The Grand Army of the Republic Remembered
Memorial Day, formerly ‘Decoration Day,’ evokes memories, as it should. The holiday’s origins as a ‘look back’ in memory of Union veterans who served in the Civil War are sometimes forgotten now; even the movie scene like the one in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ where the Wiz explains to the Cowardly Lion that back where he came from there were men called ‘heroes,’ and that once a year they took their courage out of mothballs and paraded it down the main street of the city. Surely L. Frank Baum was thinking of ‘The Grand Army of the Republic,’ or ‘GAR,’ America’s first great veterans organization, and one of the most powerful lobbies of its’ time, when he penned those lines in 1900. The GAR, formed in 1866, became a dominant force in Republican politics by the 1880s, and used that influence to elect friendly politicians to state and national office and to lobby successfully for veterans benefits, the latter so successfully that from originally securing pensions for those whose war woulds left them unable to work, and for the widows and orphans of Union soldiers killed in action, to, in the early years of the 20th Century, a pension for everyone who claimed Union service and who had attained 62 years of age, because, as President Theodore Roosevelt said in signing ‘Order #78,’ ‘Old age is the greatest disability of all.’ This action was lambasted as de facto vote-buying reminiscent of Roman ‘bread and circuses’ by Mark Twain and indicates that the support for payment of universal benefits was far from being universal itself.
(Confederate veterans were not eligible fort GAR membership nor for Federal benefits, but former Confederate states often provided generously for them, the more so as they were mostly mired in varying degrees of poverty after enduring combat on their soil and loss when the war concluded. Their systems were mostly in place by the 1890s, and continued to pay out benefits until 2008, in the case of the last known surviving Civil War widow, Maude Celia White Hopkins of Arkansas. )
The GAR passed into history, but traces of their existence are still to be seen, as many of their old meeting halls still stand, such as the one pictured below in Detroit. (This building is recently purchased by an owner intending to renovate it for office space, so the old GAR hall will have a new lease on life well into the 21st Century.)
Three lessons are apparent for the student of history: The first is that noble intent to justly relieve obvious distress can, by slow, incremental additions of only slightly less-deserving eligibility groups, morph into something entirely different: An exercise in what the Public Choice school of political economy terms ‘rent seeking,’ a threat to public morals as much as to fiscal prudence. The second is that the legacy cost of war often lasts a full lifetime beyond the end of hostilities. In planning for war (as opposed to wars thrust upon an unwilling participant nation), it is almost universal to underestimate the difficulty and cost to be encountered; it is also true that a nations’ leaders rarely stop to think about the bills they leave to future generations that attend upon the care of the families of the war dead, as well as for veterans who carry the costs of battle with them, in the form of wounds visible and invisible, for the rest of their lives. While the case of Maude Hopkins receiving a Civil War pension until her passing in 2008 is an extreme outlier, it does illustrate the point that we continue to pay for war long after the final shot is fired.
The third lesson, inherent in the story of the GAR itself, is that organizations with restrictive membership requirements are likely to enter the pages of history when the events whose memory they perpetuate recede into time out of mind. The American Legion (to which this writer belongs) and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, among others, have survived by making the care of all veterans their mission, and by opening their memberships to those who served in any war-time (American Legion) or overseas during hostilities (VFW). Thus, they may pass us by, as they did this writer earlier today (see below), but they do not pass away, as did the Grand Army of the Republic.
The color guards of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (far left) and the American Legion (center-left) pass in parade down Cochran Avenue in Charlotte, Michigan, May 28, 2012.
Dickens Redux? American Debtors’ Prisons
From a woman jailed for a disputed $280.00 medical bill to fathers imprisoned for ‘child support’ that they cannot pay due to illness, injury or unemployment, America is incarcerating her citizens for unpaid debts. In scenes reminiscent of Dickens, the improvident, the failures, the walking wounded of the divorce courts and those just down on their luck are cast into prison until ‘the last farthing‘ of a debt (disputed or not) is paid. As in Dickens’ youth, many of our prisons are now ‘privatized,’ meaning that there is no direct accountability to the electorate, as the management of these jails is a matter of contract, rather than one of public administration.
From a public policy standpoint, unintended consequences arise when a policy designed to correct one evil, say, non-support of children by absent parents, creates another, as in cases where the ‘dead-broke’ are meted out the same punishment as the ‘dead-beats.’ Additionally, processing transactions is big business, and so the more transactions, say, child support, that there are to process, the greater the incentive for private contractors and state agencies to create conditions that will produce more of these ‘transactions,’ which means the promotion of family breakup and absent parenthood are the unintended results of a desire to correct for one of the wrongs stemming from these conditions.
