.  If you do, you may agree that Eisenhower was among the last of the true conservatives.  In Minnesota they were rejected by the Republican Party as RINOs (Republican in name only).

Although John B. Anderson was a bit quixotic and supported some radical candidates, like Ralph Nader, I consider him more a true Republican than almost any other prominent Republican.  i think Rep. Bill Frenzel and Governor Arne Carlson represent true conservatives.  Arne Carlson still blogs at http://govarnecarlson.blogspot.com.

Whatever happened to real Republicans?

Once upon a time we were active Republican Party members at the precinct level. Then Reagan won the nomination instead of John Anderson, and Republicans became more rigid in their beliefs. It was about this time that the term RINO was coined: Republican In Name Only. And the Republicans stopped being a big tent party. This rigidity should not be mistaken for conservatism, a thoughtful consideration of change.

There have been a few bright spots like Bill Frenzel, Representative of 3rd Minnesota district, and Arne Carlson, Gov. of Minnesota after the Republican candidate imploded because of inappropriate behavior with teen-age girls. So much for the "moral" party. BTW Carlson still writes a blog: http://govarnecarlson.blogspot.com/

Since then, there have been more and more rigid stances, including eight years of obstruction of a Democratic President. Bi-partisan legislation happens too infrequently.

I would say the only thing "conservative" is to "conserve our world view" despite plentiful evidence to the contrary.

Comment to New York Times article "On Where the Republican Party Went Wrong", Charlie Sykes, 2016-12-15

Raucous Caucus and Other Ruckuses

The Party of One held its caucus in front of my fireplace.  Mysteriously, it issued the following results:  None of the above, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton.  The Party of One caucus called on all of its members to not vote for any Republican except Arne Carlson or Bill Frenzel.  Unfortunately, Bill Frenzel died two years ago, but Arne Carlson is alive and writing.  See governorcarlson.blogspot.com for what he thinks of Trump, Fox, and MSNBC.

Trump's plurality is not the lock on the nomination that so many news stories imply.  Cruz and Rubio could unite as President/VP and have the majority of delegates.  Either of the two could run as President but Rubio running as President may have a benefit.  This choice defuses the issue of Cruz's birthplace.  But if such a duo is finalized, Cruz will more than likely be the Presidential candidate because as of this writing he has more delegates than Rubio.  Do you think the same “birthers” that tried to make an issue of Obama’s birth will make an issue of Cruz’s birth?

There is a campaign by Credo Action to get CBS to stop giving so much coverage to Donald Trump.  An email from Credo Action quotes CBS CEO Les Moonves: Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”  The email also quotes CBS’s diversity and tolerance policy: “CBS Corporation, and its divisions are committed to building an environment that values diversity throughout the corporation and in its business practices.”

Personally, I think watching televised debates or even TV news is a waste of time.

I last watched Presidential debates in 2004.  I got so sick of John Kerry repeating “in my plan” that I almost didn’t vote for him.  I only voted for him because he was better than the alternative.  Bush was an angel compared to the angry clowns trying to outdo each other in shouting matches.  And Bush as a former governor and a sitting president had far more credibility and experience than an erratic businessman who has made a career of putting people down.  Remember “You’re fired!”

Watching TV news is unproductive time.  I can read more news items in a half-hour in a newspaper than I can get in a half-hour TV news broadcast.  Plus, I can skip ads in the newspaper but it’s hard to skip the twelve minutes of ads in a TV newscast.

My Party of One caucus was a lot less crowded than my wife’s DFL caucus.  She spent a lot of time driving around looking for a parking place, then she had to stand in line to even enter the building, and then she couldn’t get into the room for her precinct.  The best she could do was write her choice for president on a little slip of paper.  She had wanted to submit a couple of resolutions.  This is democracy?

I keep wondering why so many states have partisan primaries or caucuses that are open to the public.  I think it was Robert La Follette of Wisconsin over a century ago who thought that primaries would make elections more democratic.  I think it has had two downsides.  People who don’t give time or a dime to a party get to decide its candidates.  Second, it makes for much longer campaigns.

Many point to Canada and Britain as examples of “six-week campaigns”, but both of these are parliamentary systems.  My deadline precludes doing further research on this, but I think two factors are at work here.

First, elections are not held on a regular cycle.  Often, a prime minister may decide to call elections to try to get more support for his positions.  These irregular elections have to take place in a relatively short time.  If a government does sit for its whole term, people are just in the habit of holding elections in a short period of time.

Second, even though voting for a member of parliament may be a proxy for the prime minister, the members are possibly only willing to campaign for a short period of time.  Few are the times that we have two-year-long all-out campaigns for local and state governments.

