Television Coverage of News Events

Recently on a Sunday morning a friend of a friend woke up, turned on the TV intending to get his daily fix of the “Kavanaugh saga”. But this friend was particular. He wanted to watch it through the lens of those who produce “Meet the Press” on NBC. Sadly he discovered that the morning's NBC shows had all been preempted by the Ryder Cup Finals. So he lamented to my friend or on social media his distress over being denied this week's “Meet the Depressed”.

I know how he felt. Three days earlier I had been denied my regular dose of “Price is Right” because CBS decided to preempt their entire day's programming with the Senate Judiciary Hearing concerning Justice Kavanaugh's suitability for confirmation. I had already decided to wait on the news bunnies' recap of the riviting testimony. So I tried to substitute “Price is Right” with a local news segment on ABC or FOX or even something on public television. No such luck. Every local channel, plus public TV, plus all the cable news channels, including BBC and C-Span had all decided that only they separately and individually could produce the true, “fair and unbalanced” peek into the Senate chambers I needed. So the same hearings were broadcast simultaneously on at least 5 local and 7 national cable channels.

Was this collusion to ensure that if I watched TV Thursday daytime that I would for sure watch Senators Grassley, et al at their “finest”? Did CBS not trust its “Price is Right” viewers to record the Senate proceedings on another channel and dutifully watch it after “Price” ended? I obviously don't understand the thought processes at work here. I understood all three channels covering the Kennedy funeral in 1963. I understood however many (7 or 8?) channels covering the events of 9/11/2001. But from my humble point of view things have gotten out of hand. We shouldn't have to settle for Home Shopping Network in order to find a TV show we want to watch that differs from the topic du jour.

But I triumphed. I clicked around until I landed on the Golf Channel's presentation of the opening round of the Ryder Cup competition.

It did make me chuckle on Sunday, however, to ponder how all the news junkies would have felt if the Ryder Cup Finals had been broadcast on ten or twelve channels simultaneously and deprived them of reactions from the White House.

Justice Kavanaugh

As had been broadly anticipated, President Trump last night nominated Appeals Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat on the Supreme Court of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. This nomination has been immediately opposed by most Democrats in the Senate and across the party while being lauded by most Senate Republicans who would speak out.  The primary arguments offered  initially revolve around what Kavanaugh  will do on reproductive rights/Choice issues and, perhaps, his approach to presidential powers and rights.
My initial thoughts were (and may still be) based on the belief that should whoever Trump pick be rejected by  the Senate that his subsequent selections would undoubtedly be worse or at least no better on substantive issues.  And with that thought I was prepared to watch the confirmation process roll out and shrug when Vice President Pence broke the tie and put Kavanaugh over the top.
I am still not convinced that the status quo position of Roe v Wade will automatically be dissolved by  Kavanaugh's win. I actually have more faith in Chief Justice Roberts that he might fill that "swing vote" role on this issue if push came to shove.
However, as of Tuesday evening, July 10, I now think I support the "never Kavanaugh" movement. There is just too much to this "Forrest Gump" of Republican jurisprudence for him to get the benefit of the doubt after he dances around and coyly avoids admitting his undemocratic (little "d") positions during Senate hearings. Kavanaugh is, indeed, dangerous. He would shield Trump from scrutiny into questionable activities with Russians and a wide range of "get richer quicker" schemes of the Trump administration and Trump companies.
Kavanaugh's positions on presidential immunity seems to have flipped from early in his career when he was a Starr investigation attack dog to recent months when he wishes to shield the president who is appointing him to the SCOTUS job.
So, maybe I'll mellow as the summer drags on. But today I'm thinking -

Sept, 2018 -  The unforeseen curve in the path to the vote on Kavanaugh has been the "sexual assault" allegations. The big committee hearing will occur in two days, but as currently planned it won't prove anything as the committee leaders have rigged it to limit all discovery to "He said, she said" and no other damning evidence allowed.  The bottom line is that it's unclear if Kavanaugh will receive 50 or 51 votes in the full Senate.

    But if he can't, Trump will only nominate an even more conservative choice. However, the delay could put off a vote until after the midterm elections. And the Democrats very well might repay the Republicans for the unconstitutional treatment of Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland. In which case we'd limp along with an 8-person SCOTUS for two years. No big deal.

SCOTUS Senate Confirmation hearings

Since I taught federal government classes at community colleges off for 15 years following a 32 yr career in the federal government, I have studied these issues a little more than the average bear. But I confess to being confused and puzzled. How do we get a Supreme Courts containing liberals like Sotomayor and Kagan along with conservatives of the Thomas and Scalia ilk and still have the gall to pretend the established process is not political? You say, “Nobody pretends that. Everyone knows it's political and how it works.” Everyone? Really? Well somebody needs to whisper that to Mr. Kavanaugh. He is sitting in the witness chair of the Judiciary Committee declaring with a straight face that he will follow the lead of EVERY current sitting justice and render decisions devoid of a shred of political influence. He will take his extensive judicial and governmental experience and background, consider the provisions of the constitution and written law along with the peculiar facts and circumstances of a case before him and he will vote for a decision that is obviously correct and apolitical. His only litmus test other than the constitution will be whether his vote is consistent with the answers he gave the Senate Judiciary in confirmation hearing years before.

The big question or issue that seemingly is never challenged is the notion that there can appropriately be a “liberal” versus a “conservative” solution to a given constitutional issue. Are important laws that poorly written that vastly different interpretations of those laws can be drawn by different jurists? If not, then where have we gone wrong in the way we select judges? Why don't “liberal” justices and “conservatives” reach the same conclusions in comparing the facts of a case with written law and the constitution? Had I understood that conundrum, my years teaching federal government topics might have produced a clearer concept of the place of the Judiciary in a fair American republic.

John McCain

More later after I ruminate on it, but it's striking the differences and similarities of the national observance of the passing of John McCain with the first televised observance of a national leader, John F Kennedy's funeral and observances 55 years ago.

Differences are perhaps more stark. JFK's death was unexpected, even startling. McCain's was long awaited following announcement of its probable inevitability one year earlier. McCain left a retiring hero who had accomplished about all he could be expected to accomplish. JFK was taken early in his Camelot-like first term of his presidency while it was still very unclear how successful he might be and while he was not perceived as particularly bipartisan. McCain was a politician who could straddle the partisan divide like none of his contemporaries.

But there are also similarities. The world wondered how things might have been different if JFK had not been taken when he was. Similarly, many ponder what might have transpired had McCain lasted another year. The nation sat and watched the unfolding events of the funeral and burial and return to “regular order” in the political world in the winter of 1963. Late August of 2018 all network channels and basic cable news stations simultaneously carry the memorial services and funeral for McCain and fill in the time gaps with prognostications of a return to “regular order” in the political world this Fall.

More after Sunday when it's all over.

SA2020_Part 1

  SA2020

I have done only limited research in recent years into contemporary cases of “urban renewal”. I don't use that label to harken back to efforts of the second half of the 20^th century to combat urban decay or blight. I don't limit the concept to efforts for physical replacement of slums and low income/high crime areas into yuppie new neighborhoods. I am, instead, using the term “urban renewal” in a much broader, macro sense. Limited though they may be, there have been 21^st century business and municipal public leaders who have sought to make cities better, to right wrongs, and to fashion what their great-grandparents would have considered more utopian communities. To do this within the constraints of existing power structures and the overall social norms and to maintain the vast freedoms for all societal participants is incredibly difficult. Many cities, as encouraged and enabled by their parent state governments, seek merely to make small incremental improvements. If a given city can see a 5% reduction in their crime rate for a given year with some confidence the improvement won't reverse itself the following year, they are ecstatic. Or perhaps the one percenters convince the local voters to agree to some special tax break or funding to get a new stadium built for the local pro sports team. And when this succeeds and is followed by some success by that team it brings pride to the area and they rejoice that things are indeed improving.

But few cities look at the complete, overall urban experience and develop broader plans to marshal resources designed to make a city better and provide a better life for all or most inhabitants of the city.

Such an effort was what I found fascinating in what San Antonio, TX launched in 2010. They labeled their effort “SA2020”. Their effort was designed to allow for a full two plus years of planning and seven or eight years of action they hoped would produce a better, more livable, more desirable city than what San Antone had become by 2009. The planners broke down the total effort into eleven separate but overlapping spheres of concern and wrote ten year plans for each sphere, establishing quantifiable goals where feasible. Theses spheres ranged from Civic Engagement (voting and the functioning of government) to the local economy (encouraging business growth and reducing unemployment) to having a healthier fine arts structure (fiscally viable) and to reducing the discomforts of a poor transportation networks throughout the metropolitan area.      I moved from San Antonio to Oklahoma in early 2013. This was toward the end of the initial planning stages and after the first year or so of implementation had begun. I have not been close enough to follow the daily struggles of implementing throughout the five years since we left. I sense that there have, in fact, been improvements and some goal attainment that likely would not have been as marked had this coordinated effort not been undertaken. I also believe from available data and news reports that by 2020 not all of the spheres will be able to declare victory or mission accomplished. I offer that opinion not to denigrate the effort but to emphasize the enormity of the original vision. Had San Antonio been able to deliver in all eleven areas anywhere close to the original goals, they would have indeed produced a modern day miracle in democratic America. My hope in shining a light on their efforts is that they take encouragement from their improvements, learn from the difficult challenges they couldn't solve, and double down on their resolve to continue building a livable large city in flyover country that could offer model solutions to other cities in our fair country.

I intend to summarize the successes and ongoing challenges for SA2020 as of the summer of 2018. This will probably take four more Blog posts beyond this one.

Voter Turnout

EXCESSIVE ELECTIONS

It is easy to cite voting results that prove Americans take the right to vote too much for granted. We are the oldest democratic form of government in the world and a model for many others across the globe. Yet in the past century we have, as voting eligible peoples, not performed our civic duty very admirably. Closely contested presidential elections have struggled to tally 62% of the potentially available, non-incarcerated adult citizens. And presidential elections garner the best we can do. Congressional midterm elections, statewide gubernatorial elections and local city/county contests struggle to attain a sizable fraction of the presidential vote totals. Many places, however, have initial party primary elections with subsequent runoffs where the initial contest started with more than two candidates. Sometimes local school districts will even stage special elections for bond issues to decide on capital construction questions. Many such local elections have produced results on the basis of as little as 10% to 12% turnout. Who can claim with confidence that decisions made by such paltry representations of the body politic are indeed decisions made as a form of a democratic process?

Yet other than the occasional post-election editorial decrying low turnouts, little is ever done to reverse these trends or to boost turnout in subsequent elections. And, in fact, one major party seems intent on going the other direction, making it even more difficult for turnouts to rise. They push voter ID laws and restrictions on early voting while continuing to seek to produce and maintain legislative maps that gerrymander voter rolls in ways designed to maximize their numbers in spite of relative parity of voters at the macro level. Some in that party are more worried about the potential for undocumented immigrants voting in ways they abhor than they are ensuring that legal citizens vote in sufficient numbers to express a common will.

This being an essay, not a book, I will not offer data validating the generalizations I have made. Such data does exit and could be produced. Instead, my intent here is to suggest several simple changes available that could markedly improve voter turnout at little cost (if not produce a savings to the overall costs of elections).

We need far fewer elections. Send the voters to the polls less often. Presidential and midterm elections every two years in November are sufficient. They can be preceded by single open primaries scheduled at the whim and pleasure of various states, but without runoffs. Instead of separate party primaries, for all offices below that of President, have a totally open primary for a given office with the top two vote getters advancing to the general election in November. This could work for Congress and Senate as well as gubernatorial offices.

I would also take many currently elective offices out of the mix and convert them to appointive positions. This is most easily seen at the local levels. Why should voters elect county clerks, state superintendents of education or insurance, even attorneys general? Do local voters really have any idea who would make the best municipal or district judge? If we elect the mayor and the governor and the state legislators with appropriately representative turnout margins, why can't we trust those elected officials to appoint qualified people who will administer the various departments of government properly? And if they err they can be removed by the elected officials. And if the elected officials fail to act, they can be removed by election.

Presidential Rally Coverage

It is time, maybe past time for the “FAKE NEWS” to put up or shut up. As has been suggested by a responsible, respected Republican media operative, all the members of the MSM (mainstream media) excluding FOX should immediately begin boycotting Trump rallies or at a minimum agree to using a solitary pool reporter to cover these pep rallies. This would deprive 45 of the visible punching bag he relies on to receive his hurled invectives. It would reduce the free coverage Trump covets. Important news elsewhere could once again receive appropriate coverage.

Split California

It makes no difference to me if California is allowed to split and become three (or two) states. The only impact on the rest of us would be the makeup of the enlarged U S Senate. And it would surprise me if the Republicans actually gained from such a change.
 50 states is already too many. Makes for too much diversity in regional laws and expectations. Things like air pollution don't stop at a state's borders. And one elephant in the room is the "unit rule" that large, powerful states like CA, TX, and NY love for supposedly increasing their influence in presidential elections. If Electoral College votes more closely resembled popular votes nationwide, then it wouldn't matter much how people wanted to carve up the nation in terms of separate state governments. Abandoning the unit rule would allow more appropriate democracy.

Oklahoma Gubernatorial Primaries

My muses are conflicted. I am bemused, amused, and confused (a kissing cousin to muses). We lived in Oklahoma for five years, then took a five year break down in Texas. Now we’ve been back in Tulsa five more years. So we’re not “newbies”, but we don’t have the grasp of  state politics that natives do. What flummoxes me currently is gubernatorial politics. The three or four best known and highest spending Republicans seeking their party’s nomination this time around are all claiming that they are solid Conservatives who represent the answer to the current dilemmas the state faces. But it seems to me these dilemmas are the product of a decade of policies enacted by Republican super-majority legislatures and governor. Exactly how will these candidates regimes differ? And where will the one who promises to audit every state agency think he’s going to find the funds for such audits?  They haven’t even ponied up the resources to “fix” public education in the state.  I understand that some believe each state agency has on its organization charts a “Bureau of Waste, Fraud and Mismanagement” and that X-ing out that bureau will unleash hidden millions of dollars to fund all the other annoying purposes of government. Purposes such as teacher raises, road and bridge repair, maintaining healthcare in remote rural areas, and the like. But do these genius candidates really think the required intrepid auditors are going to work for free?

So, I guess I’ll watch the primary season lumber on. Maybe the teachers and civil servants will rise up again as they did earlier this Spring and bring educated debate to the game. Couldn’t hurt.

Restitution

Dateline April 12, Howell, Michigan

A farmer was charged with animal cruelty after approximately 70 cows were found dead on his farm.  He was sentenced to 15 days in jail and ordered to pay nearly $20,000 in “restitution”.   So, I’m wondering exactly who he pays this money to as restitution. Does it go to the bulls and mama cows of this tragedy? Or who?

Political lenses

I find it helpful to remind myself occasionally that my conservative friends and our president live in a separate, parallel universe seen through the FOX/R Limbaugh/Drudge lenses. They sincerely believe that the “objective facts” they hear and see on FOX, or don’t see on FOX are true and clear. They also assume that what I see and hear on every other network is correspondingly false and distorted. It is obvious that when the two viewpoints diverge the most that one or both do not reflect actual TRUTH. 
The search for that truth endures. It is not easy, but it is important.

Internet advertisements

I may have previously complained about this. Don't remember for sure. There is a group of advertisements that find their way onto the margins of my Facebook site as well as my Twitter page and even my Yahoo search engine which I noe pretty much refuse to read. Sometimes the purported topic is of potential interest to me. Upon reading the headline I feel like I would like to learn the secret for this or that health cure. But I am prohibited from having access to the silver bullet answer because I refuse to jump through the hoops they require to be allowed to see it. The hoops invariably come in the form of having to watch a ten to twenty minute video in which the narrator agonizingly walks me through all his examples of why a problem exists, his myriad testimonials of how his solution solves the problem, and excruciatingly minute details of why his solution overcomes all the known prior problems and issues people have ever faced. It also typically includes somewhere in the spiel the insight that his solution is opposed by unnamed status quo power brokers. It is “what the drug makers don't want you to know”. In fact that “they don't want you to know” line has caused me to cease reading or listening to more commercials than probably any other meme.

My main reaction to these commercials is anger that they don't trust me. They can't tell me what the magic solution is and what the solution costs prior to pounding me into submission. Afraid I'll not hang around and ask all the questions they are dying to answer. Afraid I won't trust that they have already dealt with my objections. I can't possibly come up with a valid reason not to buy their product other than stupidity or stinginess.

I hold out little hope that this trend will wane or cease altogether. Which is why I treat almost all advertisements and unsolicited commercials on the internet like they are merely part of the wallpaper. When I want to research a healthcare breakthrough I will take the initiative. Don't call me; I'll call you.

Parkland Shooting

Three brief, narrow points on this week’s mass shooting in Florida:

1.    Since the assault weapons Congressional ban was allowed to expire in 2004, the number of mass murders using these war weapons has mushroomed. Yes, there were school shootings prior to 2004, but not as many, not as deadly, and not increasing every month infrequency and intensity. And the only one of the “top five” school shootings that occurred during the decade of the ban on assault weapons was Columbine HS in 1999. Since 2004 there have been at least four “major” school shootings, including Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Rancho Tehama prior to last week’s Florida carnage.  And even greater loss of life occurred in non-school venues such as the nightclub in Orlando and the festival in Las Vegas.  

2.    A number of defenders of “freedoms to have and use AR-15s” seem to protest too much when arguing that gun opponents are exaggerating statistics by citing the “18 already in ‘18” mantra. They seem to love to use “slippery slope” arguments in opposing all discussions of sound gun control but will brook no taking of liberties with stat citations on how badly the trend looks to some people.

3.    Since 1996 there have been no school shootings in Great Britain. Main difference? GB banned handguns in 1996. Coincidence?  Then what about France? Germany? Japan? et al other countries with restrictions on owning and using “weapons of mass and minor destruction”? Can we be the only nation whose potential killers are so equipped and able that they would inevitably outwit any and all restrictions and regulations on guns in order to carry out their nefarious intentions?

Living Biblically?

Maybe I'm misjudging the teaser trailers I've seen for the new "comedy" series coming later this month on that ole stalwart standard broadcast TV network, CBS.  Maybe they don't intend to ridicule and rip on the slim majority of Americans who claim Christianity as their religion. Maybe they won't be going to the lunatic fringes of various Christian denominations for their stereotypical cliches to seek a laugh.  Maybe.

But I, for one, have no intention of seeing for myself this latest effort by an anachronistic media form to grab the elusive brass ring and stop their decades long ratings slide.  If they are still around Season Two I'll tune in and see what clever, original humor they have to offer.