THE NATIONAL WORKAROUND COMPACT – WHAT A SLICK IDEA!

By Edwin Cooney

As every American schoolchild used to know, “We the People of the United States” don’t directly elect our president.  Electors chosen by the several states do that according to the popular vote in each state.  When you and I go to the polls, we choose an elector to cast the majority vote from our state as part of a national electoral college.  The Electoral College meets in each state capital on the first Tuesday in December of a presidential election year to cast the state’s vote for the candidate of our choice to be the next President of the United States.  Of course, those electors are chosen to sit as electors by party leaders which almost guarantee that they will support their party’s presidential candidate, but they are not legally bound to even do that. 

The oldest story told of Electoral College independence concerns New Hampshire presidential elector William Plumber who in 1820 gave his electoral vote to John Quincy Adams instead of incumbent president James Monroe.  Had he not done so, Monroe would have been unanimously elected president just as George Washington was in 1789 and 1793.  The explanation handed down to me in the fifth grade was that Plumber had cast his vote for Adams to preserve the uniqueness of Washington’s two unanimous elections as our president.  Later evidence, however, indicates that Plumber really didn’t like President Monroe all that much preferring fellow New Englander Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.  Thus, that is only the first example of the eccentricities of the Electoral College.

About a month ago, a reader from St. Louis (I’ll call her St. Louis’ favorite Toastmistress!), drew my attention to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact or NPVIC.  It’s called a “Workaround Plan.” It’s designed to get around the tedious process of amending the U.S. Constitution by using the Constitution’s own directive for electing a president as stated in Article II, Section 1.  This article gives the individual states the right to decide on the method of selecting their presidential electors.

Four times in our history, in 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes was defeated in the Electoral College -- more later about 1888.   To amend the Constitution and thus do away with the Electoral College would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and the votes of three-fourths of the states.  Thus, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact proposes that states, which are given the right to choose their own method of selecting their presidential electors by the Constitution itself, join in a legal compact to give their presidential electors to the candidate who receives the popular vote once it has been tallied.  This interstate compact won’t go into effect until the number of states containing 270 electoral votes has passed legislation joining this compact.

Beginning in 2007, states began considering this proposition. It appears to be the brainchild of Professor Robert Bennett of Northwestern University and John Koza, a Stanford University computer scientist who wrote a book in 2006 entitled “Every Vote Equal.”

NPVIC legislation has been introduced in all 50 states. As of this writing, Maryland (in 2007), New Jersey, Hawaii, and Illinois (in 2008), Washington State (in 2009), Massachusetts and the District of Columbia (in 2010), Vermont and California (in 2011), Rhode Island (in 2012) and, just last month, New York have all passed legislation to join the NPVIC. 

Beginning in 1824 when the lack of a majority vote in the Electoral College led to a “corrupt bargain” in the House of Representatives that denied General Andrew Jackson the presidency even though he’d won the popular vote, John and Suzie Q. Citizen have been less than thrilled with the elitist Electoral College.  In 1876, when Samuel Tilden of New York, the Democratic candidate for President, was denied election after not only receiving the popular vote but coming within one vote of election in the Electoral College, it was enough to nearly bring about a resumption of the Civil War. 

As you might guess, the NPVIC is a direct response to Bush v. Gore in 2000.  All of the states that have joined the “Workaround” are blue or Democratic states, but the compact does have rather wide support including 78% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans and 73% of independents.

The law will not take effect until July 20^th of a presidential election year when the number of states totaling 270 votes will have joined the compact.  Currently, only states with a total of 165 electoral votes have joined the interstate compact.  At this pace, it is not likely that a sufficient number of states will be in place before the year 2020.  Still, contrary to most people’s expectations (including mine), the Electoral College may soon be “history”!

