By Edwin Cooney
“It ain’t easy,” as they say, it may strain the muscles in one’s face a bit, but grinning can really be done while yawning! I did it as I recently read a commentary on the significance of our national debt.
Of course, politicians of both parties are really worried about it. They’re even making it a top political priority issue in the upcoming presidential and congressional campaigns -- as though it has never before been an issue.
I was recently sent an email that “splains” it all in very simple terms. This email commentary uses the family budget to put into perspective our national debt. Families, we’re reminded just in case we didn’t realize it, have to pay off their indebtedness or they go bankrupt. Thus, they insist, it is the same with nations.
What the authors of pieces like the one I received don’t tell you is that families, despite all of the political metaphors politicians pedal to us, will never spend money the way a great and truly progressive nation is obligated to spend.
Families are primarily consumers. Their money is spent on food, shelter, medical needs, education and entertainment.
National incomes are invested in their citizens’ education, on military preparedness, scientific and medical research, the construction of roads, bridges and highways, and so on. Nations establish institutions and structures such as the national weather service, the center for disease control, dams, and national parks to ensure national security. Each of these investments supports a nation’s families by securing and assuring their education, recreation, employment and ongoing safety.
If dad and mom spend a bundle on their son’s education and Sonny makes a lot of money, it’s likely they may be reimbursed or, even more, rewarded, out of loving gratitude. However, if Sonny holds a lot of resentment toward dad and mom, he doesn’t have to do a thing regarding repayment (that is, unless his parents “loaned” him the money and, even then, unless he contracted to pay the “loan,” there’s no legal obligation on Sonny’s part to reimburse “dear old dad and mom.”)
Now, we have two opposing ideologies alive and kicking today. One ideology says that anything that happens to people is their own business and, subsequently, their own responsibility. The other ideology insists that we’re all “family” and are better off if we acknowledge and sustain that obligation to one another. The truth is that to subscribers of the first ideology, unless you’re lucratively employed (or looking for work), follow the major tenants of a mainstream religion, support supply-side economics, endorse the policy of American domination in 21st Century world affairs, and revere the memory of Ronald Reagan, you’re not really family. This set of conclusions causes me to yawn.
The grin on my physiognomy is born out of the fact that ever since FDR, Republicans have promised that whatever we may think of their foreign policies, the fact that many of them are entrepreneurs and heads of households makes them solid fiscal managers who will never lead us into debt.
I know, you’re getting the impression that I don’t take GOP concerns seriously enough! Part of the reason for that is that I’m confused. Didn’t Vice President Dick Chaney tell President George W. Bush’s outgoing Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill in January 2004 that Ronald Reagan had proven that national debts don’t really matter?
On January 20th, 1981, Jimmy Carter left our new president, Ronald Wilson Reagan, with a debt of about a trillion dollars. On January 20th, 1989, Ronald Reagan left our next new President George H. W. Bush with a national deficit of three trillion dollars. Thus, the whole topic of our national indebtedness is too often camouflaged by political partisanship
Like death and disease, monetary debt is most lethal when it’s personal. The sad truth is that families go broke only because we can afford to allow some of them to go broke. I believe that America won’t go broke because, in the end, we just can’t afford it! (Whoops, I’m grinning again)!
There’s already reasonably reliable speculation among economic/political observers that Conservatives want to maintain a good chunk of their tax cuts which will run out at the end of the year and Liberals, who insist on keeping viable some of our entitlements, will compromise after November 6th with whoever is president. Why will they settle? They’ll settle because they must! It’s okay, go ahead and yawn!
Ah! The simultaneous yawn and grin! It’s almost (although not quite) as hard to pull off as the task of paying the national debt. Believe me, it’s way beyond a mere family matter!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. WORST
By Edwin Cooney
Unfortunately for the people of his time, James Buchanan was elected the fifteenth president of the United States. He was born on Saturday, April 23rd, 1791 (exactly 221 years ago today) in a log cabin in Cove Gap, a few miles from Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Although as a college student at Dickinson College he had a reputation for mischief making, he wasn’t in the least what we’d today call delinquent.
Although some years later his wealthy fiancé Anne Coleman broke off their engagement and then, perhaps committed suicide suspecting that young Buchanan merely wanted her for her money, most everyone who knew and wrote or spoke of him testified to Buchanan’s fidelity, dignity and decency. (Right after breaking off her engagement to Buchanan, Miss Coleman visited relatives in Philadelphia over the 1819 holiday season. While there, she took an overdose of laudanum, a “fashionable” remedy ladies of that time used, when distraught or in pain, to sleep. No one knows whether she deliberately committed suicide or whether in her distress, she took a little extra laudanum to induce sleep).
On another matter of the heart, there are persistent reports from his days in Washington that James Buchanan was gay. His partner or “wife” was supposedly William Rufus De Vane King—a remarkable man—of Alabama, who was elected vice president under Franklin Pierce in 1852 but died shortly after taking the vice presidential oath in Havana, Cuba, where he was struggling to recover from tuberculosis. He returned to Alabama, but died there on April 18th, 1853 before assuming his vice presidential duties.
Many scholars, as well as some of us who aren’t scholars, rate James Buchanan the very worst of all our presidents. Part, but only part of the reason for this judgment is that he should have been so well prepared, by experience, to be an excellent president. By the time of his 1856 election he’d been in politics for the better part of forty-two years. He’d served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in the 1820s, as Minister to Russia 1832-1833, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1830s and early 40s, Secretary of State under President James K. Polk from 1845 to 1849 and as Minister to Great Britain 1853 to 1856. Politically a northern Jacksonian Democrat who sympathized with the socio/political principles of the South, James Buchanan personally disapproved of slavery. According to his biographer, George Ticknor Curtis, Buchanan, throughout his stay in Washington, often purchased slaves and then freed them in his native Pennsylvania without the least expectation of reimbursement.