Privatization, as a concept, has many adherents. Hardly an election season passes without a candidate declaring that she will ‘make the government run more like a business.’
Abuse of liberal bankruptcy laws led to bankruptcy reforms that took effect in 2006 as a result of ‘The Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005.’ Ostensibly intended to end the easy-out bankruptcies used by consumers charging their credit cards up and then walking away, it has resulted in many people, post-recession, being trapped by debts that they can no longer repay. (While not deflation, per se, the effects of reduced earnings power and declining asset values has much the same effect on debtors holding those assets, owing more than they are worth, and having less or no ability to repay the debt.) This law, coupled with the increasing use of incarceration as a putative remedy for ‘deadbeats’ of various kinds, is the driving force behind the rise of the modern ‘debtors’ prison’ phenomenon.
Whether the foregoing is good public policy or not I will leave it to my readers to judge for themselves. What is apparent,, however, is that these legislative and administrative acts have consequences unintended, and that they are magnified by the current economic climate. Asking, as Cicero so often did, “Qui bono?” would allow us to better anticipate these kinds of developments, as we would have taken the time to consider who benefits by each change in circumstances entailed by the law in question. Doing so beforehand can help us to avoid the kinds of unintended (by well-meaning people) consequences that lead to imprisonment for debts that cannot be paid.
Is The Government Above The Law?
The New York Times reports that several ‘terror plots’ foiled by the FBI were actually FBI ops that were designed to entice and entrap gullible would-be bad guys (and gals) into going along with them. The Hutaree Militia members accused of planning a cop-killing rampage walk away with nominal punishments after a lengthy trial reveals that they were led on by Federal plants, one a paid informant, who were the real instigators of the ‘plot.’ Operation ‘Fast and Furious‘ saw agents of the ATF selling automatic weapons to violent Mexican drug cartel members. They may have hoped to entrap some of the buyers, but some of those weapons become the instruments of the taking of innocent life, both civilian and of Border Patrol agents, as well.
What do all of these events have in common? An assumption on the part of the actors that they had the right to break the law in order to catch criminals. This is, sadly, a common theme in modern American culture. Whether it’s Dirty Harry or Jack Bauer, audiences cheer the vigilante who sees that ‘the system’ isn’t working and who decides to take the law into his own hands. In Movieland, the hero (or anti-hero, depending on how one views things) always gets the bad guy, the innocent are protected, and the end appears to justify the means. It’s not that neat and pretty in real life. Innocents die, and even when they are fellow sworn officers of the perpetrators, their deaths are simple ‘collateral damage‘
It ought to be a point requiring no argumentation that the ends do not justify the means. It ought also be beyond need for debate to assert that the public servants who exercise public trust while in government service ought to act within both the spirit and the letter of the law. Lawlessness can never be justified, not even if the bad guys are caught without innocent suffering. Knowing, as we do, that human nature is frail and corruptible, we know that power will be abused. That ought to impel us, as citizens, to hold government accountable, especially in the realm of law enforcement, where the use of deadly force is always a possibility in the course of daily operations. We also know, as these examples attest, that there are many instances where lawless activity will not result in a clean, neat resolution, but rather in the kinds of crimes detailed here. What remains to be seen is whether or not the perpetrators of these acts – plotting terrorist attacks, selling automatic weapons unlawfully, et cetera – will have to answer for them in court, or if we will have before proof that our government considers itself to be above the laws that the rest of us must obey.
The Rorschach Test and Public Opinion
“Can you pass the Rorschach Test?,” asked Jesus ‘Sixto’ Rodriguez in ‘The Establishment Blues,’ one of the little-known gems on his ‘Cold Fact‘ album. What does this have to do with crime and public opinion? The ‘Rorschach Test’ metaphor comes to mind when considering how people react to sensational news stories, as they tend to imprint their preconceptions onto them before the facts have a chance to be fully known.