I do wish our so-called “debates” were debates in the classical sense: rather than moderators posing questions to each of the “debaters”, one of the candidates would speak for a certain amount of time on whatever topic he or she chose.  The other candidate (or candidates) could either rebut the first candidate’s remarks or go on to another subject.  Assuming only two candidates, the first would have a shorter period of time to rebut the second.  This is more or less how the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held.  Unfortunately, few people today would be willing to stand the hour-plus time of a single debate, or even sit that long.

It is ironic that the party that thought the federal government should work to abolish slavery is now the party that promotes segregation.  “Because we think it a wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong.”  - Abraham Lincoln, Quincy, Illinois, 13 October 1858.

Whatever your choices are in November, be sure to vote.  Your vote always counts.  You only throw your vote away if you stay away.

Also posted in the Reader Weekly of 2016-03-10 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/10/6854_raucous_caucus_and_other_ruckuses.

I am a Democratic Party leader?

Way back in 2008 I donated ten or twenty bucks to the Obama campaign.  Ever since then I receive pleas for money and for filling out a “survey” from the Democratic National Party.

“OFFICIAL PARTY BUSINESS - OPEN IMMEDIATELY”

The letter, this time “from” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, includes:

Melvyn, you are one of a select group of party leaders…

I am a Democratic Party leader?  The last time I was an official party leader was in the 70s when I was a Republican precinct financial chair.  Then came Reagan.  I’ve been wandering in the political desert ever since with a couple of forays to support one or another independent candidate.

Now Reagan looks like a liberal and my only choice is pretty much to vote Democratic.  The Democrats are several steps closer to reality and practical governance than the Republicans.  Where are the likes of John Anderson, Arne Carlson, and Bill Frenzel?

I scribbled on a plea for the 2012 Presidential campaign that Obama should depend on his big donors rather than small donors he courted so well in 2008.  I haven’t sent any money since.

Still the pleas come.

The return envelope is labeled:

SURVEY RESPONSE ENCLOSED – PLEASE RUSH

As with all political surveys, the questions and answer selections are biased toward the bias of the party printing the survey.  They are meant to affirm the party’s beliefs rather than shape them.

Well, I will vote in November.  That is a lot more than I can say about many who call themselves Democrats.

Are you still writing for the Reader?

I am often asked this by long-time acquaintances.  Because I’ve been writing the “Party of One” almost regularly since early October 2013, I’m tempted to ask in return, “When did you stop reading the Reader?”  But I don’t.

I appreciate those acquaintances that tell me that they like a column, but please tell me which one.  I am thinking about three columns at the same time – the one that is already in print, the one I have submitted for the next issue, and the next one that I have sketched out.  I may have forgotten the column published two weeks ago.

How do I decide what to write about?  My stock answer is “Writing what I damn well please since 1999.”  I have this on my “business” card.  What damn well pleases me can be on almost anything: current politics, news stories, computers and other gadgets, every day mundane observations, or just whimsy.

Sometimes the ideas almost flow from my fingertips.  Last week’s “Free market in telecommunications?” was one.  I think I wrote it in two sittings.  Sometimes I have to do quite a bit of research.  “How folks change rivers” was one.  Sometimes I have to pull ideas out of my head; ideas can be like teeth, loose but not coming out.  This column is one of those.

Writing about politics is rather easy.  Sometimes the political class has some good ideas; sometimes it has some really, really bad ideas.  Unfortunately, the bad ideas get more coverage than the good ideas.  Good ideas do get coverage, but too often good ideas get attacked more often than explained because the good ideas don’t fit somebody’s idea of a “perfect world”.

Once upon a time, I was active in the Minnesota Republican Party.  Then there was Ronald Reagan.  Fortunately, there were still the likes of Rep. Bill Frenzel and to-be Gov. Arne Carlson, politicians who were more concerned with resolving problems than promoting an ideology.  I have yet to see a Congressional newsletter like Bill Frenzel’s.  He wrote critically about what Congress did, not what he did.  Almost without exception, Congressional newsletters and websites are photo-ops showing how “hard” the representative is “working” for his or her “hard-working” constituents.

Promoting ideology now seems to be the only politics that is acceptable, no matter the party.

This situation does make it easier to write a column.  As the adage states, ”It’s easier to criticize than offer solutions.”

I do try to offer solutions now and then, but few people seem to take them seriously.  I should have a bit of humility though, if they were such great solutions shouldn’t my blog get more attention from American readers and less from Russian reverse spammers and shouldn’t my writings spread wider than a weekly newspaper in a small city?

One aspect of our lives that is easier to criticize than offer solutions is technology; whether it is all the glitches in the rollout of the government health insurance or it is all the problems we have trying to have our computers and other gadgets perform consistently.