His administration, the duration of which was March 4th, 1857 to March 4th, 1861, was marked by increasing tension between the North and the South. Fearing southern threats of secession from the very outset of his term, President Buchanan pled for, rather than acted for, preservation of the Union. Secure in the knowledge from the moment he was sworn into office that the slavery issue was settled (many believe that he’d been privately assured that the Supreme Court was about to rule in the infamous Dred Scott decision that Congress could not restrict slavery). The new president sided with the demands of the South in all matters throughout his presidency.
In 1858, although the people of Kansas twice rejected the Lecompton pro slavery state constitution, Buchanan sought to get Kansas admitted as a slave state. His long friendship with Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in that fall’s Illinois senatorial election, came to a bitter end when Douglas used his power, as Senate Territories Committee chairman, to defeat the South’s and Buchanan’s bill in Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state.
Then, there was the case of the 1857 financial panic when thousands of businesses failed in the wake of the collapse of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. The economy in the Northeast, Midwest and West deteriorated while the South’s cotton economy prospered due to Europe’s need for “king cotton.” President Buchanan, partly for political/ideological reasons, but many were sure out of personal/prejudicial sentiment, refused to intervene.
Had President Buchanan taken political command, for example, by establishing an emergency committee made up of northern and southern moderates sufficiently well connected with opinion makers in their home states, insisting that they establish a set of strategies for political and economic compromise before passions got out of hand, perhaps civil war could have been prevented or localized to the deep South. If he’d been far sighted enough to offer a program for gradual slave emancipation consisting of compensation, as Lincoln actively sought to do in 1862, much of the tragedy may well have been abated. Paralyzed by fear of secession, he was able to do nothing.
Thus, when the crunch came in the wake of Lincoln’s November 6th, 1860 election and the South, led by South Carolina on December 20th, began seceding, Buchanan was helpless to do anything effective to prevent it. Informed, while attending a Washington ball, by a happy South Carolina messenger proclaiming that he felt like a little boy just let out of school, the President, ashen faced with tears welling up in his eyes, could only desperately call for a carriage to take him back to the executive mansion.
President Buchanan believed that he had the authority to protect federal property in the South, but lacked the constitutional authority to prevent the South from seceding even though he regarded secession as illegal. He even, despite advice from Secretary of State Jeremiah S. Black and Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton, failed to adequately supply the federal garrison at Fort Sumter located in Charleston harbor.
James Buchanan, ultimately, was more a man of law than a man of men. If the Constitution permitted an act, it was wise. If it didn’t, whether an action was moral or immoral seemed to make little difference. Law, Buchanan believed, must govern passion. Firm in that conclusion, for the remaining years of his life Buchanan never wavered in his belief that he’d done all he legally could do to prevent the Civil War, and if all he could do was what was legal, it was, by definition, enough. (Buchanan would live through the Civil War and support the cause of the Union. He would die on June 1st, 1868 at Wheatland, his estate near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.)
Basically, President Buchanan was a man of unquestionable morality. All his life he went out of his way to prevent even the slightest possibility of dishonesty or the appearance of a conflict of interests in his public duties. However, he clearly had a blind spot when it came to comprehending matters of passion or of the connection linking human cause and effect. When the law and his sense of passion or compassion ran together, he could purchase slaves in Washington and free them in Pennsylvania. Neither his political, religious, nor personal experiences with the giant personalities of his time such as John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster or members of his cabinet enabled his gifted mind to go beyond its capacity for legal comprehension.
Nearly forty years ago when Richard Nixon was driven from office in the wake of the legal and political reaction to the Watergate affair, millions of Americans were grateful that we are “a government of laws and not of men.” In the case of President Buchanan, we have the reverse. James Buchanan failed because he was unable to see beyond the law and the Constitution.
His failure as president came about because he allowed his logical mind to dominate his humane principles. To him, there’s little doubt, that logic and principle were the same thing. Hence, the story of James Buchanan, as I see it, is the sad but true story of the worst presidency we’ve ever had and hopefully ever will have!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Unfortunately for the people of his time, James Buchanan was elected the fifteenth president of the United States. He was born on Saturday, April 23rd, 1791 (exactly 221 years ago today) in a log cabin in Cove Gap, a few miles from Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Although as a college student at Dickinson College he had a reputation for mischief making, he wasn’t in the least what we’d today call delinquent.
Although some years later his wealthy fiancé Anne Coleman broke off their engagement and then, perhaps committed suicide suspecting that young Buchanan merely wanted her for her money, most everyone who knew and wrote or spoke of him testified to Buchanan’s fidelity, dignity and decency. (Right after breaking off her engagement to Buchanan, Miss Coleman visited relatives in Philadelphia over the 1819 holiday season. While there, she took an overdose of laudanum, a “fashionable” remedy ladies of that time used, when distraught or in pain, to sleep. No one knows whether she deliberately committed suicide or whether in her distress, she took a little extra laudanum to induce sleep).
On another matter of the heart, there are persistent reports from his days in Washington that James Buchanan was gay. His partner or “wife” was supposedly William Rufus De Vane King—a remarkable man—of Alabama, who was elected vice president under Franklin Pierce in 1852 but died shortly after taking the vice presidential oath in Havana, Cuba, where he was struggling to recover from tuberculosis. He returned to Alabama, but died there on April 18th, 1853 before assuming his vice presidential duties.