Between Wednesday, November 7^th, 1888 and Monday, March 4^th, 1889 when he was inaugurated as our 23^rd President, Benjamin Harrison insisted that his upset victory over President Cleveland, in which he won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, was surely “....a gift of Providence.”  The reality was that Benjamin Harrison won the key states of Ohio, Indiana (his home state), and Illinois in part because hardworking Republicans spent much of Election Day on Ohio River boats and barges casting their votes in the river towns in those three states.  It’s impossible to resist the observation that if “Providence” was working for Senator Harrison that Tuesday, then “Providence” was working with larceny in his heart!

Yes, indeed, the NPVIC may be slick, but it ought to stick!

What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

HEADS UP – HERE COME THE BARE KNUCKLES!

By Edwin Cooney

The last time I addressed the topic of capital punishment, I had two notable responses.

The first response, which favored the continuance of the death penalty in effect justifying and taking pleasure in Clayton D. Lockett’s agony, dwelt on the horror of Lockett’s crime experienced by the victims, living and dead.

The second notable response asserted that I had “elevated the level of discussion on the topic.”  I tried to do that by asserting that sympathy for the victims of capital murder is shared alike by the proponents and opponents of legal death; that more than right or wrong, capital punishment is pointless; and that vanquishing one’s fear of death is often an admirable quality since it is required by the police, firefighters, soldiers, explorers and the practitioners of experimental science as well as by those who would break the law by committing murder. Those guilty of murder very often see themselves as the victims of outrageous fortune and are thus beyond the ability to receive the message sent by the perpetuation of capital punishment that their lives are in peril should they kill to avenge their social or personal resentments.

I’ve since decided that the insistence on the part of pro capital punishment advocates that the practice is necessary for the protection of the good requires a cognitively lethal response.

Capital punishment is an ineffective, pointless, primitive, barbaric, inhumane act of both deception and evil.  Wrapped in the cloak of sympathy for the victims of crime, capital murder accomplishes little more than the perpetuation of the horror of murder.  The celebration of the horrors of murder to support capital punishment’s justification is inexcusable.  Too many pro death penalty advocates wallow in the anticipation of a death row inmate’s suffering.  An execution in a civilized society should be an act of sad necessity; instead, it is anticipated with relish by too many among us.

Far too many proponents of the death penalty found satisfaction in Lockett’s suffering which translates into the unfortunate reality that there exists in Christian America a lot of joyous satisfaction in human and even animal suffering. (Note how many times proponents of capital punishment try to explain it away by referring to murderers as “animals.”) Even worse is the self-righteousness of those who approve of capital punishment and condemn legal abortion.  If abortion isn’t purified by legality, then murder can hardly be so purified or legitimatized by an act of law.  Ultimately, both capital murder and abortion should be practices of the past.  (It should be noted, however, that legal abortion, squalid as it is, has a socially redeemable purpose which is the prevention of lifelong disability that might be experienced by the unborn or the diminishing of financial and emotional hardship on the part of those already living.) 

Here it is pure and simple: life is either sacred or it’s not.  That which is sacred cannot be subjected to emotionally gratifying thrills of revenge.  There is only one legitimate reason for killing and that is to counteract or prevent murder already in progress.  Because they were on the loose and dangerous to the public at large, Bonnie and Clyde probably got what they deserved.

I have no argument with the contention that people deserve ironclad protection from the murderous marauders amongst us.  However, there exists a fierce argument against the contention that we who oppose capital murder are somehow numb to the anguish experienced by the victims of crime or sympathetic with the motives of those currently on death row.  My dreams weren’t in the least affected by Lockett’s execution, but my conscience is disturbed (as it should be) when the free society of which I’m a part deliberately adopts a policy of spite!

Support for the families of victims of crime should be designed for their emotional, spiritual and financial comfort rather than for encouraging and justifying their understandably angry sorrow.  What percentage of those who insist that they sympathize with the victims of murder would support a program to provide money to finance their economic, social and spiritual recovery?  Shouldn’t public policy support that which heals rather than that which appeals to the same troth of resentment from which the murderer draws his or her energy?  That troth of angry sorrow and resentment feeds the motives and the satisfactions of both the murderer and the murderer’s murderer!