I use my computer and gadgets for a large variety of tasks – from writing this column to preparing taxes.  Certain software also allows me to have the same data on my computer as well as on my gadgets.  For example, I can use email on my laptop, my iPad, and my iPhone.  A copy of every received and sent email will be on all three.

Almost every program I use does far more than the programs I wrote for the Macintosh over 25 years ago.  I consider my programs of then almost as toys.  Because modern programs are far more complex than mine of yesteryear, that complexity leads to a longer problem list than my nine-page problem list when I folded my company.

Sometimes I write a bit of wordplay.  “You can write haiku” was one of these.  Writing that column was almost a word torrent.  One thing led to another.  The only hard part was making sure I had the 5-7-5 syllable form.  I think I missed on one or two.

Since then I came up with a Japanese haiku from my very small Japanese vocabulary.

Wakarimasen!
Zero, ichi, ni, san, shi!
Wakarimasu!

I don’t understand!
Zero, uh-one, two, three, four!
I do understand.

Both versions are a stretch.  Technically the “masu” at the end is two syllables, but most Westerners only hear “mas”.  I had to use “uh-one” to follow the same number pattern.

Every so often an acquaintance asks me to write about some topic; generally he or she is asking me to report on the topic.  Sorry, I don’t do reporting.  I’ll leave that to those who want to interview lots of people and sift through the various views.

The closest that I came to that was “Does ‘environmentally friendly’ copper mining exist?”  I found more sources about this topic than I would ever read.  Some of the sources gave reasons that it does; some gave reasons that it doesn’t.  Every “pro” source I found was countered by a source, neutral or “anti”, that showed otherwise.

Will I keep writing for the Reader?  You betcha!  I have a long list of notes in my computer and on scraps of paper that can provide material for several years to come.

Now I ask, are you still reading the Reader?

Have Republican defections gotten a big boost?

Former Florida Republican Governor Charlie Christ has come out in support of Barack Obama.  See
"Here's why I'm backing Obama", Tampa Bay Times, 2012-08-26.

Once upon a time I was active in the Republican Party, and then it nominated Ronald Reagan over John Anderson.  I did keep voting for Bill Frenzel, Rep., 3rd District, MN, until he retired.  And I voted for Arne Carlson for governor when he replaced the Republican candidate who behaved inappropriately in a swimming pool with teen-age girls.

And the Republicans have gotten even worse.  If they really looked at Ronald Reagan's ability to compromise, they would consider him a "Marxist".

I keep hoping the current Republicans will self-destruct and be replaced by a common-sense party based on facts rather than ideology.  Meanwhile, I feel compelled to vote for Democrats even though they try to cater to too many narrow interests.

Will moderates be returning to Minnesota state government?

I don't have any great hopes for seeing this happen in a big way soon, but a wedge has been put in to create an opening.  Margaret Anderson Kelliher, the DFL-nominated candidate for governor, has chosen John Gunyou as her running mate.

John Gunyou was Finance Commissioner under Arne Carlson, the last state-wide moderate Republican.  He has written many op-ed pieces for the Star Tribune criticizing the many ideologues in politics, especially Republicans.  I've saved five of them.

One of my favorites is "Taxpayer's League's model for governing", Star Tribune, 2006-06-15.  Sorry, it's no longer available online.  His opening is priceless:

"Here's a civics question to start the day. Who provides your public services like police and fire protection, education, parks and roads? Is it: (a) cities, counties and schools, (b) Uncle Sam & Cousin Tim, or (c) the Minnesota Taxpayers League?
Listening to the Taxpayers League and their political sycophants crow about our state's drop in tax rankings is a little hard to take for those of us actually responsible for delivering the services those taxes pay for. It's a whole lot easier to pontificate about downsizing government when you don't have to figure out how to stretch shrinking resources to patch crumbling streets."

Among other things he points out is the Taxpayer's League doesn't consider that the price of asphalt has gone up but the cities's share of the unchanged gas tax has not gone up.  As citizens' two biggest concerns are speeding and road repair.  Gunyou proposed that his city solve these with less taxes by having inverted speed bumps.  He had a couple of other tongue-in-cheek ideas for getting something for nothing.

If you are a Minnesota voter, I highly recommend looking up his commentaries in your nearest public library.  That is, if it is still open and at a time convenient to you.

I was planning to cast a blank ballot in the August primaries, but now I will be sure to put an X next to Kelliher/Gunyou.  Also, after I post this I'll make a small contribution to the Kelliher/Gunyou campaign.  Note that I am still a Party of One and do not contribute to parties.  Oh, the Coffee Party might be an exception.