Many scholars, as well as some of us who aren’t scholars, rate James Buchanan the very worst of all our presidents. Part, but only part of the reason for this judgment is that he should have been so well prepared, by experience, to be an excellent president. By the time of his 1856 election he’d been in politics for the better part of forty-two years. He’d served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in the 1820s, as Minister to Russia 1832-1833, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1830s and early 40s, Secretary of State under President James K. Polk from 1845 to 1849 and as Minister to Great Britain 1853 to 1856. Politically a northern Jacksonian Democrat who sympathized with the socio/political principles of the South, James Buchanan personally disapproved of slavery. According to his biographer, George Ticknor Curtis, Buchanan, throughout his stay in Washington, often purchased slaves and then freed them in his native Pennsylvania without the least expectation of reimbursement.
His administration, the duration of which was March 4th, 1857 to March 4th, 1861, was marked by increasing tension between the North and the South. Fearing southern threats of secession from the very outset of his term, President Buchanan pled for, rather than acted for, preservation of the Union. Secure in the knowledge from the moment he was sworn into office that the slavery issue was settled (many believe that he’d been privately assured that the Supreme Court was about to rule in the infamous Dred Scott decision that Congress could not restrict slavery). The new president sided with the demands of the South in all matters throughout his presidency.
In 1858, although the people of Kansas twice rejected the Lecompton pro slavery state constitution, Buchanan sought to get Kansas admitted as a slave state. His long friendship with Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in that fall’s Illinois senatorial election, came to a bitter end when Douglas used his power, as Senate Territories Committee chairman, to defeat the South’s and Buchanan’s bill in Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state.
Then, there was the case of the 1857 financial panic when thousands of businesses failed in the wake of the collapse of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. The economy in the Northeast, Midwest and West deteriorated while the South’s cotton economy prospered due to Europe’s need for “king cotton.” President Buchanan, partly for political/ideological reasons, but many were sure out of personal/prejudicial sentiment, refused to intervene.
Had President Buchanan taken political command, for example, by establishing an emergency committee made up of northern and southern moderates sufficiently well connected with opinion makers in their home states, insisting that they establish a set of strategies for political and economic compromise before passions got out of hand, perhaps civil war could have been prevented or localized to the deep South. If he’d been far sighted enough to offer a program for gradual slave emancipation consisting of compensation, as Lincoln actively sought to do in 1862, much of the tragedy may well have been abated. Paralyzed by fear of secession, he was able to do nothing.
Thus, when the crunch came in the wake of Lincoln’s November 6th, 1860 election and the South, led by South Carolina on December 20th, began seceding, Buchanan was helpless to do anything effective to prevent it. Informed, while attending a Washington ball, by a happy South Carolina messenger proclaiming that he felt like a little boy just let out of school, the President, ashen faced with tears welling up in his eyes, could only desperately call for a carriage to take him back to the executive mansion.
President Buchanan believed that he had the authority to protect federal property in the South, but lacked the constitutional authority to prevent the South from seceding even though he regarded secession as illegal. He even, despite advice from Secretary of State Jeremiah S. Black and Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton, failed to adequately supply the federal garrison at Fort Sumter located in Charleston harbor.
James Buchanan, ultimately, was more a man of law than a man of men. If the Constitution permitted an act, it was wise. If it didn’t, whether an action was moral or immoral seemed to make little difference. Law, Buchanan believed, must govern passion. Firm in that conclusion, for the remaining years of his life Buchanan never wavered in his belief that he’d done all he legally could do to prevent the Civil War, and if all he could do was what was legal, it was, by definition, enough. (Buchanan would live through the Civil War and support the cause of the Union. He would die on June 1st, 1868 at Wheatland, his estate near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.)
Basically, President Buchanan was a man of unquestionable morality. All his life he went out of his way to prevent even the slightest possibility of dishonesty or the appearance of a conflict of interests in his public duties. However, he clearly had a blind spot when it came to comprehending matters of passion or of the connection linking human cause and effect. When the law and his sense of passion or compassion ran together, he could purchase slaves in Washington and free them in Pennsylvania. Neither his political, religious, nor personal experiences with the giant personalities of his time such as John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster or members of his cabinet enabled his gifted mind to go beyond its capacity for legal comprehension.
Nearly forty years ago when Richard Nixon was driven from office in the wake of the legal and political reaction to the Watergate affair, millions of Americans were grateful that we are “a government of laws and not of men.” In the case of President Buchanan, we have the reverse. James Buchanan failed because he was unable to see beyond the law and the Constitution.
His failure as president came about because he allowed his logical mind to dominate his humane principles. To him, there’s little doubt, that logic and principle were the same thing. Hence, the story of James Buchanan, as I see it, is the sad but true story of the worst presidency we’ve ever had and hopefully ever will have!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, April 16, 2012
SELL ME! SELL ME! SELL ME TRUE!!!
By Edwin Cooney
I know, you hate to admit this as much as I do, but you and I have been “sold” many times over. Let’s face it, it began with our parents.
They sold us on going to bed earlier than they did. Many parents sold us on Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and even the Tooth Fairy. When I was seven, I was so sold on the Tooth Fairy that I put a tooth under my pillow one night without telling anyone that my latest tooth had come out. Because I was so ashamed of myself, I didn’t tell anyone the next morning that he didn’t come. What had happened was that I’d put my hand under the pillow sometime in the middle of the night looking for my nickel and I realized I’d scared him off. I simply threw the tooth in the waste basket. Not even a Tooth Fairy wants a day old tooth!
Okay, confession time! I was once, not too many years ago, a telemarketer. I telemarketed for the better part of six years before becoming permanently burned out. Thus, the other day when I got one of those calls offering me a chance to purchase an inexpensive healthcare plan, I responded to the ad by pressing one as instructed. The conversation went something like this:
The Agent: “What kind of a healthcare plan are you looking for?”
Me: “I don’t know, I already have a healthcare plan, but you called me!”
Agent: Click!
I wasn’t, as I saw it, arguing with him, I was simply informing him of what the situation was from my standpoint. He was as “Gone with the Wind,” as was Rhett Butler from Scarlett. “Wow!” I thought, and am still thinking, “what kind of wimpy telemarketing is that!”
Last Saturday and Sunday evenings I got telephone calls from someone with a heavy Chinese accent saying that he was from Microsoft and that they’d been getting an error message from my computer a lot lately and that they were calling to fix my hard disc if I’d follow their instructions. Now, I’m naive, about a lot of things, yes, I hate to admit it but you, being my reader, you wear clerical garb these days. Thus, to you I must confess most, if not all! So, it is what it is! However, not even me, naive as I am, swallows that pitch. (Don’t you either since Microsoft doesn’t contact us!) When I wouldn’t follow their directives protesting that I needed to further consult my computer gurus, they hung up. The last time before hanging up they warned me that my computer was about to crash. “Then, it’ll crash,” I exclaimed.
Computer driven calls that you and I must respond to by pressing “1”, are becoming the latest device of entrepreneurial America. Furthermore, if you ask me (and you didn’t), telemarketers who use this device for evaluating potential clients or customers lose what respectability (and it was damned little) we 1980s telemarketers once had. Back then, most of us had only a phone book and as much grit as we could muster to conduct the intrusion we made on both businesses and private homes. I once asked a boss of mine how he’d like to receive calls from the telemarketers he was willing to employ and his response was something like this:
“I wouldn’t much like it any more than the housewives of days gone by liked visits from the Fuller Brush man or the vacuum cleaner salesman or the encyclopedia salesman, but this method of contacting potential customers is much less personally intrusive and even more cost efficient and that’s the bottom line.”
I could assert that everything from our spiritual faith to our patriotism has been “sold” to us and that we’ve paid for those with loyalty as the coin of the realm. However, it’s monetary sales ship that this is all about. What was especially nettlesome to me, particularly in the first instance cited above, the “salesperson” didn’t hang around enough to try and sell me anything. I do have a health plan that takes a bundle out of my checking account each month, and I was ready to give this “salesperson” a hearing. However, he/she didn’t want to even hear me out. He/she wasn’t interested in the customer, but only in the potential sale. The same thing happened to me when I got a call, about a month ago, from some company that wanted to lower my credit card debt. I pressed “1”, just to hear what they were selling and when I responded that I had only a small debt, well under a thousand dollars, click went the phone.
I suppose something can be said for cost efficiency, but, if you ask me (and you didn’t), there are two factors as important as cost efficiency at stake.
First, there’s the “free market!” After all, Conservatives insist on the “free market” as the center of free humanity. Of course, the potential customer is free to walk out of “the free market” but shouldn’t the entrepreneur hang around long enough to try and make the sale? Second, there’s good old fashion courtesy -- if you make a call, shouldn’t the call conclude, as much as possible, with a sense of mutual completion?
I understand that I’m a mere mortal who possesses only a few increasingly shrinking paper dollars to offer in return for the valuable goods, services, and time today’s corporations have to offer!
Hence, sell me if you must, but at least listen and please, sell me, sell me, sell me true!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
I know, you hate to admit this as much as I do, but you and I have been “sold” many times over. Let’s face it, it began with our parents.
They sold us on going to bed earlier than they did. Many parents sold us on Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and even the Tooth Fairy. When I was seven, I was so sold on the Tooth Fairy that I put a tooth under my pillow one night without telling anyone that my latest tooth had come out. Because I was so ashamed of myself, I didn’t tell anyone the next morning that he didn’t come. What had happened was that I’d put my hand under the pillow sometime in the middle of the night looking for my nickel and I realized I’d scared him off. I simply threw the tooth in the waste basket. Not even a Tooth Fairy wants a day old tooth!
Okay, confession time! I was once, not too many years ago, a telemarketer. I telemarketed for the better part of six years before becoming permanently burned out. Thus, the other day when I got one of those calls offering me a chance to purchase an inexpensive healthcare plan, I responded to the ad by pressing one as instructed. The conversation went something like this:
The Agent: “What kind of a healthcare plan are you looking for?”
Me: “I don’t know, I already have a healthcare plan, but you called me!”
Agent: Click!
I wasn’t, as I saw it, arguing with him, I was simply informing him of what the situation was from my standpoint. He was as “Gone with the Wind,” as was Rhett Butler from Scarlett. “Wow!” I thought, and am still thinking, “what kind of wimpy telemarketing is that!”
Last Saturday and Sunday evenings I got telephone calls from someone with a heavy Chinese accent saying that he was from Microsoft and that they’d been getting an error message from my computer a lot lately and that they were calling to fix my hard disc if I’d follow their instructions. Now, I’m naive, about a lot of things, yes, I hate to admit it but you, being my reader, you wear clerical garb these days. Thus, to you I must confess most, if not all! So, it is what it is! However, not even me, naive as I am, swallows that pitch. (Don’t you either since Microsoft doesn’t contact us!) When I wouldn’t follow their directives protesting that I needed to further consult my computer gurus, they hung up. The last time before hanging up they warned me that my computer was about to crash. “Then, it’ll crash,” I exclaimed.
Computer driven calls that you and I must respond to by pressing “1”, are becoming the latest device of entrepreneurial America. Furthermore, if you ask me (and you didn’t), telemarketers who use this device for evaluating potential clients or customers lose what respectability (and it was damned little) we 1980s telemarketers once had. Back then, most of us had only a phone book and as much grit as we could muster to conduct the intrusion we made on both businesses and private homes. I once asked a boss of mine how he’d like to receive calls from the telemarketers he was willing to employ and his response was something like this:
“I wouldn’t much like it any more than the housewives of days gone by liked visits from the Fuller Brush man or the vacuum cleaner salesman or the encyclopedia salesman, but this method of contacting potential customers is much less personally intrusive and even more cost efficient and that’s the bottom line.”
I could assert that everything from our spiritual faith to our patriotism has been “sold” to us and that we’ve paid for those with loyalty as the coin of the realm. However, it’s monetary sales ship that this is all about. What was especially nettlesome to me, particularly in the first instance cited above, the “salesperson” didn’t hang around enough to try and sell me anything. I do have a health plan that takes a bundle out of my checking account each month, and I was ready to give this “salesperson” a hearing. However, he/she didn’t want to even hear me out. He/she wasn’t interested in the customer, but only in the potential sale. The same thing happened to me when I got a call, about a month ago, from some company that wanted to lower my credit card debt. I pressed “1”, just to hear what they were selling and when I responded that I had only a small debt, well under a thousand dollars, click went the phone.
I suppose something can be said for cost efficiency, but, if you ask me (and you didn’t), there are two factors as important as cost efficiency at stake.
First, there’s the “free market!” After all, Conservatives insist on the “free market” as the center of free humanity. Of course, the potential customer is free to walk out of “the free market” but shouldn’t the entrepreneur hang around long enough to try and make the sale? Second, there’s good old fashion courtesy -- if you make a call, shouldn’t the call conclude, as much as possible, with a sense of mutual completion?
I understand that I’m a mere mortal who possesses only a few increasingly shrinking paper dollars to offer in return for the valuable goods, services, and time today’s corporations have to offer!
Hence, sell me if you must, but at least listen and please, sell me, sell me, sell me true!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
WHAT REALLY MATTERS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU!
By Edwin Cooney
I’ve believed for some time now that, as much as our leaders may differ politically, how much they personally like and/or respect one another may often affect our national destiny. Although this belief of mine is difficult, if not impossible, to document, history is bedecked by at least anecdotal evidence that such is the case.
Last week, Conservatives took “Obama Care” to the Supreme Court, which, sometime in June, will decide on its constitutionality. Liberals will insist that the government has the right to require individuals to purchase health insurance for the betterment of the “general welfare.” Conservatives insist that there’s nothing in the Constitution that empowers the federal government to tell John and Susie Q. Citizen what to do, even if it’s for their own good. Conservatives, at least their leading presidential candidate Mitt Romney, contend that state government can make such requirements within state jurisdictions, as Governor Romney did in Massachusetts, because the Constitution grants to the states “enumerated powers” not specifically granted to the federal government.
For decades, Conservatives have labeled Liberal Justices political activists because instead of “literally” interpreting the Constitution as written by “the Founding Fathers,” they judge cases according to their political faith. Liberals, on the other hand, insist that Conservative justices are no less activist in their opposition to such social causes as abortion and civil rights—hence, “Christians one, Lions one!”
Ah! But does the Constitution grant to the Supreme Court the power to declare laws passed by the Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional? No it doesn’t—not specifically! The Constitution grants the Supreme Court ultimate appellate power for the settling of disputes, but it doesn’t specifically grant power to the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional—although “judicial review”—the method utilized to make such declarations—was a tradition of jurisprudence within at least seven of the thirteen original colonies. How the use of judicial review came about may well have had as much to do with a series of personality clashes as much as it did with our tradition of doctrinaire driven political conflicts.
Since George Washington’s presidency, there has been a tradition of big government vs. small government or states’ rights controversies. Those who supported the policies of President Washington and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton were called Federalist, while those who supported the party organized by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia were called Republican-Democrats. By 1800, George Washington—the President named George who really was a uniter and not a divider—was gone. When President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, both exceedingly willful men, came to political blows during that year’s campaign, the outcome was to have legal and social as well as political consequences. Jefferson, the ultimate victor, called that campaign “the revolution of 1800.”
President Adams, an irascible old gentleman, realizing that he was going to lose the election to Thomas Jefferson—his old friend and late antagonist—sought to retain power on behalf of his party by appointing his Secretary of State, John Marshall, to replace the ailing Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth. In fact, President Adams made a series of judicial appointments, which came to be called “midnight appointments.” Marshall was confirmed by the outgoing Federalist Senate and therefore was commissioned Chief Justice. However, a number of other Federalist appointees were confirmed but not commissioned before Adams left office.
Part of Chief Justice Marshall’s mission from Adams and his fellow Federalists was to preserve, as much as possible, the fundamental Federalist doctrine of the supremacy of federal jurisdiction and laws over state laws. Ultimately, the delivery of these commissions by the Jefferson administration came to the Supreme Court in Marbury verses Madison.
Chief Justice Marshall and three other justices ruled that the Supreme Court lacked the jurisdiction to force James Madison, Jefferson’s Secretary of State, to deliver the commissions. However, they ruled that it does have the power, under its appellate authority, to declare state laws and laws passed by Congress unconstitutional. Thus, the supremacy of federal power over state power was sustained and such power was ultimately available to Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, as well as to modern Conservatives and Liberals.
President Jefferson and Chief Justice Marshall, born in Virginia and second cousins once removed (Jefferson’s mother Jane Randolph Jefferson was Marshall’s second cousin), were very different personalities. Affable, a celebrated soldier during the Revolutionary war, a close personal friend and biographer of George Washington, John Marshall was a devout Federalist and jealous of his prerogatives. As Chief Justice he insisted that, as often as possible, there was near unanimity, especially when he wrote opinions for the majority on the court.
Thomas Jefferson, a towering intellect, an excellent lawyer and eloquent writer, was nevertheless often dower and thin-skinned when opposed. There also existed a coolness between the Jefferson and Randolph clans. Some of Jefferson’s biographers insist that Jefferson, since he wrote almost nothing about her, was exceedingly cool toward his mother. Perhaps another reason for -- or if you prefer, cause of -- a possible strain between the Jefferson’s and the Randolph’s was the result of the breakup of Jefferson’s daughter Martha’s marriage to her abusive alcoholic husband Thomas Mann Randolph. Finally, the fact that President Washington never spoke to Jefferson again after he resigned as Secretary of State over increasing political differences, surely had some effect on his relations with his second cousin.
There are numerous instances throughout our history when personal animosity was a factor, as much as political or ideological differences, when it came to settling important national issues.
Ironic, isn’t it, that President Obama’s opponents, who insist on the constitutionality of all laws, are so dependent on judicial review, a procedure not originally written in to the Constitution by “The Founding Fathers,” to sustain their political and social agendas!
I wonder if their real objection to “Obama Care” doesn’t have more to do with the fact that they just don’t like the president!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
(Originally published MONDAY, APRIL 9TH, 2012)
I’ve believed for some time now that, as much as our leaders may differ politically, how much they personally like and/or respect one another may often affect our national destiny. Although this belief of mine is difficult, if not impossible, to document, history is bedecked by at least anecdotal evidence that such is the case.
Last week, Conservatives took “Obama Care” to the Supreme Court, which, sometime in June, will decide on its constitutionality. Liberals will insist that the government has the right to require individuals to purchase health insurance for the betterment of the “general welfare.” Conservatives insist that there’s nothing in the Constitution that empowers the federal government to tell John and Susie Q. Citizen what to do, even if it’s for their own good. Conservatives, at least their leading presidential candidate Mitt Romney, contend that state government can make such requirements within state jurisdictions, as Governor Romney did in Massachusetts, because the Constitution grants to the states “enumerated powers” not specifically granted to the federal government.
For decades, Conservatives have labeled Liberal Justices political activists because instead of “literally” interpreting the Constitution as written by “the Founding Fathers,” they judge cases according to their political faith. Liberals, on the other hand, insist that Conservative justices are no less activist in their opposition to such social causes as abortion and civil rights—hence, “Christians one, Lions one!”
Ah! But does the Constitution grant to the Supreme Court the power to declare laws passed by the Congress and signed by the President unconstitutional? No it doesn’t—not specifically! The Constitution grants the Supreme Court ultimate appellate power for the settling of disputes, but it doesn’t specifically grant power to the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional—although “judicial review”—the method utilized to make such declarations—was a tradition of jurisprudence within at least seven of the thirteen original colonies. How the use of judicial review came about may well have had as much to do with a series of personality clashes as much as it did with our tradition of doctrinaire driven political conflicts.
Since George Washington’s presidency, there has been a tradition of big government vs. small government or states’ rights controversies. Those who supported the policies of President Washington and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton were called Federalist, while those who supported the party organized by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia were called Republican-Democrats. By 1800, George Washington—the President named George who really was a uniter and not a divider—was gone. When President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, both exceedingly willful men, came to political blows during that year’s campaign, the outcome was to have legal and social as well as political consequences. Jefferson, the ultimate victor, called that campaign “the revolution of 1800.”
President Adams, an irascible old gentleman, realizing that he was going to lose the election to Thomas Jefferson—his old friend and late antagonist—sought to retain power on behalf of his party by appointing his Secretary of State, John Marshall, to replace the ailing Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth. In fact, President Adams made a series of judicial appointments, which came to be called “midnight appointments.” Marshall was confirmed by the outgoing Federalist Senate and therefore was commissioned Chief Justice. However, a number of other Federalist appointees were confirmed but not commissioned before Adams left office.
Part of Chief Justice Marshall’s mission from Adams and his fellow Federalists was to preserve, as much as possible, the fundamental Federalist doctrine of the supremacy of federal jurisdiction and laws over state laws. Ultimately, the delivery of these commissions by the Jefferson administration came to the Supreme Court in Marbury verses Madison.
Chief Justice Marshall and three other justices ruled that the Supreme Court lacked the jurisdiction to force James Madison, Jefferson’s Secretary of State, to deliver the commissions. However, they ruled that it does have the power, under its appellate authority, to declare state laws and laws passed by Congress unconstitutional. Thus, the supremacy of federal power over state power was sustained and such power was ultimately available to Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, as well as to modern Conservatives and Liberals.
President Jefferson and Chief Justice Marshall, born in Virginia and second cousins once removed (Jefferson’s mother Jane Randolph Jefferson was Marshall’s second cousin), were very different personalities. Affable, a celebrated soldier during the Revolutionary war, a close personal friend and biographer of George Washington, John Marshall was a devout Federalist and jealous of his prerogatives. As Chief Justice he insisted that, as often as possible, there was near unanimity, especially when he wrote opinions for the majority on the court.
Thomas Jefferson, a towering intellect, an excellent lawyer and eloquent writer, was nevertheless often dower and thin-skinned when opposed. There also existed a coolness between the Jefferson and Randolph clans. Some of Jefferson’s biographers insist that Jefferson, since he wrote almost nothing about her, was exceedingly cool toward his mother. Perhaps another reason for -- or if you prefer, cause of -- a possible strain between the Jefferson’s and the Randolph’s was the result of the breakup of Jefferson’s daughter Martha’s marriage to her abusive alcoholic husband Thomas Mann Randolph. Finally, the fact that President Washington never spoke to Jefferson again after he resigned as Secretary of State over increasing political differences, surely had some effect on his relations with his second cousin.
There are numerous instances throughout our history when personal animosity was a factor, as much as political or ideological differences, when it came to settling important national issues.
Ironic, isn’t it, that President Obama’s opponents, who insist on the constitutionality of all laws, are so dependent on judicial review, a procedure not originally written in to the Constitution by “The Founding Fathers,” to sustain their political and social agendas!
I wonder if their real objection to “Obama Care” doesn’t have more to do with the fact that they just don’t like the president!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
(Originally published MONDAY, APRIL 9TH, 2012)
Monday, April 2, 2012
AH, WONDERFUL! ONCE AGAIN, HERE COMES BASEBALL!
By Edwin Cooney
I know, not everyone loves or even likes baseball. However, I insist that some of the most vital elements of the game -- hotdogs and beer, the almost delicious smell of freshly mown spring grass, and the stories which are delightfully entertaining -- are what make baseball so very human.
As for the stories, it isn’t so much that they have to do with baseball itself, it’s their themes of human audacity and disappointment, vulnerability and humor, triumph and tragedy, cleverness and confusion that make them real.
When I was 8 years old, I was introduced to “America’s National Pastime” by my maternal Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe was an avid Yankee fan. Baseball became our bond as it gave us something to talk about. Forced to grow up apart from my “real family,” baseball, with all its glories and occasional disappointments, was my magic bridge to the family that should have been my natural birthright.
Baseball, as much as balls and strikes, is the story of Yankee rookie shortstop Phil Rizzuto being handed a stool by ace Yankee hurler Vernon (Lefty) Gomez as he stepped into the shower. Gomez is said to have quipped, “You’ll need this kid! You’re so short that if you don’t use it, the water will be ice cold by the time it gets down to you!”
As much as hits and walks, baseball is the story of Jimmy Sebring, the left-handed hitting Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder who, on Thursday, October 1st, 1903 before 16,242 fans at Boston’s Huntington Grounds, hit the first home run in modern World Series history. Two years later, having been traded to the Cincinnati Reds, young Sebring gave up his big league career in midseason. “Why?” you may reasonably ask! The answer is he wanted to go home and play with Williamsport of the Eastern League to be nearer his sick wife. Jimmy returned briefly to play with the Washington Senators in 1909; however, there would be no 1910 season. James Dennison Sebring would die in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, December 22nd, 1909 at exactly 27 years and 9 months of age.
As much as baseball is about World Series glory, diamond rings and money, it is also about something very personal. When asked what the greatest satisfaction in the game was for him, former Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers left-handed pitcher Sandy Koufax replied, “It was that fifteen minutes in the clubhouse I spent after a World Series triumph, with guys I’d worked so hard with day in and day out over the previous eight or nine months of travel and pressure to bring that triumph about!”
As thrilling as is listening to baseball broadcasts is the pride of handing on to the youngest generation an identification with the game’s greatest stars. Hence, one of my biggest thrills came the day I handed a statue of Willie Mays I owned to an eleven-year-old boy.
Like nourishment itself, baseball is what you do with it. I spent Saturday evening a week or so ago with my younger lad as we each drafted players, over the internet, to compete in our separate baseball teams for Linguini’s Fantasy Baseball League. His team is called the Arrogant Bastards while mine is the Alameda Ligers. (A “liger” is a breed of cat, part lion and part tiger, found in many zoos around America and the world.)
I will spend many Sunday nights over the next few months comparing notes, challenging and being challenged, by the managers of nine other Linguini’s League baseball teams. With the possible exception of our exceedingly generous and occasionally pugnacious commissioner, these “managers” aren’t baseball geniuses; they simply love the game and the camaraderie of good-natured competition. Will it matter who wins the league prize being offered by the lovely manager of Linguini’s at season’s end? Well! Maybe for a minute or two, but much more memorable will be the hours we spend together managing, rooting, and wondering about our baseball fate.
Meanwhile, those who play the game, rookie and veteran alike, are getting ready for the coming season. Of course, they enjoy and anticipate their generous salaries and they are cared for, as if they were orchids, by exceedingly wealthy corporate types. Still, however, success depends on their ability to work and sweat themselves into shape. As they do so, older men who’ve been hired to manage them assess their strengths and weaknesses and ultimately dictate their fate. Former Orioles’ Manager Earl Weaver was once asked if releasing a player was the hardest decision a manager had to make. His reply was very telling. He said that the hardest decision he ever had to make, when he was a minor league manager, was to keep a player who had little chance of advancing to the big leagues in the game for another season because he needed a second baseman for that season.
If human concerns and wisdom are part of baseball, so is confusion -- even on the field. One day in 1926, Babe Herman of the Brooklyn Dodgers came up with the bases loaded. He drilled the ball off the right field wall, which scored Hank Deberry from third base. However, pitcher Dazzy Vance, who’d been on second, after rounding third, decided not to try and score because the ball had been relayed to the infield so quickly. Meanwhile, Chick Fewster, who’d been on first base, had already rounded second and was headed for third. At the same time, Floyd Caves (Babe) Herman -- who was a hell of a hitter but a lousy fielder and not terribly bright -- also rounded second with his head down, and headed for third. Suddenly, there were three Dodgers knocking noggins at third base. The Braves third baseman tagged all three runners. As it turned out, only two of them, including Herman, were out since Dazzy Vance was ruled by the umpire as having a right to third base because he’d already been there.
Even more than money, playing major league baseball is ultimately about boyish hopes and dreams coming true. Baseball may be a business with some teams approaching wealth in the billions, but to those closest to it -- especially on the field -- baseball remains a sport.
Of course, professional baseball has, by no means, a monopoly on the thrill of the game. My youth spent on the baseball fields of a residential school for the blind is evidence of that. Back then, we played baseball with volleyballs rather than with baseballs because it was easier to bat and field a large easily bouncing rubber ball than it was to play with a conventional baseball or softball. Today, young blind men and women play with large softballs containing beepers in them which make fielding a batted ball possible. The thrill of playing or listening to baseball for me is akin to love -- in that I’ll never get enough of it!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
I know, not everyone loves or even likes baseball. However, I insist that some of the most vital elements of the game -- hotdogs and beer, the almost delicious smell of freshly mown spring grass, and the stories which are delightfully entertaining -- are what make baseball so very human.
As for the stories, it isn’t so much that they have to do with baseball itself, it’s their themes of human audacity and disappointment, vulnerability and humor, triumph and tragedy, cleverness and confusion that make them real.
When I was 8 years old, I was introduced to “America’s National Pastime” by my maternal Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe was an avid Yankee fan. Baseball became our bond as it gave us something to talk about. Forced to grow up apart from my “real family,” baseball, with all its glories and occasional disappointments, was my magic bridge to the family that should have been my natural birthright.
Baseball, as much as balls and strikes, is the story of Yankee rookie shortstop Phil Rizzuto being handed a stool by ace Yankee hurler Vernon (Lefty) Gomez as he stepped into the shower. Gomez is said to have quipped, “You’ll need this kid! You’re so short that if you don’t use it, the water will be ice cold by the time it gets down to you!”
As much as hits and walks, baseball is the story of Jimmy Sebring, the left-handed hitting Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder who, on Thursday, October 1st, 1903 before 16,242 fans at Boston’s Huntington Grounds, hit the first home run in modern World Series history. Two years later, having been traded to the Cincinnati Reds, young Sebring gave up his big league career in midseason. “Why?” you may reasonably ask! The answer is he wanted to go home and play with Williamsport of the Eastern League to be nearer his sick wife. Jimmy returned briefly to play with the Washington Senators in 1909; however, there would be no 1910 season. James Dennison Sebring would die in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, December 22nd, 1909 at exactly 27 years and 9 months of age.
As much as baseball is about World Series glory, diamond rings and money, it is also about something very personal. When asked what the greatest satisfaction in the game was for him, former Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers left-handed pitcher Sandy Koufax replied, “It was that fifteen minutes in the clubhouse I spent after a World Series triumph, with guys I’d worked so hard with day in and day out over the previous eight or nine months of travel and pressure to bring that triumph about!”
As thrilling as is listening to baseball broadcasts is the pride of handing on to the youngest generation an identification with the game’s greatest stars. Hence, one of my biggest thrills came the day I handed a statue of Willie Mays I owned to an eleven-year-old boy.
Like nourishment itself, baseball is what you do with it. I spent Saturday evening a week or so ago with my younger lad as we each drafted players, over the internet, to compete in our separate baseball teams for Linguini’s Fantasy Baseball League. His team is called the Arrogant Bastards while mine is the Alameda Ligers. (A “liger” is a breed of cat, part lion and part tiger, found in many zoos around America and the world.)
I will spend many Sunday nights over the next few months comparing notes, challenging and being challenged, by the managers of nine other Linguini’s League baseball teams. With the possible exception of our exceedingly generous and occasionally pugnacious commissioner, these “managers” aren’t baseball geniuses; they simply love the game and the camaraderie of good-natured competition. Will it matter who wins the league prize being offered by the lovely manager of Linguini’s at season’s end? Well! Maybe for a minute or two, but much more memorable will be the hours we spend together managing, rooting, and wondering about our baseball fate.
Meanwhile, those who play the game, rookie and veteran alike, are getting ready for the coming season. Of course, they enjoy and anticipate their generous salaries and they are cared for, as if they were orchids, by exceedingly wealthy corporate types. Still, however, success depends on their ability to work and sweat themselves into shape. As they do so, older men who’ve been hired to manage them assess their strengths and weaknesses and ultimately dictate their fate. Former Orioles’ Manager Earl Weaver was once asked if releasing a player was the hardest decision a manager had to make. His reply was very telling. He said that the hardest decision he ever had to make, when he was a minor league manager, was to keep a player who had little chance of advancing to the big leagues in the game for another season because he needed a second baseman for that season.
If human concerns and wisdom are part of baseball, so is confusion -- even on the field. One day in 1926, Babe Herman of the Brooklyn Dodgers came up with the bases loaded. He drilled the ball off the right field wall, which scored Hank Deberry from third base. However, pitcher Dazzy Vance, who’d been on second, after rounding third, decided not to try and score because the ball had been relayed to the infield so quickly. Meanwhile, Chick Fewster, who’d been on first base, had already rounded second and was headed for third. At the same time, Floyd Caves (Babe) Herman -- who was a hell of a hitter but a lousy fielder and not terribly bright -- also rounded second with his head down, and headed for third. Suddenly, there were three Dodgers knocking noggins at third base. The Braves third baseman tagged all three runners. As it turned out, only two of them, including Herman, were out since Dazzy Vance was ruled by the umpire as having a right to third base because he’d already been there.
Even more than money, playing major league baseball is ultimately about boyish hopes and dreams coming true. Baseball may be a business with some teams approaching wealth in the billions, but to those closest to it -- especially on the field -- baseball remains a sport.
Of course, professional baseball has, by no means, a monopoly on the thrill of the game. My youth spent on the baseball fields of a residential school for the blind is evidence of that. Back then, we played baseball with volleyballs rather than with baseballs because it was easier to bat and field a large easily bouncing rubber ball than it was to play with a conventional baseball or softball. Today, young blind men and women play with large softballs containing beepers in them which make fielding a batted ball possible. The thrill of playing or listening to baseball for me is akin to love -- in that I’ll never get enough of it!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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