Friday, November 18, 2016
The Swamp
Drain the swamp.
Donald J. TrumpIt’s great news for Kansas-and who’d have thought it. Of course it hasn’t happened yet, but it seems to be a possibility.
When President-elect Donald Trump was campaigning, one of his favorite refrains was that when elected he would drain the swamp, and the common assumption was that he was referring to Washington D.C. and the people who had traditionally been involved in assorted administrations there. It never occurred to the listener that the swamps he was planning to drain were, in some cases, far from the nation’s capital. That, of course, is exactly what seems to be happening. One of the swamps is a state. The citizens of that state, including those who supported Mr. Trump’s election, as well as those who did not, can be pleased at the possibility that their political swamp will be drained by sending two of its most prominent inhabitants to the new administration. Supporters of Mr. Trump will be pleased that the inhabitants may bring glory to Kansas by being given important roles to play in the new administration. Non-Trump supporters will be pleased to get the two men out of Kansas.
The first person to leave the Kansas swamp may be its Secretary of State, Kris Kobach. Kris made news outside Kansas when he served on the Republican Platform Committee prior to the 2016 Republican National Convention. As a member of that committee, he was successful in inserting language into the platform addressing the border wall that, Mr. Trump now suggests, may be only a fence in some places. The language he successfully inserted was: “The border wall must cover the entirety of the southern border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.” In addition to the insertion of that language in the platform, Mr. Kobach was also able to persuade the committee to condemn the U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized gay marriage, saying it was “obviously incorrect.”
Mr. Kobach’s swamp-like activities in the state of Kansas were the extensive efforts he undertook, as secretary of state, to make it more difficult for people to register and vote in Kansas. Although he was apparently successful in making it difficult for Kansans to vote in state elections, if they registered without presenting their birth certificates, his efforts to impose that requirement in federal elections were struck down by a federal court. Addressing Mr. Kobach’s assertion that the impediments to voting that he wanted to impose were necessary to avoid fraudulent voting, the federal judge who rejected his efforts said: “There is evidence of only three instances where noncitizens actually voted in a federal election between 1995 and 2013.” She further observed that during this period, only 14 non-citizens attempted to register.
Mr. Kobach is a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team. In that capacity he has been involved in, among other things, discussing the possibility of drafting a proposal to “reinstate a registry for immigrants from countries where terrorist groups are active.” The proposal has raised alarm among civil rights activists as well as other groups who believe the proposal is reminiscent of the Japanese-American internment camps that were used during World War II. Mr. Kobach is rumored to be in the running for attorney general. If he is appointed, the Kansas swamp would be emptier by one.
Another resident in the Kansas swamp who may be called to greater things is its governor, Sam Brownback. His accomplishments as Kansas governor are legion, especially when it comes to state taxation. When he became governor of Kansas in 2011, he slashed personal income taxes and assured his constituents the cuts would result in new hiring and business expansion that would more than offset the loss of revenue that resulted from the tax cuts. He reduced the top personal income tax rate by 29 percent and exempted more than 330,000 farmers and businesses from paying taxes. According to the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, as a result of the Governor’s policies, “Kansas is coming close to scraping the bottom of the barrel-both on state finances and job creation.” According to CBS News, in 2016 the governor “ordered $17 million in immediate reductions to universities and earlier . . . delayed $93 million in contributions to pensions for school teachers and community college employees. . . .” According to the report he also siphoned off more than $750 million from highway projects during the preceding two years. Tax collections in 2015 fell below projections in 11 months of 2015. In campaign speeches Mr. Trump has applauded the governor’s tax policies as a model for America, describing them as the “Kansas solution.” On August 16, Governor Brownback was named an advisor to Mr. Trump for agricultural policy. He is now rumored to be a candidate for Secretary of Agriculture.
Commenting on the possibility that Messrs. Kobach and Brownback might join the Trump administration, Kelly Arnold, chairman of the Kansas Republican party, observed that Mr. Trump would have his pick of qualified people to serve in his administration and Kansas had some good people to offer. Kansans are probably holding their collective breath, albeit for different reasons, hoping the two people being considered will be appointed. The rest of the country is holding its nose out of fear that the two men will be appointed.