Consider the following: The Susan Smith story, the Duke Rape Case, the Tawana Brawley story, the the ‘Beltway Shooter’ and the unfolding situation surrounding the deadly shooting of Treyvon Martin by George Zimmerman. (One could mention the O.J. Simpson case, as well as many others, but the foregoing examples are sufficient to illustrate the issue at hand.) What do they have in common? The end of each was unlike what the press reports would’ve led one to expect at the beginning. All were also marked by people, some opportunist, some conditioned and habituated to sincerely expect a certain kind of reason for what they saw, jumping to conclusions about what actually happened. Tom Wolfe novelized this phenomenon the sharp, cynical prose of his ‘Bonfire of the Vanities.’ That novel still has a modern feel because the conditions described and the characters portrayed are still to them. The reason for this is that Americans are still too apt to take each new press sensation and imprint it with their own prior experiences, fears, assumptions and agendas, rather than seeing each as what it is: A distinct happening that may or may not play out according to what they’ve come to expect. (In other words, generals aren’t the only ones preparing to fight the last war.)
If there is a moral to all of this, perhaps that it is best to get up each morning and shave with Occam’s Razor; that way, the face each of sees in the mirror will have in it eyes more likely to see the simple truth of a matter than the complex morality play that our minds would make of it.
Stripped of Everything – Including Dignity and Privacy
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled (Justice Kennedy writing for the majority) that strip-searches are legal in virtually every arrest made in America. This is further evidence of what futurist-forecaster Gerald Cenente calls ‘the groping trend,’ where Americans are subject to ever-more invasive police measures, essentially being treated like dangerous suspects rather than being presumed innocent, as Amglo-American law has always heretofore required. (even if an arrest requires ‘probable cause,’ that a crime has been committed one is still entitled to reasonable treatment, and an arrest, say, for unpaid parking tickets should nor subject anyone to a strip-search more suitable to a dangerous and armed suspect.)
Part of the reason for this trend, perhaps the critical one, is public acceptance of it. Grousing, complaining, ineffectually protesting (as in painting protest slogans on one’s body before going to the airport and then submitting to TSA), et cetra, is not the same as citizens taking effective action to end such practices. many even support them, as they value ‘security’ over liberty, not realizing that giving up liberty for safety guarantees not the latter while certainly costing them the former, as Benjamin Franklin noted.
Knowing one’s rights and politely insisting on the exercise of the full extent of them, even in the face of a threatening police officer, TSA employee or other official may seem like a tall order, but it pales in comparison to what was required of those who scaled Pointe Du Hoc, as well as all the others who bore arms to ensure that we had the exercise of the ancient rights in question. The least we owe ourselves, as well as to those whose valor bought them, again and again, for our use, is to use them, fully and firmly. The fear of abusive government must be conquered if we hope to avoid the actuality of it.
Political Spouses: Is All Fair in Love, War, and…Politics?
Hillary Rosen is in hot water, understandable so. She attacked Ann Romney, whom she likely has never met, for ‘not having worked a day in her life.’ The mother of five responded quickly, via Twitter, as did the First Lady and the President himself. This is as it should be, since spouses are still private citizens, and ought not to be, unless they inject themselves into partisan politics and policy-making (as Hillary Clinton was wont to do), they should remain off-limits. It may be acceptable, and ought to be assumed, that a spouse will support the candidate, perhaps even raise money on the rubber-chicken circuit, serve as a good-will ambassador to groups aligned with his/her interests, et cetera. This ought to be viewed in the light of acceptable, basically non-partisan activity. Unless a candidate’s spouse chooses, knowingly, to enter the arena, they ought not to be regarded as ‘fair game.’
Our era is marked by a ‘politics of personal destruction’ that takes no prisoners, knows no boundaries, and which regards little, if anything, as being sacred. Given the ongoing descent into politically-motivated ugliness, charges and counter-charges, and the mounting racial tension surrounding the shooting of Treyvon Martin, it is reassuring to see this incident result in a bipartisan rebuke to the instigator of it. As was the case after the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords led some commentators to blame talk radio or Sarah Palin for the incident, the President has chosen to use his office to promote civility. While this has not always been the base, it is welcome, regardless of the reasons that may have motivated it.
‘Chicken Ordinances’ – No Chickening Out
Connecting the classroom to the real world is one purpose of this teacher/local office-holder keeping a blog. One ‘real-world’ situation I now face is a citizen proposal for a local ‘chicken ordinance.’
Some local residents want to keep chickens in their yards. One, the guiding spirit of the proposal, wants to teach her children about self-sufficiency and the care of animals. The amount of eggs produced – one per hen per day, three hens, maximum – is secondary to the desire to raise chickens, per se. Advocates are sincere and appear to have done their homework, with their research into this idea predating my arrival in Council last summer.
Several other Michigan cities have such an ordinance, Traverse City and East Lansing among them. Neither (and I spoke with the latter myself) reports any significant problems, and license issuance runs about 1 for every 1,000 residents. We are, however, neither a college town nor a retirement/resort community, so our demographics are not necessarily comparable. (I am seeking information on a town in Georgia that also allows backyard chickens to broaden the pool of comparables.)
Two things are still to be resolved, for me, at least: Would the proviso that neighbors have to sign off on an applicant’s chicken license be fair, since we don’t require that of potential Rottweiler or pit bull owners, for example, and should this be a ‘sunset’ law that requires renewal after a certain term of years to continue?
A public hearing will take place before a final vote; hearing from all sides and addressing all reasonable concerns are foremost in my mind (as, I imagine, is the case with my fellow citizen-legislators) as we prepare for the meeting, and for the vote.
Asian carp have been making their way from Arkansas, where they were introduced in the 1990s, upstream through the Mississippi River system, and have now arrived in Chicago. (The Chicago River is a tributary of the ‘Mighty Miss.’) The Chicago River rises only a mile from Lake Michigan’s watershed, the closest point of contact between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system. The carp may already have entered Lake Michigan, where they are expected to be a very dominant invasive species, doing great harm to the ecosystem over time.
No one stopped to think, when these ‘bighead carp’ were brought to the United States in the 1970s for vegetation control (they are plant-eaters) that they would thrive so well here, become a demand item for ethnic restaurants and grocery stores, and that they would spread as far as they have. The original users, Arkansas ‘fist farm’ owners and various government agencies (who, ironically, saw the carp as being easier on the environment than chemical plant-control options), did not take a long-range view of what this fish, with no natural predators in our waters, might do over time.
Say’s Law informs us that ‘supply creates its’ own demand.’ Asian immigrants enjoy eating the carp that are native to their homelands; therefore, smuggling is an ever-present environmental threat, as a recent Detroit-Windsor border-crossing apprehension shows. The introduction of the asian carp was short-sighted; however, an environmental impact study likely would not have grappled with the profitable temptation posed by smuggling of this pest-cum-delicacy, as the latent demand for it an an ethnic dish would’ve been harder to foresee that the more natural spread of a species without predators or other obstacles to its’ propagation across an ever-wider swath of middle America.
We have, however, been here before. Unintended consequences resulting from the introduction of non-native flora and fauna are nothing new. Jared Diamond even wrote an entire book about how such events, in part, influenced the rise, development and fall of many civilizations. Closer to us in space and time is the fate of the magnificent American Chestnut, nearly wiped out by a blight carried here on imported European Chestnut lumber. (The disease is hard on European Chestnuts, as well.)
The moral for us, in terms of public policy, would seem to be that all non-native species should be considered ‘guilty until proven innocent,’ in terms of their introduction into our ecosystems. The same thinking would apply to ‘genetically modified organisms,’ or GMOs, as they are not, in their doctored-up form, native to any environment. Given the prevalence of GMOs in our industrialized food chain, the havoc caused by, and perhaps still to come from the asian carp ought to warn sensible minds against tinkering with the environment that sustains our lives.
‘Stand Your Ground’ – The Exercise of the Law
The title of this essay refers to the propensity of many of us to act as if trials are conducted in the press, and as if we have the information necessary, as a case develops, to jump to conclusions and then to take action accordingly. The killing of a 17 year-old black teenager, Treyvon Martin, by a Neighborhood Watch captain, George Zimmerman, is one such example. Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground‘ law, a variant of the ‘Castle Doctrine,’ is on trial here, too, as the shooter remains at large and un-charged because his actions allegedly fall under the purview of this law. (It is hard to imagine that confronting a minor on the street and then invoking self-defense in any presumptive ensuing scuffle could be justified, but again, we do not conduct trials in the press, and only the grand jury, plus a few others, will have access to all of the relevant evidence, witness testimony, et cetera, necessary to to decide whether to prefer charges against Zimmerman.)
It is clear that many who urge action now do not know what the law says. It may also be the case that the law did not apply in this case, and that Zimmerman’s actions are not justified by it. The danger here is that more than one innocent life may be unnecessarily lost, as emotionalism, exploited by the sensationalist and agent provocateurs among us, may lead to violence, perhaps widespread and difficult to control. The ‘long, hot summers’ of 1967-8 may return, with the tinderbox of economic depression, alienation, poverty, debt, decade-long war and the memories of past injustice having made fertile ground into which this seed of vengeance falls.
It is urgently incumbent upon the authorities, in a situation like this, to act swiftly and to render a clear, easily understood message as to why the shooter is charged, or not. To allow a situation like this to simmer, hoping that it goes away, is a strategy of capitulation to chance, misplaced hope, and the actions of outsiders. It invites the trouble that it seeks to avoid.
Corn-pone Opinions
Questions Without Answers…..
Sometimes I have conversations with others about politics and public policy. Often, when I ask questions of my fellow conversationalists, I get no answer to a certain type of question. Here are some of them:
1.) When someone tells me that requiring voters to show photo ID is a form of vote suppression aimed at the poor who cannot afford ID, I ask if they’d change their mind if IDs were given to anyone on public assistance for free. (For that matter, nothing stops advocates, as individuals or organizationally, from paying for ID for the poor.) I never get a straight answer; they usually change the subject.
2.) When people tell me that they think we ought to go to war (or bomb, or some other act of war), I ask things like this:
-Should Congress declare war, as the Constitution requires?
-If you’re a Christian, is this war a ‘just war‘ that your church can morally support?
-If they support war, do they support paying for it through higher taxes? Would they support a draft if we need more soldiers? (the Pentagon says that 75% of each year’s crop of 18- to 24-year-olds is ineligible for military service due to poor entrance test scores, physical impairments, drug use or police record, so the supply of potential volunteers is short.) Would they support rationing food and fuel to help keep the military supplied? (We had a draft, a 90% top marginal tax rate and rationing in World War II, the last time we went to ‘declared’ war.)
-Can they find ‘Ubeckibeckibeckistan’ on a map? (Herman Cain was a leading Presidential candidate and admitted that he couldn’t keep his ‘Stans straight, even though he supported an aggressive stance in central Asia.) I expect people who want to bomb another country to know something about it, but that’s the geography teacher in me.
3.) On a couple of occasions, I’ve asked Tea Party supporters, in person or online, what government spending that they benefit from would they support cutting. Like them, I support a balanced budget; unlike every one I have asked this of (admittedly, a small sample size) has avoided giving an answer, even when I pose it as a challenge: If I give up my Veterans Administration benefits – which I earned – what will they give up, earned or otherwise? Silence is the only reply I get. Most Tea party supporters wouldn’t be simple enough to demand that the government ‘keep out of Medicare,’ but serious attention to the top budget line items – defense, interest on the national debt, Medicare and Social Security – is lacking. Without cutting these, no realistic solution to our debt crisis is possible.
4.) When people tell me that they support tax increases, as a number of ‘Occupy’ supporters and public employee union members do, I ask them what taxes that they’d pay would they support increasing. I also ask why they don’t just pay more now, if they’re willing to do so. Don’t claim all legal deductions and your taxes will go up; otherwise, just write a check for your voluntary additional contribution, as I am sure that the IRS will cash it. Again, this suggestion gets no takers, only silence.
Other examples abound. These are meant to be illustrative, and I chose two each from the so-called ‘left’ and ‘right’ ends of the political spectrum (itself an outdated concept of questionable validity). What becomes clear here are two things:
1.) Many people take positions on things without knowing much or thinking much about the question at hand. Many writers, such as the medieval Arabic scholar al-Farabi noted this. (Al-Farabi’s example is that children tend to follow the religion of their parents, often without giving the precepts of what they vow to believe any deep thought or analysis.)
2.) Most people act in their own perceived self-interest. This is a basic principle of economics. They may conflate their own interests with those of their fellow-citizens; they may not be fully conscious of their advocacy for what they call the right being their interest, or they may cynically insist that they serve the common weal while actually promoting their own benefit at the expense of all. Henry Hazlitt wrote of this latter phenomenon in ‘Economics in One Lesson‘ when he identified deliberate misinformation as being a tactic used by special interests to gain an advantage over their neighbors through the law. Special interests, Hazlett wrote, will get the best ‘hired brains’ that they can afford to spin plausible arguments in favor of their position, no matter what the truth of the matter is.
That most people put their mouths where their money is isn’t an observation confined to the purview of economists. Mark Twain noticed the same thing; as he put the matter: “You tell me where a man gits his corn-pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.” To that, this writer will add no more, except to say that a social studies teacher’s job is never done..