You will note that in denouncing capital punishment I left out a traditional argument -- that of its immorality.  I did that for two reasons.  First, proponents of capital murder already believe themselves to possess the moral high ground.  Second, if Pope John Paul II, whose capacity for moral thought and behavior was obviously far superior to mine, couldn’t convince them then, only God Almighty has any kind of a chance to change their minds.  After all, they know how to do God’s work better than the “Holy Father.” Otherwise, they would have heeded his moral judgment on capital punishment.

I was sorry to read the other day that President Obama would be supportive of the death penalty if it were applied more equitably.  According to Charles M. Blow in The New York Times, we’ve executed 15,717 Americans since 1700.  The peak year was 1935 when 200 people were executed.  Hanging is the method used the most followed by electrocution and the firing squad.  Hence, President Obama doesn’t seem to object to the fact that the United States remains one of only nine nations throughout all humanity that has executed its citizens in the last five years. For the most part, these countries are the very ones both conservatives and liberals alike would squirm from being associated with on any other list of nations.  They are Bangladesh, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen.  How’s that for civil company!

Too many proponents of capital punishment or, as I prefer to call it, legal murder take satisfaction in its existence rather than sorrow.  They insist that they despise killers -- but somewhere I’ve heard the observation that “imitation is the highest form of flattery!”

Now, what the hell did I do with my brand new set of brass knuckles?!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AMONG THE BEST LOVED!

By Edwin Cooney

I know it’s trivial!  Call it silly, meaningless, or whatever adjective you see fit to apply.  Still today, May 12^th, 2014 is a pretty special day.  It’s the 89^th birthday of one of the best-loved living Americans!  I don’t believe I know anyone who hasn’t heard of him. In fact, I hope I never know anyone who doesn’t know his name – my three-year-old granddaughter excepted, of course!

Before disclosing his name, let me briefly examine what I mean by this week’s topic, “...best loved.”

Of course, I’m not referring to romantic – or eros -- love although this gentleman shared deep and abiding love with his sweetheart Carmen for 65 years from Wednesday, January 26^th, 1949 until Friday, March 7^th, 2014 when she slipped away.  No doubt he still basks in the lingering glow of her love!  Nor, unfortunately am I writing of “philia love” – the love of friendship – as he and I never met.  “Agape love,” which is unconditional love, is ultimately what this is about.  This gentleman born Lawrence Peter Berra to Pietro and Paolina Berra at home on Elizabeth Avenue in south St. Louis, Missouri on Tuesday, May 12^th, 1925 literally compels our love for him just by being Yogi.

Yogi, who was called Lawdie by his mother and father as a child, was given his famous nickname by Bobby Hofman, a neighborhood friend who, along with Yogi and Joe Garagiola, would grow up to play major league baseball.  Hofman insisted that Larry (or Lawdie) Berra looked like a Hindu Yogi whenever he sat cross-legged and cross-armed while waiting to bat or while looking sad whenever his team lost a game. 

Note that Joe Garagiola, probably Yogi’s best friend from “the Hill” where they grew up, caught for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1946 to 1951 before finishing his 8 year career with the Cubs, Pirates and New York Giants.  Most of Bobby Hofman’s career between 1952 and 1958 was spent with the New York Giants.  In fact, Joe Garagiola caught in a World Series before Yogi did.  Joe’s World Series year was 1946 when the Cardinals defeated the Red Sox in seven games while Yogi’s first of 14 as a New York Yankee came the following season.

Hofman, like Garagiola, played in only one World Series.  Hofman’s World Series year was 1954.  That was only the second World Series that Yogi didn’t play in after 1947 until 1959.  In fact, Garagiola told a mid-1950s banquet crowd that Yogi, for all his success, had never experienced one of the finer things in life.  After all, Yogi, up to that time, had never had the pleasure of watching a World Series game on television.