(For links to sources please go to my site on Huffington Post.)
Thursday, November 3, 2016
The Ark and the Election
James Thurber, The Unicorn in the GardenThe Unicorn is a Mythical Beast.
Although my readers do not come to this space to get ideas for vacations they may wish to take, many of my readers may be looking for respite after suffering through the last 12 months of what is known as presidential politics. Herewith my suggestion for something to do after voting. The suggestion I offer should serve as a way to go gently from the complete insanity of the presidential election, to something only slightly less unreal, as we all seek a soft landing back into the real world. The destination to which I direct my readers as they attempt to return to normalcy, is located in Williamstown, Kentucky.
Williamstown is home to the world’s largest replica of Noah’s Ark. It was built at a reported cost of $100 million, which even when put into the context of how many hundreds of millions have been spent on this election, seems like a lot of money.
The site where the ark resides is called “Ark Encounter,” and the promotional materials designed to entice visitors, describe it as a “Christian evangelistic outreach intended to bring the Ark of Noah’s day to life.” Since there is not sufficient water in the immediate vicinity of the park to float the ark, tourists boarding it will not enjoy exactly the same experience enjoyed by Noah and his companions. Nonetheless, it will give visitors an idea of what a huge ark it was. A visit, says the literature, “equips visitors to understand the reality of the events that are recorded in the book of Genesis.” Understanding those events will, of course, be completely different from trying to understand the events that will lead to the election of a new president in only a few days’ time. As educational experiences, however, it is obvious that both are of equal value.
The first thing of which prospective visitors should be apprised, is that the phenomenon described in this piece is NOT the same as the experience that people visiting America’s largest waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells will enjoy. That place is called “Noah’s Ark,” but it is nothing more than an enormous amusement part and in its literature is described as the “Largest Water Park in America.” It is quite different from “Ark Encounter” which is not meant to be amusing but educational. Whether “Arc Encounter” achieves that goal is probably in the eye of the beholder and if the beholder is of a scientific bent, it is probably less of an educational event than if one subscribes to the beliefs of former presidential candidate, Ben Carson. Nonetheless, a description of the physical structure will almost certainly create a sense of excitement in the reader and inspire the reader to plan for a visit. According to the literature, the arc is “seven stories tall, a football field and a half in length” and is the “largest timber-frame structure in the world.”
A visit to “Ark Encounter” will prove enlightening in any number of ways. A little known fact is that Noah was accompanied by, among other animals, dinosaurs that were kept in cages on the ship. The proprietor and designer of the ark, Ken Ham, told a visitor that there were only about 55 different kinds of dinosaurs on board Noah’s ark but in total there were about 8,000 different kinds of animals plus an equal number of their mates on board. In addition to the variety of dinosaurs that accompanied Noah, the exhibit suggests that unicorns were among the animals Noah was preserving. The effort at preservation of the unicorn as a species was apparently a failure, since no unicorns are known to have survived after the animals on board the Ark were released.
For much of what I am able to recount, I am indebted to Minda Berbeco, the former Programs and Policy director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). (Since describing her visit to “Ark Encounter,” Ms. Berbeco has left NCSE and is now the director of the San Francisco Bay chapter of the Sierra Club.) Ms. Berbeco, who wrote about her visit to the Arc for Science League of America, observed that on Arc Encounter there are models of polar bears and, according to the information accompanying their exhibit, is an explanation that is contrary to the belief of people like Ms. Berbeco or people at the San Diego zoo where live polar bears are found. The description at “Arc Encounter” says polar bears are well suited to living in warm climates and do not need to be kept cool. That explains why, on Noah’s Ark, where there was no refrigeration, the polar bears did just fine. The foregoing gives the reader only a taste of what awaits the visitor at the “Ark Encounter.” There is a great deal more to be learned from the exhibits on display and the accompanying texts.
All in all, the Ark and the election are a good news-bad news scenario. The good news is what is taught on “Ark Encounter” did not actually happen. The bad news is the presidential campaign of 2016 did actually happen.
For annotations visit Huffington Post.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Requiem for the Asterisk
Omissions are not accidents.
— Marianne Moore, Complete Poems, author’s note
This election season has had many unexpected consequences, but none has been more distressing than its effect on civility. Civility was long thought to be the hall mark of a civilized society, but as the presidential campaign has drawn to a welcome end, so has civility. Whereas in times gone by, those running for high office had differences of opinion and did not hesitate to criticize one another, the ad hominem attacks levelled by Donald Trump against his primary opponents during the early months of the campaign, followed by similar attacks on Hillary Clinton during the final months of the campaign have brought the level of discourse to a new low. And no part of the English language is more distressed by this turn of events than the asterisk, that tiny symbol that has long been a part of the world of print.
The asterisk is distressed because its most important role has been taken away from it and it is left with only a passive and considerably less interesting role to play in contemporary publications. (Some may observe that in some publications the “dash” rather than the asterisk is used to indicate omitted material. There is no need to pity the dash. Unlike the asterisk, it has many uses besides indicating omitted material.)
The passive role that remains for the asterisk is alerting the reader to the fact that at the bottom of the page will be found a comment that helps to explain the textual material next to which it appears or, alternatively, directs the reader to source material. This is a vital service to the reader and the asterisk should not consider that role unimportant. However, in the civilized discourse venue, the other purpose of the asterisk was to protect the reader from a word that, it was generally agreed, might be offensive to the reader, if spelled out in its entirety. The reader would, in most instances, know exactly what letters were omitted but their absence protected the readers’ sensibilities. The asterisk performed its task for many years but, because of the debasement of the English language during the presidential campaign, will no longer be as frequently needed to serve the valuable function it has served for so many years.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s choice of words in public and private and reports of those words in inter alia, The New York Times and The Washington Post, there are no longer any words that need the asterisk except, perhaps, in headlines. An example of its continued use in headlines can be found in a story that appeared on October 10 in The Fix in The Washington Post. The headline was: “Clinton aide to Donald Trump ‘go * * * * yourself.’” Although asterisks appeared in the headline, the word in its entirety can be found in the article itself. Although this writer is but a casual observer of the newspaper business, it seems safe to say that in the not too distant past, that headline would not have appeared in the paper at all and the word that the asterisks sought to disguise would almost certainly not have appeared in the text of the article that the headline announced.
The New York Times of October 16th offered three more examples of language that would never have appeared in that paper before the debasement of the language brought to us at least in part by Mr. Trump. In the column by well-known columnist, Maureen Dowd, the asterisk was sadly missing in her column (but continues to play a role in this column) when Ms. Dowd reported that Mr. Trump agreed with Howard Stern that his 23-year old daughter, Ivanka, was a “***** of ”, a description most of us would never have expected to hear a father use when describing his daughter nor expected to see in its entirety in the NYT. On that same page, Nicholas Kristof repeated that quote from Mr. Trump and asked how the public would respond were Secretary Clinton the speaker, and referred to the size of her v**, the way Mr. Trump trumpeted the size of his p****. As noteworthy as those comments might be, most of us would have considered them best referred to by such expressions as “a bodily part” or in the case of a p * * * * of *** as “a crude description of an attractive woman.”
On October 8, 2016, on the front page of the New York Times the lead article was entitled “Tape Reveals Trump Boast About Groping Women.” In the second paragraph of that story, a story having nothing to do with dogs or cats, the words bitch and pussy appear and in the third paragraph the word f***” appears unassisted by asterisks. This is the front page of the New York Times. Perhaps its masthead should be changed from: “All the News that’s Fit to Print” to “All the News that’s Fit to Print and Words Once Thought not Fit to Print.” Perhaps the editors think those words have become such a standard part of our every day parlance that there is no need to protect our sensibilities from them and, accordingly, the asterisk can be dispensed with. It will be missed.