Across the Great Divide

The Peripatetic Bicycle.

You realize I'm making up stories here, don't you?

I mean, I don't fabricate and I usually try to verify, but I'm still filling the blanks with some of my stuff, like we all do.

In fact, I specialize in stories about how often people tell themselves untrue stories about other people and the world, because they are so confident in their own experiences, perceptions and character judgment. I tell these stories to encourage others to look beyond what they believe to be the truth. And I accept that as an obligation in my own life.

Then, there's reality.

A few weeks ago, I told a poignant story about giving away a cherished but underused bicycle. If you haven't read it yet, you should go here and do so before you continue with this post.

This is where, if I had advertisers, I would insert an ad to create a little space so you don't just breeze on through.

Oh, wait...

[Post continues below]

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On Friday at Peace House, two weeks after I wrote the wistful account of the Sky Rider's fate—a fate, I might add, I accepted with grace—I saw Marsh again.

This time, he greeted me immediately when I entered the large common room.

And immediately, I knew why he was so much more effusive this time. 

Because the Marsh I wrote about two weeks ago—the heavyset black man with the little beard evading me behind the sunglasses and hat—was not Marsh. As soon as I saw the real Marsh I thought, how could I be so blind, such a prototypical white dude, blending these two people into one, and inventing an explanation for the other Marsh's distance. 

Oh sure, I thought I had the facts and a credible witness. But even more important, I had a story that satisfied my need to tell a story.

You gave me a bike that needs work, Marsh said.

I thought you got rid of it. Calvin said he saw someone else riding it.

Nah, nah, it's in my front room, Marsh said.

There were things he wanted to change on the bike but he didn't have the money because he owed a debt to Social Security thanks to his former case worker screwing him somehow. (A long story we will skip over, because at this point, Calvin appeared.)

You got me, I said.

What?

You told me Marsh had unloaded the bike, that you'd seen it down on Lake Street.

Yeah, black, chrome fenders, with a big basket and its chain all rusty.  A girl's bike, right?

Uh, no.

Ah, man, I wasn't putting you on. I thought it was yours!

The peripatetic bike made such a compelling tale, wrapped up with a pretty good lesson about the perils of attaching expectations to the gifts we give. And I got to play the wise man, so that was cool.

But I suppose this story is just as good, if not better. And heck, it might even be truer.

 

 

 

Drowning the Truth in the Bathtub.

Heading in from burning back some weeds, I heard the cry of a rabbit in distress. Where I live in Colorado, I can be sure it's not the Quiver Rabbit I'm hearing across the arroyo.

Coyotes lope across our land all the time. Two days ago three does trotted single file along a ridge about 60 yards from the house, as I turned to watch them, I saw a single coyote in pursuit, followed by a straggling pup. The survival parade dipped down into the wash, then back up the other side of a trail that connects to one of our regular mountain bike and hiking trails. A minute later, the deer had switched back my way and were headed around my sister's house, the coyote still about 20 yards back, the pup nowhere to be seen.

I don't have to stand in my snowless yard to know I'm in a different place. I can read the local newspaper.

Gary Harmon is the local Katherine Kersten, with a couple exceptions. He's a lot more likely to write about the Second Amendment, and his column takes more stabs at humor, though it's hard to say which columnist is funnier.

One other difference. In his day job, Harmon works as a reporter for the same newspaper, writing on a range of topics, including energy and land use.

Last week's column connecting the Tea Party movement to Dalton Trumbo was classic Harmon.

Trumbo is Grand Junction's most famous native son, which tells you quite a bit about sons from here. He gained his greatest fame as an ex-communist screenwriter who, hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee, refused to answer questions or rat out other people in Hollywood, citing First Amendment rights. He was held in contempt of Congress, sentenced to 10 months in prison and then was exiled from regular film work for 13 years as one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10.

He was also the first writer to come back out.

Under the pen name “Robert Rich,” he won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for “The Brave One” in 1956, and finally was credited under his own name for "Spartacus," thanks to the advocacy of Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger, who hired Trumbo for "Exodus."

The Tea Party is doing a promotion riffing on the famous "I am Spartacus" scene, giving Harmon his opening for lefty bashing.

Harmon, who has been around for a long time, summarizes Trumbo's career this way:

The real screenwriter is something of a hero to everything the tea party types stand athwart. He was a black-listed screenwriter who had been a communist and turned on his friends when the FBI came a knocking.

Get that? Trumbo goes up against Congress, defies government suppression of First Amendment rights and risks his treasure to stand on principle — which doesn't sound all that athwart what tea party types think they are doing — and Harmon turns him into a commie snitch.

Trumbo found the Communist Party about as effective and interesting as the Knights of Pythias and he moved on. It never bothered me this writer was once a communist, but it's disturbing that this columnist is still a reporter.

Smart Politics Can Divide, but Can it Figure?

I can't tell if Smart Politics has a statistical tin ear or is willfully deaf.

Here's an example: Minnesota Has 2nd Largest Increase in Prison Population in the Nation This Decade.

What kind of policies or changes in the population are responsible for Minnesota's prison population increasing by 50.79% — from 6,238 to 9,406 between 2000 and 2010? A helpful analysis from a public policy center named for Hubert Humphrey might tell us.

Smart Politics, which posts under the banner of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, just does the math, notes the change and passes on rather pointless observations like this:

Looking at states in the Upper Midwest region, North Dakota experienced the ninth largest increase in the nation in state and federal prisoners since 2000, with its prison population rising at a rate of 34.9 percent to 1,452 total prisoners. South Dakota's rate of increase was ranked #14 in the nation (27.8 percent; 3,342 prisoners), while Wisconsin was ranked #33 (12.7 percent; 23,380 prisoners), and Iowa was ranked #38 (10.2 percent; 8,766 prisoners).

I've remarked often about how state rankings often overstate small differences and get interpreted idiotically. The role of analysts should be to look beyond their number crunching to offer some enlightenment.

The incarceration data is in the Smart Politics table, but a useful caveat is not in the post — a small increase affects a small number percentage-wise more than a large number. Minnesota's high ranking for the period selected means nothing without more context. Even after the increase, Minnesota has the 18th lowest absolute number of prisoners.

More pertinent here would be a comparison between Minnesota and other states with similarly sized populations.

 On a prisoner-per-capita basis, Minnesota has perhaps the lowest rate in the nation. (I haven't calculated every state, but our rate is at least half the rate of similar-sized Wisconsin, Maryland, Colorado and Missouri, and of South Dakota to boot. We're also lower than North Dakota and West Virginia.)

Those lower incarceration rates mean we spend less on corrections and reflect the fact we do more to get people out of the criminal justice system so they can lead productive lives.

You'd think smart policy thinkers at University could dig that out for us.

Is Boehner a Reverse Sandbagger?

Politico says the well-tanned Ohio Rep. John Boehner is a prolific fundraiser and golfer whose political action committee has spent $82,998 on golf outings so far this year.

The story says Boehner is a "pretty good golfer" with a 7.9 handicap.

That would make him a decent golfer, provided he kept his handicap properly, but I'm suspicious.

The USGA records show that Boehner has posted all but one of his scores at his home course. His 20 scores go all the way back to June 2007, with only eight scores for this year.

Maybe he only plays in scrambles when he's away from home, so he can't post his scores, but I don't know any golfers with a single digit handicap who live in two places, travel and play so little, at just one course.

Boehner's handicap may be legitimate, but to me it has the markings of the "reverse sandbagger" who only posts his best scores so he can maintain his self-image as a pretty good golfer. 

For you non-golfers, a sandbagger is someone who inflates his scores in order to have a higher handicap that is advantageous in competitions. A reverse sandbagger is more concerned about looking good in the bar, so he's only cheating himself.

Come to think of it, that's not very GOP-like.

A New Wave.

It took four stops to locate an American flag. One place said they used to sell them, but the owner ended up giving away more than he sold. Another store sold them only as a seasonal product around the Fourth of July.

I found an appropriate Made in the U.S.A. sewn flag at Ace Hardware. (It was not folded properly in the package, though.)

Tomorrow, the bracket goes up near the front door.

I'm not saying this is the first time in my life I was really proud to be an American, but it was the first time I was moved to put the flag on my house. Now that the Bush era is winding to a close, I invite other progressives to join me in reclaiming our flag and everything it stands for.

This is Not the [Blank] We Knew.

Eric Black didn't say this. Neither did Scott McClellan. But they could have.

Only Some Mentors are Disappointed Today.

In light of Eric Black's stories on the Mike Hatch/Lori Swanson regime, I went back into my archives to find a post I thought I'd written prior to the last election for attorney general, in which I thought I'd quoted a source in the AG's office: "If you like Mike, you'll love Lori."

I think the ambiguity was deliberate.

Turns out, I'd written it in a private communication, but now you have it. This person did not at all approve of Hatch's management style or uncomfortable, often crude communication style, but on balance believed Hatch's heart was in the right place.

I guess we'll see in part two of Black's report whether that view is still represented.

Some people will thrive under an overbearing boss; some crumple and others just grumble. As a former — and sometimes possibly overbearing — boss, I understand how hard-drivers can be frustrated by get-alongers and half-assers. Perhaps the AG's office had a few of those when Hatch came in, but a good manager would've had them out quickly and not brought in any more.

Black's account sounds like a let's-separate-the-men-from-the-boys style of abusive, politically driven leadership helped create the current management problems.

As I futilely searched for that quote, I came across an old post that reminded me Hatch's penchant for insulting the media didn't start with Eric Black and MinnPost.

As his gubernatorial race came down to the wire, Mike Hatch was trying to clarify that he merely called a reporter a media hack — not a media whore. Allow me to rerun my glossary:

Was Mike Hatch misheard, or was he stumbling, Kerry-like, as he tried to select the proper term of opprobrium from a rich lode of invective against the media? Let's review some of the possibilities, along with the distinctions among them.

A whore performs a repulsive and demeaning act for pay — and pretends to be excited about it.

A hack performs the same act for pay and acts bored — while trying to figure out who else will pay him for the same job.

A jackal works in packs and rarely does any original work — but is capable of surviving entirely on regurgitated material.

A flack performs the same insipid act over and over, hoping to do it well enough to advance to hack.

A hound only masquerades as a member of the media in order to attract coverage by the hack or the whore.

Today Scott McClellan's new book, and the reaction to it, call for an addition.

A mouthpiece speaks the speech as they pronounced it to him, trippingly on the tongue. Some lose the taste for it once they discover the lie, but others...

Separating Right and Wrong.

A few weeks ago, blogger Two-Putt Tommy took a cheap shot at Sen. Norm Coleman through his wife, Laurie Coleman, who is promoting a hair dryer holder called Blo & Go. I didn't write about his juvenile stunt at the time and don't plan to now, because I thought it was in bad taste and not at all germane to Coleman's performance as a senator.

But I am interested in what Tommy said since.

The point is correct: even when the shot is open, even when the target damn near asked for it, doesn’t mean it’s still right to take the shot.

I was wrong. Taking that shot at Mrs. Coleman is a shot I should not have taken. The point I was going after with the complaint to the State Of California was the financial aspect; that’s where I should have focused. It’s where I’ll focus, in the future.

What brought about Tommy's change of mind? He listened to a Coleman partisan's point of view and reconsidered. He listened to a conservative blogger who just this week published his reckless speculation that Coleman's opponent, Al Franken, had forged the signature of a doorman at his apartment building.

Tommy's shot at Coleman was well-documented by comparison. Yet he was open to the thinking from the other side, which is a progressive characteristic. Meanwhile, good luck getting Mr. Right to admit he was wrong.

Saving Tape.

The Bush White House was more committed to recycling than I thought. And, no, I don't just mean bringing back Cheney and Rumsfeld or resurrecting supply side economic policy.

It so happens the administration recycled email backup tapes used to archive White House emails during the critical spring of 2003.

Presidents are responsible for preserving all historical records during their time in office under the Presidential Records Act. Congress is conducting an investigation into possible violations of this act, including the destruction of at least ten million White House email records.

In response to a judge's orders, the White House Office of Administration (OA), which manages the networks and email systems in the White House, filed a statement, which revealed that no emails were saved between March 1 2003 and May 22, 2003. "Office of Administration is preserving 438 disaster recovery backup tapes that were written to between March 1, 2003 and September 30, 2003. Of those 438 tapes, the earliest date on which data was written ... is May 23, 2003," according to the Bush administration filing.

This time period is perhaps the most historically significant of the entire Bush administration. It includes the run up to the invasion of Iraq, diplomatic jockeying to try and rally United Nations support for war, the possible planning for retaliation against former diplomat Joe Wilson, who was accusing the administration of lying about Iraq weapons of mass destruction claims, the use of harsh interrogations in the so-called "War on Terror", as well as the formation of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) – the ruling body in Iraq after the invasion – and the controversial policy decisions the CPA undertook.

What Obama Said to Me.

The week Barack Obama made The Speech About Race, I've been working on another conversation America needs to have. Nominally, it is about guns and the right to self-defense, but the larger topic is Obama's.

How do Americans with differences form a more perfect union?

My discussion with Joel Rosenberg is ongoing. For some, my side of it has been too general and naive, as Obama has been accused of being. Some others might mistake Joel's desire for clarity and doggedness about change as bellicosity, but committed struggle, too, was something Obama endorsed.

As two verbal and opinionated bloggers, we could easily have fallen to skewering each other in comment threads and planting unanswerable tarbombs in our posts.  That can happen when you don't do hard time in conversation and jump right into the fight. When you fill in the other's words for them. When you stick with your tribe and brand Them as embodying all your fears.

Instead, we've tried to have a conversation and actually listen to each other. Sometimes, it's gotten rocky or we've wandered off the tracks we'd each hoped to follow. At times, I've risked coming across as weak by simply letting Joel say his piece instead of standing up to every utterance with which I might have some difference.

Obama talked about that, too.

We may not move the other very far from where we started, but that's not the main point. It's to show how such a respectful conversation can take place, and then another, and then another, until we find that common thread that will lead to a better solution than the one we have.

I'm not a lawyer or a politician, so the modes of debate and fierce advocacy don't speak to me. As a career creative problem-solver, I've dedicated myself to discovering new ideas and reinvigorating old ones. I don't think good creative solutions come from fighting — or from compromise. But a new idea almost always brings together opposites in a new way.

If you were my client, I wouldn't show you all this work in process, because I'd want to dazzle you with my solution later. But here, I'm willing to show how messy and difficult this business can be, so that you won't be discouraged when your own efforts at reaching across the divide don't produce anything right away.

I don't know exactly how this will conclude, but I am full of hope.