Across the Great Divide

Lincoln, Douglas, Cheney and Me.

Ex-Stribber Eric Black "launched" his two-month-old blog this week with a post on the Lincoln-Douglas debates that also drew from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. The piece, "Lincoln, Douglas, the typographic mind and us," sparked some thoughts I'll get to later.

For now, here's an excerpt from Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln's rhetorical and moral approach to arguing against the expansion of slavery, a main feature in those debates:

Unlike the majority of antislavery orators, who denounced the South and castigated slaveowners as corrput and un-Christian, Lincoln pointedly denied differences between Northerners and Southerners. He argued that "they are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up.... When it is said the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate [italics mine!] the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself."
[...]
More than a decade earlier, he had employed a similar approach when he advised temperance advocates to refrain from denouncing drinkers in "thundering tones of anathema and denunciation," for denunciation would inevitably be met with denunciation, "crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema."

I try to keep this in mind when I feel like screaming at anyone except Dick Cheney.

Kersten: A Non-Lawyer's Brief on Free Speech.

Katherine Kersten is an attorney. I am not, so I must appeal to other sources to help me explain today's column.

The way I read it:

The trouble with lawyers is their rules of professional conduct consider it a responsibility to offer services free pro bono publico.

The trouble with the Constitution is the first amendment protects free speech and right of assembly.

The trouble with anarchists is they often insist upon free speech and can't afford legal counsel.

The trouble with knee-jerk newspaper columnists is they draw unwarranted connections between attorneys and the clients they represent.

The  trouble with the law is we can't just round up people for what they might do. At least in the country, and unless we declare them unlawful combatants.

The trouble with Kersten is she's a lawyer who apparently doesn't get any of this.
 

Understand that I Appreciate His Style. In Other Words, I Have Appreciation.

"We're still paying attention. We understand."

AP coverage of President Bush's latest visit to New Orleans picked up his favorite trope, so it's in headlines across the country.

Has anyone with less understanding more abused the word?

When he first used ''crusade'' in conjunction with war in the Middle East, he said: ''This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil. And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.''

Jon Stewart lampooned him earlier this month when Bush said in a Fox News interview:

"I've been around long enough to be able to understand how it works. Nobody likes to be called names. On the other there's -- we've got a bigger enemy than name-callers. That's al-Qaeda. Or people losing jobs."

"Oh, my god!" screamed Stewart.  "We're now fighting al Qaeda and the unemployed!  They're everywhere!"

Stewart then showed Bush telling Cavuto, "I mean, if bridges -- if rebuilding bridges is that big a priority, then we ought to prioritize that in the highway monies that we've already budgeted. ... In other words, prioritization means real prioritization."

He understands building infrastructure. He said so in Afghanistan:

BUSH: We're going to help you build roads. We understand that it's important for people to have access to markets.

I thought our general had a pretty interesting statement. He said, "Where the road ends, the Taliban tries to begin."

And the president understands that.

We're helping you with the national literacy program.

KARZAI: Yes.

BUSH: We understand that a free society is one that counts upon an educated citizenry. The more educated a populace is, the more likely it is they'll be active participants in democratic forms of government.

And back to New Orleans:

A lot of people down here probably wondered whether or not those of us in the federal government not from Louisiana would pay attention to Louisiana or Mississippi.  In other words, it's one thing to come and give a speech in Jackson Square; it's another thing to keep paying attention to whether or not progress is being made.  And I hope people understand we do, we're still paying attention.  We understand.

One of Don Powell's jobs is to make sure that the federal government understands the hurdles that remain for recovery.  One hurdle was the levee system.  We fully understand that New Orleans can't be rebuilt until there's confidence in the levees.

Understanding and appreciation is not action — it's the suggestion of action. In other words, understanding can be a substitute for action. Understand?

Of course real understanding is hard work, and it will likely compel action. For Bush, though, "understand" is his version of Clinton's "I feel your pain" coupled with "feel mine."

Semi-Cross-Posting at Growth & Justice.

I've started posting my more policy-oriented stuff over at the Growth & Justice Blog. Rather than cross-posting, I'll periodically note some of the topics over there:

• If D.C. transit project runs off the rails, watch out
• What's the right percentage of hungry children?
• Fix earmarks, but that still won't fix transportation

Ex-English Major Withdraws Proposed Symbol.

I apologize. I presented an instance of a signless Spokane fire station as a symbol of community neglect.

Why use an ironic symbol when naked facts are so much more powerful?

The sex-crimes unit of the Minneapolis Police Department has been reduced from 10 officers to four, who are responsible for investigating an average of 1,300 cases a year, and that doesn't include oversight of the 2,500 registered sex offenders living in Minneapolis. "Do the math," said an officer we spoke with. "We're not checking on them."

Meanwhile, Minneapolis has an average of 951 cases per city attorney per year. Obviously, government needs to become more efficient — or privatize the caseload.

Could We Have Some Help Over Here?

Fred Thompson's allure totally escapes me. He's like Sam Waterston, minus the charisma and with fewer lines. Watching his corn pone celebrity  pantomime around the country, I can't help but wonder — when is Lenny Briscoe gonna find the body and get this story going?

His fans are not helping me get it. Here's a Virginia site salivating over Thompson's blog from Minnesota:

My friends, this is yet another example of why Fred Thompson is my candidate for President, or rather he will be soon...

Update from the Road
From the FredFile

Posted on August 27th, 2007

By Fred in Budget, Taxes, Terrorism, Updates

Hello Everyone,
The last weeks have been busy for us on the road, and let me tell you the hospitality everywhere we’ve traveled has been amazing! While I’m sure you’re following what’s been happening in the papers and on the blogs, I wanted to share my impressions from my travels.

I’ve visited the Iowa and Minnesota State Fairs (and did you see our video of the butter cow?). I was glad to see so many fine, enthusiastic people stop by for some of the great fried food the fair has to offer and to share their thoughts and ideas.

This past Saturday I was at the Midwest Leadership Forum in Indianapolis, Indiana[click here for video of speech], with state Republican leaders from across the Midwest. I shared my concerns about the direction this country is headed, and where I think we can go.

We’re not having the kind of conversations we need to have on a range of issues, particularly the kind of threat we’re facing, on a global scale from radical Muslim fundamentalists who want to bring our nation to its knees and destroy our way of life.

We’re pointing fingers rather than finding solutions to the big challenges that face our economy and our prosperity. And for the first time in our history, we have a government that can’t do all the basic things we expect our government to do.

We need to be talking about these things and how to get back to first principles. And if you know me, you know my answers are not bigger government and more bureaucracy and higher taxes. It’s just the opposite.

Stay tuned for more updates as we travel around the country and talk with folks, and if we’re in your area we’d love to have you stop by.

If that's an example, all I can say is: I  knew Jerry Orbach. Jerry Orbach was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Jerry Orbach.

How Much News Fits in a 14-Pound Bag?

The Minneapolis Star Tribune goes to a slimmer page format the day after MinnPost.com announces its plans for an online local news venture, and publisher Joel Kramer says:

This is not just for political junkies or policy junkies, by any means. It's about, for example, what you might expect to see on the cover of the New York Times. The Times does a lot of government coverage and a lot of political coverage, but it also covers science, health, the arts, culture, popular culture, on occasion, when it has an interesting way of looking at it. That's our goal: to cover the whole range of human experience with writers who have had a long time developing their contacts, their understanding and who know what's going on.

The Strib has already been doing that, of course. Only with content that actually comes from the Times.

The front section is of greatest interest to those Minnesotans seeking substantive news Kramer means to attract. The 14-page section in today's print edition carried, by my rough count, four pages of original content.  That includes one and a third pages of locally generated editorial/letters/opinion, more than a page devoted to Jon Tevlin's fine series on a multiple murder in Waseca last February, and about half a page for Dan Browning's story on the push for allowing heavier loads on state highways.

Incidentally, no local resources were evident in a front-page story about an Idaho Senator who pled guilty on August 8th to a charge of disorderly conduct after being arrested in a men's room at Minneapolis St. Paul Airport. The story was first reported by Washington's Roll Call and spread online well before it surfaced here in print.

The other 10 pages are split between advertising and other news sources, including "news services," the New York Times, LA Times and McClatchy News Service. Five pages of content available elsewhere.

This isn't a critique of the quality of what the paper has produced. And one day's stories in one section do not a newspaper make. But it's hard to miss that four pounds are being delivered in a 14-pound bag.

The Anonymous Fire Station.

Here in Minnesota, we talk about budget cuts affecting schools, libraries, children's health care and bridge maintenance.

The solution, some tell us, is to reallocate money spent on frills and low priorities to those government services that obviously benefit more people. It's pure coincidence that this happens to mean redirecting funds to benefit drivers, not transit users, to whites, not blacks, and the wealthy, not the poor.

Still, we are fortunate in this state, where investment in ourselves is still relatively generous and government has neither devolved into crony-seeking graft nor seed-corn-consuming parsimony. Yet.

From the west, that sparse land with the big sunsets — where mining and oil revenues and public lands grazing and the legacy of federal public works projects obscure the real sources of individual prosperity — we can get inklings of what happens when self-interest begins to triumph over the common interest.

This is actually a small example, from Spokane, Washington, and I expect a lot of friends on the right may ridicule it. You decide what it means.

Budget cuts in Spokane have reduced all types of low priority services. Some of the things missing, like snow plowing within three days of a snowfall, become apparent only occasionally, and eventually, the snow does melt. Others remain invisible until a citizen finally takes note.

Two newer residents walking past their local fire station wondered, what station is this? Back in Minnesota, fire stations had signs. Here, the building was nondescript. If not for a swatch of red, behind the high bay doors might be dump trucks or bookmobiles.

In a nation where you might find a million dollars worth of NYFD tee shirts walking around as testament to public sacrifice, a community would not spring for a sign for the fire department that actually protected its lives and property.

And why would the fire department need a sign? It comes to us, we don't come to it. Clearly a waste of taxpayer dollars to put a name on a place when most of us already know where it is.

The couple inquired, and when they learned the dollars for a sign were not a priority, they offered to pay for one. The bureaucracy didn't quite know how to handle such a proposal, but the local station house was energized. Some of our neighbors truly appreciate what we do, what we take pride in and dedicate our lives to.