Although “Mr. Berra,” as Yankee announcer Red Barber often used to call him, looked more like a yogi than like an athlete, he was definitely athletic.  Standing only 5 foot 7 inches and playing at a weight of 195 pounds, Berra batted left-handed but threw right-handed.  Quick and light on his feet, Yogi could pounce on a bunted ball like a cat.  His hitting prowess was amazing especially when the game was on the line.  His .285 batting average, his 1,430 RBI’s and 358 home runs were very respectable if not spectacular.  Yogi’s gift to baseball was his athleticism combined with steady nerves and thorough knowledge of the game.  Above all however, there was his personality.

Although “all man” in every sense of the word, Yogi’s manhood was tinged with the carefree perspective of both a little boy and a sage.  Having dropped out of school in the eighth grade, Yogi’s English could best be characterized as “blue collar.”  Therefore, when Yankee owner Dan Topping’s wife complemented him for looking cool in a seersucker suit after a hot spring training game in 1957, it was only natural for Yogi to respond by saying, “Well, you don’t look so hot yourself, Mrs. Topping!” (Note: Dan Topping’s six wives were all beautiful actresses and models.  Few words could have described their looks better than the word “hot.”)

Of course, many of Yogi’s observations are legendary.  Of the shadows that used to plague both Yankee and opposing outfielders on October afternoons at Yankees Stadium, Yogi once observed: “It gets late out there early.”  While going through a batting slump early in his career, Yogi was instructed to think while he was at the plate.  The very next at bat Yogi proceeded to take three called strikes.  As he walked back to the dugout he was heard muttering: “how the hell is anyone supposed to hit and think at the same time?”

I guess we all love Yogi because he entertains us and asks for nothing in return.  As a beloved baseball player he probably is still second to Babe Ruth, but as a model for living he vastly outranks “the Babe.”  As an American icon he certainly rates among the near greats if not the truly great Americans of the twentieth century!

His 1973 observation about the National League pennant race (“It ain’t over till it’s over”) is a combination of optimistic wisdom and patience that Americans have come to apply to countless circumstances in their own lives.

Mr. Berra’s success in baseball is probably still what matters the most to him outside of his love for his late wife Carmen, and his sons Larry, Tim and Dale.  (Note: I’m told that he wanted to name his first born Yogi Jr., but that Carmen wouldn’t hear of it!)  

As Yogi approaches that inevitability which we all face, his legacy includes the Yogi Berra Learning Center established on the campus of Montclair State University in northern New Jersey.  This combination baseball museum, baseball park and community center will pass on the essence of what Yogi is all about.

It’s a matter of fact and, even more, of profound pride that the little man with the first name of a Hindu Yogi is as American as…

a high fast ball, the crack of bat on cowhide, the cheer of a Sunday afternoon crowd and the home run just tagged by number eight!

No wonder we love him and that today is indeed so very, very special!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SCORE: INCREDULITY -- 2, REALITY -- ZIP!

By Edwin Cooney

In the wake of the botched execution at the “death house” in the southeastern Oklahoma town of McAlester that occurred between 6:23 and 7:06 p.m. on Tuesday night, April 29th, 2014, the shrill voices of proponents and opponents of capital punishment are once again being heard throughout the land.

Convinced that capital punishment constitutes due justice, proponents of legal death have reacted with varying emotions that range from indifference to gratification over the agony experienced by Clayton Lockett as he painfully struggled for breath in the wake of the breakdown of the execution process.

Lockett, who was convicted of the 1999 murder of 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman, had been declared unconscious shortly after 6:30 and doctors had administered drugs designed to paralyze his breathing and stop his heart.  Lockett’s crime was particularly heinous since he not only bound his victim and inflicted two gunshot wounds into her innocent body, but then watched two other jerks proceed to bury her alive.  Thus, there’s little sympathy among proponents of state sponsored murder (or from anyone else for that matter) for Lockett’s approximately 43 minute ordeal.

As for opponents of official state sponsored homicide (of which I am one), our protest has to do strictly with the poorly planned and administered execution, not only on the grounds that such treatment is in violation of the constitution’s Eighth Amendment banning “cruel and unusual punishment,” but also on the grounds that crime is crime whether committed by the state or by a mean or crazed killer.  However, it is both appropriate and accurate to assert that even among opponents to capital punishment, what sympathy or empathy there is in the wake of Lockett’s agony has to be more circumstantial than personal.

Proponents of capital murder believe its existence is not only just, but that it sends an effective  message to potential killers that their own lives are on the line should they use murder to settle their personal scores with individuals or with society as a whole.  Additionally, proponents are convinced that they and they alone, are sympathetic to the victims of crime.

Having once favored the death penalty, I became convinced of a compelling reality after reading Thomas McLendon’s novel called “Death Work.” Capital punishment isn’t right or wrong; it’s pointless and absolutely irrelevant to any meaningful human need.

The novel, which was published in early 1977 shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court approved alterations which it had demanded states apply to their capital punishment laws, describes the crimes and executions of four convicts at the Gainesville, Florida state prison where “Old Sparky,” Florida’s electric chair, resides.  Each convict, one woman and three men, had been justly tried and convicted, three for murder and one for rape.  Their motives ranged from emotional deprivation and professional political murder to passion-oriented murder. Frustrated by her husband’s infidelity, a woman murders him and their three children by grinding nitroglycerin tablets into a serving of mashed potatoes.  A self-absorbed young man is convicted of capital rape under Florida law.  A Cuban exile, trained by the CIA to fight pro-Castro subversives, is convicted for firebombing a Miami nightclub and killing 95 patrons in order to eliminate four pro-Castro agents. 

The final convict, a powerfully muscled black man who was charged with the ax murder of his wife, agrees to go meekly to “Old Sparky” if guards agree to keep their hands off him. When he gets to the chair he makes a little speech.  In it he acknowledges his crime and accepts his punishment.  He insists however that his executers understand that their treatment of him is no different from his treatment of his wife.  He thus asserts that he and the state are ultimately guilty of the same misconception.  Legal death, he has finally realized, is no more successful at solving humanity’s ills than he was in solving his own.  Thus, he and the state both have operated under the oldest human illusion, that killing is the most effective way to permanently rid humankind of its most vexing problems.

The individual passing of Clayton Lockett doubtless satisfies the proponents of legal death who hold the conviction that humankind has been purified by the elimination of one "bad apple."  Therein lays the illusion!

The only legitimate moment to kill Clayton Lockett would have been as he was about to commit or as he was in the midst of committing his crime.  As for sending a message to potential killers, two realities render such logic impotent.

First, most people who commit serious crimes on a powerful level already see themselves as the victims of outrageous fortune brought on them by a hostile or unfeeling society.  Their desperation blinds, deafens and numbs their sense of perspective and masks any grasp of the significance or the severity of consequences.

Second, if fear of death or injury were sufficient to prevent criminal behavior, those very fears also would likely prevent noble behavior. Hence, no one would have the capacity to be brave in the face of danger. Thus the policeman, the fireman and the soldier would not dare to exist.  Humankind depends on people's willingness to lay their well-being and their lives on the line for causes that matter.  Ultimately, people do what they do for both good and bad reasons even in the face of danger.

Meanwhile, we're faced once again with the incredulity of a botched execution.  Proponents and opponents of legal death bombard us with their legalistic complaints and their angry sorrow.

As for the benefits society would realize were it to accept the gifts of the reality described above, a reality in which killing was replaced by justice, those benefits would be endless.

Sadly, incredulity is preferable.  We know how to express our incredulity: its tools and weapons are at our fingertips. It provides us with the license to be resentful, angry, and to get even.  Reality however, is a place we only agree to go if we are in control.

Thus, as stated above, the score is:  incredulity -- 2, reality -- zip!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY