A SIGNIFICANT MARK IN TIME!

By Edwin Cooney

The 29th of February only visits us once every 1461 days, so why not give it a little notice?  After all, we celebrate the groundhogs and valentines of February, the lions, lambs and madness of March, the fools of April, the mothers of May, the flags, graduates, and fathers of June, our national independence in July, drooping dogs in August, labor in September, the ghosts and goblins of October, the turkeys and pumpkins of November, tots and toys in December and, most fervently, new beginnings in January.  Thus, this question:  what do orchestra leader Jimmy Dorsey, 1930’s baseball player John “Pepper” Martin of the famous St. Louis Cardinals Gashouse Gang, power-hitting third baseman Al Rosen of the Cleveland Indians (and, later, baseball executive of the seventies, eighties, and nineties), Henri “Rocket” Richard of the NHL Montreal Canadians center, and singer Gretchen Christopher, female lead of the Fleetwoods of the late 50s and early 60s have in common?

They all were “leap yearlings,” a term used by Ms. Raenell Dawn, President of The Society of Leap Year babies, which was featured in a story recently by Adrian McCoy in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Okay! You may say “so what!” but time and the dates that mark time do offer us a worthwhile perspective on both our personal time and national circumstances.

What is it like to have an official birthday only once every four years while all of your siblings and friends enjoy a guaranteed birthday celebration each year?  It’s a rarity and oddity most children don’t have to face and rarities and oddities make a huge difference to us when we’re young and impressionable.  As for adults, it has to be frustrating when it comes to filling out forms.  Then, of course, there are the well-meaning friends who constantly razz you as to whether you should celebrate your birthday on February 28th or March 1st.  Finally, there are those who invariably criticize you no matter what your own attitude is.  If you react to it at all you are criticized for taking it too seriously and if you don’t seem to care, well, that’s also a sin!

Other birthdays also invoke special reactions from both friends and family.  If you’re born after November 15th or before the 15th of January, it’s likely that an aunt will send you a Christmas present that is also for your birthday.  Then, of course, it can be tough to have to celebrate your birthday with a twin sibling—or even worse two triplet siblings.  Of course, if you’re so inclined, you can take some comfort from sharing your birthday with a celebrity such as one listed above.

Then there is the historical significance of events that occurred on February 29ths of the past.  Get a load of these!

On Thursday, February 29th, 1504, Christopher Columbus used knowledge of a coming lunar eclipse to frighten and thus control hostile native tribes in Jamaica.

On Monday, February 29th, 1796, President Washington announced completion of the Jay Treaty signed with Great Britain which turned out to be the most unpopular act of his presidency. (The reason for the treaty’s overall unpopularity was that the good Chief Justice John Jay didn’t get the British to stop boarding American naval and merchant ships illegally with American sailors who were born in England and taking them back for British service.)

On Thursday, February 29th, 1940, the movie version of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” won eight Oscars  at the twelfth presentation by the American Academy of Movie Arts and Science.

On Wednesday, February 29th, 1956, President Eisenhower announced he would seek re-election to a second term despite the severe heart attack he’d suffered the previous September 24th while vacationing in Denver, Colorado.

On Monday, February 29th, 1960, the first Playboy Club opened, with bunnies and all, in Chicago.

On Thursday, February 29th, 1968, the Beatles’ Lonely Heart’s Club Band won a Grammy awarded by the American Academy of Recording Arts and Science.

On Thursday, February 29th, 1968, the Kerner Commission on racial relations appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the United States issues its gloomy report.  “America is a nation consisting of two major races, separate and unequal” asserted its chairman Illinois Governor Otto Kerner.

On Tuesday, February 29th, 1972, Hank Aaron, two seasons away from tying and breaking Babe Ruth’s 714 home run record, is the first player to sign a $200,000 baseball contract.

On Friday, February 29th, 1980, the Detroit Red Wings’ Gordie Howe became the first hockey player to score 800 career goals.

On Wednesday, February 29th, 1984, exactly 28 years after President Eisenhower decided to continue his career despite his heart attack, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, made the decision to step down and end his nearly 15 years as Canada’s most eloquent, glamorous and controversial politician.

There you have a selected list of historical events that occurred on the calendar’s rarest of dates.  Wise, foolish, frivolous and important events occur every day of our lives.  Still, our very designation of February 29th, which has been determined as crucial to mark the earth’s rotation around what might be called “heavenly bodies”, thus becomes naturally imbued with human values reflecting all of those values within its comparatively limited notoriety in human awareness.

If February 29th lacks value then, as sure as you and I were born, so does every other date on the calendar!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHAT’S AT STAKE: POLITICS, PRINCIPLE, OR CIRCUS?

By Edwin Cooney

The body of the most preeminent conservative legal scholar and beloved Supreme Court Justice of our time, Antonin Scalia, was hardly cold last Saturday, February 13th, 2016 when it all began.

Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of the U.S. Senate Republican majority, announced that no nominee presented by President Barack Obama to fill the vacancy created by Justice Scalia’s death would receive a hearing, let alone confirmation, by the United States Senate.  After all, Senator McConnell asserted, 2016 is an election year and thus it is only reasonable that the voice of the people should be heard so that the next president may be more responsive to the people’s will.  On the surface that idea appears reasonable if you believe that we live in a democracy.  Aside from the number of times I’ve heard Republicans lecture liberals that “after all, we live in a republic not a democracy,” one of the main principles practiced by the Founding Fathers was that the judiciary should be above politics.  The uncomfortable truth is that the court has never been appointed nor has it ever functioned devoid of politics.

In 1800, when Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth became ill and resigned his seat on the Supreme Court, President John Adams, a member of the Federalist Party and a “lame duck” with the election of Thomas Jefferson, wanted to reappoint John Jay to his old seat.  However, Jay didn’t want the position, so Adams appointed his outgoing Secretary of State, John Marshall, a personal as well as a political opponent of President-elect Jefferson.  President Adams made no bones of the fact that he wanted some Federalist party influence to remain in the body politic for as long as possible.  Hence, Marshall was appointed and confirmed by the outgoing Federalist Congress which would be replaced by a Democratic-Republican Congress the following December.

Over the past week, I’ve read over a dozen historical instances that fly in the face of what Senator McConnell and all the potential GOP presidents had to say about the rarity of Supreme Court appointments around election time.  What is amazing about all this pretense is how unaware these GOP presidential hopefuls seem to be regarding historical facts.  What’s downright galling about their pretense is how brazenly they defy principle which they always insist lies at the root of their socio/legal Christian-based patriotic beliefs.  Let’s get it straight:  all parties and principled politicians invariably play politics - especially when it really matters.  I’ve read recently that former Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor regrets, at least somewhat, the roll the Supreme Court played in Bush vs. Gore in December of 2000.

Neither political party is historically free of playing politics with the Supreme Court.  The most famous case was FDR’s decision to “pack” the court in 1937 by adding a new judge to the court for every justice over the age of seventy who refused to retire.  Many Democrats including Vice President John Nance Garner disapproved of Roosevelt’s action back in 1937.  What they resented most, however, was that he hadn’t let the congressional leadership of Congress in on what he planned to do before he announced it.  Harry Truman was one of the few Democratic senators who defended the president.  He reminded us that there was nothing in the constitution that dictated that the court have nine members.  After the Civil War, the court had only five members up until around 1869, the first year of the Grant administration.  On several other occasions early in the 1800s, it had less than nine members.  Politicians of both parties really get self-righteous when they start waxing eloquent about the judiciary.  That isn’t to deny that there are some legitimate and important matters at stake, the outcome of which will certainly depend on who is appointed to fill Justice Scalia’s seat.  At the heart of all this is a final and most uncomfortable reality.  Historically, politics has been rather academic for the most part.  However, during several periods in our history since 1789, politics has become desperate.  The first time was that period from 1847 through 1861 leading up to the Civil War.  The second time was during the Depression when everyone was out of ideas except Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Thus his success during that historic one hundred days.  The third period was between late 1965 and 1981 during the upheaval brought on by political assassinations, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Watergate all rolled into that fifteen-year era.  The fourth time is now!

Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Catherine Rampell opined that apparently, according to the Republicans, a president’s first, third and final years in office do not count.  They excuse President George W. Bush from any responsibility for 9/11 because it was too early in his presidency.  They insist that the last year of a presidency doesn’t count since the people can soon decide the course of the future.  The third year of a presidency doesn’t count because, after all, in 2015, the third year of President Obama’s second term, the Senate only approved 11 judicial appointments, the least in history since 1953.

That reminds me, however, how in 1980, after Ronald Reagan’s stunning victory over President Jimmy Carter, President-Elect Reagan’s advisers insisted that President Carter had full authority to negotiate with Iran for the freedom of Americans held hostage in Iran until noon on January 20th, 1981.  Of course, they later insisted that the Iranians settled with Jimmy Carter out of fear of President-Elect Reagan, but of course it was all up to President Carter.  (Remember how the Iranians would manipulate President Reagan over hostages taken in the Middle East in 1985 and 1986.)  So as you can readily see, all of these would-be GOP presidents appear to be confused.  They apparently aren’t sure how long their term in office would count. 