The department higher ups are now mulling the offer.

Individual underwriting public expenditures might enflame the heart of a Minnesota governor who once invited citizens to send in a check if they didn't like the way the state was spending its money. Perhaps we  could privatize all sorts of spending and move it off the books.

Get Coca Cola and Twin City Federal to underwrite bridge inspections. Gang members, turn in your guns at Target for a free gift card. Ask neighbors not just to shovel fire hydrants clear in the winter but to buy  defibrillators for their local fire station. After all, why should young people underwrite the cost when it's the old  farts having heart attacks?

A signless fire station in Spokane might be seen as an example of the right priorities, but from here it looks like a symbol of a community losing its grip.

If a sign goes up on station number 11, we'll let you know. If it doesn't, who's even gonna notice?

MinnPost.com Will Not be Strib.lite.

MinnPost.com, Joel Kramer's new non-profit online news venture stepped out from behind the curtain today. The MinnPost.com site has the announcement, with links to coverage, including Paul Schmelzer Leonard Witt and Brian Lambert interviews.

Read especially Schmelzer, if you want a strong flavor of what Kramer is attempting and how he'll go about it.

I've refrained from commenting on this venture until the announcement. I'm not involved with it and have no inside knowledge, but I have had the opportunity to work with Kramer, going back more than two years ago at Growth & Justice. My comments here are based in part on that experience.

Kramer was initially unimpressed when I tried to get him to pay more attention to the blogosphere — largely because he saw blogs as largely opinionating driven by someone else's original reporting. As a former reporter, editor and publisher, he holds reporting in high esteem. This quote from the Schmelzer interview sound right to me about how his thinking has evolved:

What you and Brian [Lambert] do are good examples of what we're talking about. You do real reporting. I've looked around to find those kinds of blogs in town, and there really aren't that many who really start their day by trying to report. That's our model – people who start their day saying, "What can I find out that's new, and then how can I engage with the readers about it?"

Early speculation about what Kramer would do with MinnPost.com based upon what he had done before as a newsman struck me as off base. He's also a well-connected former political candidate and nonprofit executive with a very keen mind, so he brings a unique mix of experiences into this venture. And unlike some very smart, accomplished people I've known, he continues to learn, be open to other perspectives and appreciate talents other than his own.

These are all fine attributes for someone exploring terra incognita. Not to mention knowing Ferdinand and Isabella, plus a bunch of good sailors.

Kramer has unquestionably lined up some fine reporting and editing talent. Minnesota Monitor, not Minnesota Public Radio, is the nonprofit news organization most likely to feel the first heat from MinnPost.com's goal "to cover the whole range of human experience with writers who have had a long time developing their contacts, their understanding and who know what's going on."

However, it's also worth noting that many of these reporters with great knowledge and valuable contacts are emerging from a long period of working within a structured environment that valued different skills and behaviors. Shifting to a freelance /blogger mindset with its wham-bam mix of opinion, attitude and reporting — and where readers are buying the writer's daily product, not the paper that lands on the porch each morning — may not be an easy transition for all.

But it looks like Kramer is building an enterprise that can adapt, even if individuals don't. Whether that's enough, as a crappy reporter would say, remains to be seen.

Privatization is Tool, Not Panacea.

A while back I noted a certain inability to detect a highway project as public because it a) charged tolls and b) provided a good service experience. This was prima face evidence the road must be a private  venture.

Once the facts about Denver's E-470 highway are presented, Mitch Berg will grant only the most grudging acknowledgment:

It shows that government, given boundless resources and an open-ended mandate (especially as a small part of a larger money-pit boondoggle, the Denver International Airport project), can occasionally duplicate the benefits of private-sector service, market-orientation and usability.

Then he turns it into a call for building tollways, which lefties are supposed to oppose just as reflexively as the righties oppose... well, pretty much everything government does except wage war against people they don't like and arrest people they don't like.

For the record, I don't oppose tollways, provided they reduce congestion, don’t reduce public access to places we want to go and pay for themselves at least as much as public transit. Privatizing certain public services should  not be ruled out as a matter of principle.

But let's get real.

There are industries that specialize in satisfying government requirements — for example, the road construction and arms industries. Their livelihood is pretty well intertwined with public needs. Beyond that, though, the private sector will  behave more like my company did, gravitating to where it can make the most money with the least resistance.

In my experience, that was not in government contracting. I made a good living providing services corporate America was incapable of performing for itself. On the other hand, I rarely did work for the government or non-profit sectors because they were tighter with their dollars and much more stringent about specifying what they expected.

Private industry will serve the public interest when it can make a buck, and it is obligated to move on when it isn't. All by itself, that's the reason we should be wary about privatization as our salvation.

How long do you think private industry would keep running a tollway, an immunization program or a retirement plan once the profits dried up?

Government isn't perfect, but neither is it the bumbling, service-deficient, scripture-guided festival of ineptitude and corporate interest the Bush Administration has spent nearly seven years installing at the federal level.

Let's not get hung up on ideologically driven solutions. Let's just solve the problems.