One more thing: do you suppose these same Conservatives will listen to the voice of the people should it be President Bernie Sanders or President Hillary Clinton who sends someone to take Justice Scalia’s place next spring?

Come to think of it, maybe the Republicans are right after all.  Perhaps President Obama shouldn’t submit a nominee to the court.  It will be absolutely fascinating to see what the Conservatives’ reaction will be when Mrs. Clinton sends “First Gentleman” Bill Clinton’s name up for confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States.  First Lady Hillary Clinton refused to merely pour tea and serve cookies during Bill’s administration.  After all, now he would need something to do while she runs the country, wouldn’t he?

What say you?  Would that be principle, politics or circus?!!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

BREAKING A BAD HABIT

By Edwin Cooney

Although it’s a bit disconcerting, Americans, at long last, appear to be breaking a bad habit: political trust!

Trust is a vital factor in both personal and business relationships.  However, for too long Americans have applied personal and business relationships to politics -- local, state and national.  There’s been an historical reason for this.  Since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, Americans have come to depend upon political ideologies as pathways to a brighter, peaceful and prosperous future.  Teddy Roosevelt offered to use the power of government to destroy business monopolies and establish powerful government institutions to ensure the safety of heretofore powerless workers and consumers.  He called his movement “a Square Deal” or “the New Nationalism.”    Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” proposed to use the federal government to break up business monopolies into manageable and competitive entities that people could control more.  Both of these men, although they came to thoroughly distrust and dislike each other, were labeled progressives.  After twelve years of laissez-faire and economic depression under Republican rule, FDR brought about the “New Deal.”  The era of liberalism, which lasted from 1933 to 1969, utilized government to stabilize the economy and ensure social equity and thus increase the fortunes of the vast middle class.  Beginning in 1981, following a twelve-year period of transition, a new brand of conservatism led by Ronald Reagan promised to encourage and enforce America’s traditional values of personal morality and individualism.

It is increasingly apparent that in 2016 Americans have stopped trusting either traditional liberalism or conservatism.  Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are obvious threats to the well-heeled establishments of both parties.  GOP establishment conservatives are obviously very worried about Donald Trump’s economic and social pedigree.  At the same time, Democratic Party liberals seem ready to offer a larger dollop of liberalism than ever before by perhaps nominating an open socialist.

The New Hampshire primaries appeared to indicate to the leadership of both parties that the voters are ready to tip over the traditional card table of political gamesmanship.  To this observer that means that Americans, in greater numbers than ever before, have given up on political trust.  

When you think about that possibility, it may well be a godsend.  I’ve opposed ideas such as line item vetoes (executives don’t veto objectively), term limits (staff leaders who hold the same political positions as their predecessors usually take over when the boss’s term expires), and citizen legislatures. (I’ve never read that Jefferson, Madison, Henry Clay or Daniel Webster voted counter to the wishes of well-healed investors. Note that it is a known fact that Daniel Webster received an annual retainer from the Bank of the United States as he was defending it from Andrew Jackson during the 1830s.).

As I see it, candidates for public office should not only assert their ideologies, but should be compelled to demonstrate to the public how they will apply their principles given the present state of political and social conditions.  For example, most people would assert that a union’s most powerful tool, the right to strike, could be damaging and even unpatriotic when misused.  A union is most useful when it negotiates successfully on behalf of its members.  Conservatives have too often patted themselves on the back when they succeeded in shutting down the government.  However, shutting down the government isn’t governing and that is what they were elected to do: govern.

As for trust, I’m compelled to assert that Americans have depended on that generous option for too long and in the wrong way.  Trust your parents, your siblings, your friends and neighbors.  They deserve the benefit of most of our doubts.  Public officials, whether elected or appointed, need and deserve our guidance and even, on critical occasions, our cooperation.

As for trusting them, let’s hold off on that until once again, as a group, they have earned our love!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE “AMERICAN DREAM” -- WHAT A SCREAM!

By Edwin Cooney

According to everything I have read from the observations of 2016 political analysts, Americans are furious.  Really furious!  The American Dream is not only gone -- it’s dead!  It has been the victim of Barack Obama, former Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, former House leader Barney Frank of Massachusetts as well as both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

So, long live the American Dream! 

Bah, humbug!  I think it was the late Paul Harvey who once observed that Americans will swallow anything as long as it’s launched dramatically enough -- or did Mr. Harvey say “pompously” enough?  He ought to have known, as he launched some pretty pithy words and phrases such as “snooper-vision” for supervision, the significance of “the rest of the story,” and a few other emotion-grabbing sentimental sayings.

Thus, politicians do what we expect of them.  Politicians create phrases that illuminate our past so grandly that we, hungry for all the good things imaginable, thrash about looking for our past “dreams” to create and insure our future.  Thus, we insist that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Dr. Ben Carson, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders make “the American Dream” real once again.

Here’s the unvarnished truth.  I can suggest it because I haven’t announced my presidential candidacy yet.  The American Dream has never existed and, to the extent it has been imagined  (usually by some left or rightwing socio/political splinter group), the American dream is mostly a politician’s phraseological prop.  The question is: when was the American Dream really real?

Perhaps the American Dream was really real during the 1950s when the top tax rate was seventy or eighty percent? Or when Americans were panicked by the Rosenberg spies, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist hunt, or Khrushchev’s 1957 Sputnik? Maybe the American Dream was alive and kicking during the huge 1959 steel strike!

Moving on to the 1960s, perhaps the “American Dream” was throbbing during the civil rights struggle, the anti-Vietnam War turmoil, or just after the two Kennedy assassinations. Perhaps it was when Medicare, which was so derided by Republicans, was passed, or it could have been during the 1966 airline strike, the college sit-ins, or the race riots in 1964, ’65, ’66 and ’67.

Perhaps the Chicago police riot during the ’68 Democratic Convention was America’s expression of its truest aspirations.

I remember a moment during the 1966 congressional campaign when President Johnson opined (rather pleadingly, I thought): “I’m not saying you’ve never had it so good, but have you?”  The GOP led by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s election as Governor of California along with the loss of forty-seven Democratic House seats was the American people’s response to LBJ.

America, just like every other nation, has always possessed an agenda for its immediate and long-term future.  However, that agenda is often tempered by our individuality.  More to the point, an agenda isn’t necessarily a dream. Many (but not all) Americans hope to own a home, send their children to college, and prosper in the safety of a highly tuned social, economic, and militarily protected environment.

I suggest that immigrants who dared to set out for American shores were most likely the primary American dreamers. Some (and I’ve got to believe they were few in number!) believed that American city streets were actually paved with gold.  Faced with hard labor in our mines and in our sweatshops, with low pay and with social discrimination, immigrants in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century encountered the growing pains of legitimacy and equity. Accomplishments inevitably bring about growing pains seldom foreseen by dreamers.  Some of these pains, the result of unanticipated economic and social circumstances, were the ultimate American reality.

Back on Wednesday, August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King could assert: “I have a dream today…!”  However, Dr. King wasn’t a politician. He was a preacher.  A preacher is expected to dream of an incomprehensible future that encompasses our fates as individuals, not as a nation.

The politician gains the most when he or she seems sympathetic to his or her constituency. Thus, we insist our leaders must identify with our anxieties, share our frustrations, proclaim and reinforce our anger, stamp our victimhood with the magic seal of legitimacy, and then we assert “you’ve got my vote.”

There’s nothing new about this.  Certainly, FDR listened and reacted to the voters of Depression- ridden America in 1932 as every president has ever since.  Still, this insistence that America is about a “dream” is exceedingly silly!

If they insist that America has reached its pinnacle of freedom and prosperity due primarily to a dream, today’s political peddlers of prosperity and profit must be trying to sell you and me a dream that they, not we, have been dreaming about.

I could be wrong.  However, my guess is that their “dream” is their possible occupancy of that 132-room house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DON’T CALL ME PRIVILEGED -- THAT’S AN INSULT!

By Edwin Cooney

A few days ago, a friend sent me a column by Christine Emba who writes the “In Theory” blog for the Washington Post.  The topic of the column was the prevalence of “white privilege” here in the United States. In her commentary, Ms. Emba outlined some of the components of white privilege as follows:

Not being followed or harassed by suspicious store personnel when shopping.

The option to curse or dress sloppily in public without people reflecting on the disadvantages of your morals predicated on your race.

If you have a quarrel with any part of the goods or services you’ve purchased, the person in charge of that department or service will be of your own race.

The expectation that should you move into a nice neighborhood, you can expect to be greeted warmly by your neighbors.

You will feel comfortable and normal in all walks of life.

Finally, Ms. Emba defines white privilege as being  “the social advantage that comes from being seen as merely part of the norm.”

Even more eloquently and powerfully, she quotes from Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 paper entitled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”  Dr. McIntosh defines white privilege as “a set of unearned assets that white people can count on cashing in each day even as they remain largely oblivious to their advantages.”

So, there it is.  If you’re white in America, you’re a privileged citizen in comparison to people of color.  It’s hard to argue with either Ms. Emba or Dr. McIntosh.  However, it’s even harder to swallow the idea that those of us who have white skin are really and truly privileged.  We didn’t choose to be white any more than people of color chose their complexions!

Ms. Emba writes that she was disappointed with the reaction of many whites when a version of her column was published on Martin Luther King Day. Most of the protests minimized the feelings, especially of blacks, that they are second class citizens invariably looked upon with everything from hatred to indifference.  One common reaction was that if only blacks would pull up their proverbial “bootstraps” and get off welfare by getting a job, everything would be just fine, thank you!

Of course, all of us in one way or another are privileged.  Blacks and whites alike possess valuable talents that entice the privileged class to pay them handsomely.  Thus, they become privileged!  Whites and blacks alike are limited by physical disability.  Thoughtful, generous, intelligent, foolish and wise blacks and whites populate this broad and gracious land of ours.  Still, there looms the question of privilege and why it’s a drag to be seen as privileged.

First, few of us, the privileged included, rarely feel privileged in this uncertain world.  Second, often when one is born a member of the privileged class, one eventually gets used to being privileged and it’s no “big deal.”  In other words, the distinction or the exceptions granted by privilege fade with time.

Third, to be branded “privileged” requires those thus classified to give much in return.  “If much is given, more is expected.”  Sadly, too many of us, whether or not we’re of the privileged class, heartily resent being required to do anything even when we’d normally be glad to give to others.  We privately and sometimes not so privately insist, “let me decide to be generous!”  Too often we even resent the scriptural call to be our brother’s keeper.  The price of privilege is pretty steep and consequently quite demanding.

Fourth, another truth is that the privileged are seldom looked upon with much empathy or understanding.  The material, social, and emotional burdens they carry are seldom appreciated by the common folk and if there is anything beyond food, clothing, shelter, money, or love that all of us crave, it’s our hunger to be understood and appreciated by others.

Most of us “common folk” find little room in our hearts for the burdens of the privileged.  Struggling with the challenges we face, we, whom Lincoln called “the plain people,” tend to minimize our own blessings or privileges.  As for the privileged, we’re sure that they take pretty good care of themselves and so they do!  With that, our concern for the privileged class comes to a screeching halt!

As for the social status we call “privileged,” by definition it is a very narrow designation.  While we were growing up, the kids who were “teacher’s pets” or those who had lots of money or fine clothes were “the privileged.”  In adulthood, those who are well off largely due to an unearned income are generally regarded as the privileged ones in society. So the question is what role, if any, do the privileged play in society?  Historically, the most positive role they play is that of role model.  I can think of at least three public servants, Nelson Rockefeller, Ted Kennedy and George H. W. Bush, who sacrificed their ivory towered sanctuaries for the slings and arrows of public service.  Ask yourself, if you were any one of those three men, would you subject yourself to the political abuse to which they subjected themselves in political life?

In closing, I humbly offer you a truth that should be self evident!  White privilege really doesn’t exist.  Privileges are not earned and they thus cannot be unearned. After all, a privilege is something that is consciously granted and ultimately acknowledged.  Racial bigotry is the real culprit.  Racial prejudice is as American as cherry pie.  Anyone who doesn’t see that reality is blind in more ways than one.

As I see it, there is too much pointless prejudice and jealousy toward those classified as privileged.  If someone is born with unearned assets, that person can hardly be charged with any kind of misdeed!  If it isn’t a crime to be one of President Abraham Lincoln’s “plain people,” how can it be a crime to possess privileges?  Personal prejudice, not privilege, is America’s systemic disease!

As much as I whole-heartedly concur with Ms. Emba and Dr. McIntosh’s sentiments and descriptions of the benefits white Americans have that black Americans lack, white privilege is a misnomer. To be categorized as privileged in 21st Century America is an unearned insult!  Being bigoted and being privileged are far from being the same thing.

The late George C. Wallace was quite bigoted, but nobody ever suggested that he was privileged.  From what we’ve seen during the 2015-16 GOP primary season, Mr. Trump might be easily described as a privileged bigot. After all, he boasts about both his bigotry and his privileges!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY