A Letter-Writing Campaign...Shame on you, Mr. Legislator

We need to tell the Arizona state legislators on the Republican side of the aisle of our deep concern about  the wellbeing of our state and our fellow citizens. The Data Port wants to suggest that a concerted letter- writing campaign may in the end be the most efficient way to tell them this and, possibly, effect policy changes

In this digital age it’s all too easy to post a quick comment (often snarky and anonymous) on Facebook or Twitter. This is easily done and easily ignored as nothing more than a rant from a crank with a computer.

If you believe that it is shameful to balance the state budget by denying support to the social and educational safety net; or that failing to close loopholes in our tax system imposes undue burden on local budgets; or if you believe they should be embarrassed to ground public policy on the failed Laffer Curve theory…then a letter, directed to a single individual, is more likely to be get some attention.

Will it work?Who knows until we try it. Hundreds of personal letters mailed to each of our legislators and fully identifying the sender might begin to nudge them in a less ideological, more practical direction. 

    

The Old Man's Car

I have bought an Old Man’s Car. Not my father’s car you understand, but the sort of car an old man would drive. The car is a big square econo-box and the first one I have ever owned that didn’t have four, five or six on the floor…a stick shift, that is.

A stick shift is a wonderful feature. I have clung for fifty years to the notion that unless you have a stick shift you are SOL (Surely Out of Luck) if you ever have to rock the car out of a snow drift. I haven’t seen a snow drift since I moved here some thirty-odd years ago but it’s best to be prepared. 

My new car may not have a stick shift but it does have a lot of other  wonderful features. It has electric door locks. You have only to press a button and slam the door to lock yourself out of your car. That was impossible with my last car, which had door locks that were so cranky it was virtually impossible to lock them at all.

Sadly, An Old Man’s Car has all the modern conveniences except a tape deck. The first two days I owned the car I searched the dashboard for it and finally had to go back to the dealer. I was a confused old guy who couldn’t find his own deck.

“Okay, I give up. Where have you boys hidden the tape deck?"

“There isn’t one, sir. You have a six speaker surround sound system driven by whatever you choose to slip in this little slot. It’s called a CD player.”

Oh, that. It looked like the little slot on vending machines you stick paper dollars into. It seemed odd, because I didn’t think the car would dispense cans of cold beverage, but then you never know.

The dealer helped me get my five dollar bill out of the little slot. Doesn’t serve cold soda and it doesn’t make change, either. A double disappointment. 

The absence of a clutch pedal (you used to have to press down on one of these with your left foot to perform  an action called ‘shifting the gears’) meant that I was pointlessly slamming my foot into the firewall for the first week I drove my new car.

I say I ‘drove’ the car but that isn’t quite right.  It doesn’t describe what my new car feels like. Well, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t “feel” like much of anything at all. The car is so comfy that you feel pretty much disconnected from it.

Oh, sure, you’re sitting behind the wheel and steering but you don’t feel like you’re doing anything. It’s more like playing a video game: Granddad Takes A Drive.

My old car was as hard sprung as a rock and it kept you intimately aware of the condition of the road. My new car feels like a slice of white bread mounted on four marshmallows rolling on a sea of molasses. And without a stick shift the car is making decisions for you that you used to make for yourself. This was called 'driving.’

I didn’t trade in my old car, the sleek, low, sporty, transverse-engined, spoiler equipped, bucket-seated wonder. I knew I could do much better than the pitiful sum I was offered by the dealer if I sold it myself.

What I didn’t realize was that I didn’t want to sell it at all until I put an ad in the paper.

“For Sale: Belch-fire Six with 300 thousand miles, two speakers, AM radio. Asking 18 thousand dollars. Firm” The ad didn’t work so I re-wrote it.

“Nice car for sale by an old guy who can no longer get in it. Two doors, no room in back seat for elderly relatives unless they have lost both legs at the knees. Asking 18K or best offer.”

The last ad worked: “Help! I must pay for new car. Please buy my old one.”

There is a moral here somewhere: Things change, and it is the wisdom of aging to get used to that. I have adjusted to my new car…affectionately dubbed Old Mr. Comfort…as I will eventually adjust to not driving at night, not driving at all, and loving my hi-tech walker.

If you see me on the road, wave (with all the fingers of your hand, please.) I’ll be the old guy driving 25 in the left lane.

"He Said, She Said" Reporting

You all know what that is. Candidate A asserts that the earth is a great sphere that revolves around the sun. Candidate B asserts that the earth is a great sphere, stationary in the universe, around which the sun revolves.

Our journalist takes no side and achieves “balance and impartiality” by carefully reporting each position and ....leaves us there. Thanks a bunch! Is that all? Which of these two rascals is right, and doesn’t journalistic good practice deserve at least some attempt to clarify the dispute? Who’s right?

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard took on this and related issues of truth in journalism in its Summer 2012 issue.

A long article by Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse asks, “Instead of striving for balance, how about truth for a goal?” Read it here.

Motels

Motels

I have a persistent affection for the American Motel. 

We have always been a nation of travelers. As paved roads and improved motorcars spread across our land Americans abandoned the railroads and chose to drive to the next town or the next state. 

It wasn’t until the 1930s that you could ride from coast to coast entirely on paved roads. In the process driving became something more than simple transportation; it became recreation. The great American road trip was born. The “getting there” became almost more important than the “there” got to. And motels were where we stayed. Motels and America’s highways grew up together.

I’ve spent a lot of time in motels, and I plan to spend more before my riding season is over. For most touring motorcyclists there is no more convenient way to sleep dry.

Motels are always handy to the route you’re on…just off the interstate or a block or so in town. My favorites are the single digit motels, the 6s, 8s, or 9s… one-story units with parking right at the door.  

Many touring bikes end up with bits and pieces of luggage bungeed on them like gear on a prospector’s mule. Getting into your room with tank bags, saddlebags, helmet, riding clothes, and camping gear you don’t want to leave exposed in the parking lot over night can be a three trip journey.

The last thing you want is to have to carry that stuff up two or three flights of stairs.

I never worry about my car being stolen when I’m travelling by car, but every motorcyclist believes that someone wants to steal his bike and is reassured by being able to look directly out his motel window and see it. In one instance I was able to look right out my window and see my motorcycle had been stolen. So much for “window parking” as a theft prevention tool.

I’m afraid that motels are in decline. The new ones being built are three stories tall, have  rooms accessed only from indoor corridors, and one elevator. In other words they are morphing into hotels, but with none of the conveniences of hotels. There are no helpful bellmen, no “lounge” and no coffee shop. 

At one of my stops a summer ago the motel was located just off an interstate highway; just outside of a town I had no interest in visiting. Although it was one of the “morphing into a hotel” places I had a main floor room just inside the door at the end of a corridor. The motel was part of a truck stop complex: One restaurant, three fast food franchises, a trucker’s convenience store, a casino, and a twenty pump gas station. All one would wish.

My requirements on the road are simple. A reasonably firm bed, a decent shower and a television set with HBO. I’m not looking for a resort, or luxuriously landscaped grounds. 

I am perfectly content if the walls of my room are free of artwork.

In my favorite single digit chain the rooms are identical, the furniture unobtrusive and intuitively arranged. You can get up in the middle of the night, and wander around in the dark, without stubbing your toe.

Each night in one of these rooms is exactly like the one before or the one to come. I feel perfectly at home. As a matter of fact in one respect  these rooms are just like home…where every night is spent in a room exactly like the room slept in the night before.    

“How boring,” say my critics. “You should seek out a nice Bed and Breakfast place.”

Not on your life. I have never been in a B & B that was conveniently located, easy to find, or where I felt comfortable wandering around in the middle of the night. Although I was paying more than I might at one of the single digit joints, the extra cost did not leave me feeling freer, or more luxurious. After all I was a “guest” in someone’s home.

Conversations are whispered so as not to be a ‘bother.’ You don’t ask the nice retired couple, or the widow lady ekeing out an insufficient pension, to rise to provide breakfast at 5 am so you can get an early start. There is no TV. The bathroom is across the hall.

I have never been in a B &  B that wasn’t over-decorated: Twee little stuffed animals, pictures of clowns or big-eyed children, gaily decorated vanities,  type boxes filled with colored beans, lamp shades with fringe… Martha Stewart gone mad. Or maybe just Martha Stewart.

You can lie awake at night in one of these places and hear things in the room whispering, “Wouldn’t you like to take me to the Salvation Army?”

No thanks. When all I want is a place to sleep dry, 6s 8s or 9s are road-trip perfection.

(Reprinted from a piece that appeared in The Desert Leaf more than
ten years ago.....but truth is eternal.) 
    

   

The Red Star

Here at The Data Port we quite like The Arizona  Daily Star. We occasionally wonder if it employs a copy editor but apart from that we think it's the best way to keep up with the local news.

Incidentally, so does AZPM. Star stories are frequently reborn on KUAZ newscasts.

Once in a while some outraged letter writer will rail against "The Red Star"

and threaten to cancel his subscription...probably because he can't tell the difference between the opinion pages and the news pages.

Actually, the opinion pages seem pretty mild mannered. After being asked for more "balance" the Star started to run more conservative columnists. You never see Paul Krugman's column any more; Charles Krauthamer appears regularly.

Hardly makes the Star a radical left rag.

Over the morning paper one morning I asked Mrs. Data Port what she thought the political bias of the sports pages was. She looked at me as if she thought I was off my meds and went back to reading Greg Hansen.  

Here We Go Again

Over the past couple of months I’ve made a number of attempts to re-up The Data Port.

Well, I didn’t. After the Tucson Citizen’s site was chopped by Gannett the blog’s readership and my enthusiasm waned.

Sick of politics... I took a Shakespearean attitude toward Republican clowns and powerless Democrats: “A pox on both their houses.”  I lived, or tried to live, a politics-free life. Couldn’t do it.

So for better or worse here we go again. 

Barber to Run in Congressional District 2

Democrat Ron Barber has an uncontested shot at the nomination to be the Democrats’ candidate to fill out Gabrielle Giffords’ Congressional District 8 term. He is, for this election at least, unopposed. Hence, liberal-leaning independents have the opportunity to influence the election by voting in the Republican primary.

This strategy is not an unheard of gambit...it was reported the other day that even Mitt Romney has done it. In states with closed primaries, where  independents can’t vote in the party primaries, you must temporarily change your registration to do this.

In Arizona an Independent may vote as he or she chooses. So if you want to help Barber in the general election you might choose  

the Republican you judge his weakest possible opponent. (Jim Kelly, Frank Antenori, Dave Sitton, or Martha McSally)

Independent voting is a two-edged sword of course. Republican- leaning Independents may vote for the Republican candidate they judge strongest against the Democrat in the general election.

Now that Barber has announced that he will run for the full Congressional term in the new District 2, as well as running to complete Giffords’ term, voting decisions for both Democrats and Republicans become more complicated.

Beginning with Barber, his decision to run again in November imposes on him  a series of contests in which he will not get anything like a free pass. 

The current run for the District 8 congressional seat will surely be more hotly contested by the Republicans, regardless of which Republican wins the primary. They will not wish to risk ceding the power of incumbency to the Democrats in the November election.

If he loses the District 8 race it is an open question whether he would choose to run for the district 2 seat against the new incumbent congressman who had just defeated him.

If Barber wins, he will most likely have a contested primary for the District 2 seat against a slate of Democrats who chose to honor both him and  Gabrielle by passing on the District 8 race.

The primary opposition could be serious. Three Arizona legislators have thrown their hats in the ring. Paula Aboud, Steve Farley and Matt Heinz have sound legislative backgrounds and solid name recognition.

Just in the wings is Stanford Law School graduate Nan Stockholm Walden who is widely believed to be favored by early Giffords supporters. 

Until Barber announced today this was the Democratic candidate slate.

Who knows what it will be tomorrow...but now the fun begins.

  

Teach The Bible in High-School? Maybe Not

The Data Port returned to find that the Arizona House has voted to allow high-schools to offer an elective course on “The Bible and Its Influence On Western Culture.”

On the face of it I have no great objection to this. The religious mythology of Christians and Jews has certainly informed the art, literature and law of the West. Every educated person should have some knowledge of it, just as they should have some knowledge of Greek mythology and Homer...the other great western religious mythology.

It is also important to understand the Bible as a book, since the Bible is not, in fact, a single book but a whole library of books, the parts of which had different authors and entered the canon at different times.

But there is a difference between teaching the Bible as a profoundly significant part of world literature, and teaching religion. Bringing

the skills of historical  criticism and analysis to a study of the Bible harms neither personal faith nor the work itself. Teaching it as a single great literal religious truth might actually discourage a real understanding of its spiritual message.

I favor the former approach but greatly fear the latter.

The 3.8% Solution...Debunking a Conservative Meme

Conservative bloggers are devoted to winkling out shocking ‘facts’ that discredit the President or his administration. Well, who can blame them...it’s hell to lose an election and the Republicans seem hellbent on doing it again.

I have no objection to criticizing the President; done it myself, loads of times. Conservatives have the same privilege, but they are under a reasonable obligation to get their facts right.

An e-mail is being widely circulated that says something like the following: "Due to Obamacare, did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it?  That's $3,800 on a $100,000 home, etc.” 

If left at that you’d think that Mr. and Mrs. Working  Stiff were going to be taxed 3.8% on the sale of their modest subdivision home. I’d be shocked, too...except it isn’t true.

There will be some taxing going on, but it will not be a sales tax on all home sales. Like all tax legislation this is complex. Here’s how Rob Chrisman, writing at Mortgage News Daily explains it :

Congress did approve, however, and the president did sign, a bill authorizing a 3.8% tax on the capital gains (unearned income) on real estate transactions over the existing $500,000 exemption for married couples ($250,000 for singles). Couples have to make more than $250,000 in adjusted gross income for the tax to apply to them (singles more than $200,000). And it isn't very common these days to find married couples making more than $250,000 a year, who then also made more than $500,000 in profits on their house sale.

See also: Snopes.com

L'affaire Babeu

The Data Port returns to the fray after a long absence. Political blogging is made hard by a number of factors, not the least of which is that there are so many political bloggers... and the rascals are so quick.

By the time a thoughtful commentator has marshaled his wits to make the necessary trenchant comment four other folks in the blogosphere have already done so, and their views have been demolished by equally perceptive critiques by their opponents. 

Oh, well.

I recently shamelessly eavesdropped on a vigorous  conversation going on at an adjoining lunch table. It was about L’affaire Babeu, and the Sheriff’s recent outing by an alleged former lover. The speaker loudly affirmed that he would never pull the lever for that man again.

I found that very odd. He must have once approved of the Sheriff enough to vote for him. Liked his aggressive immigration policies; favored his pursuit of grants to improve equipment; found no fault with the management of his department, and so on.

It’s pretty hard to believe that while he was in the closet his deputies didn’t at least suspect,  but apparently Babeau was on efficient, workmanlike terms with his staff and the policing of Pinal County went forward to everyone’s satisfaction.

And he did all this while he was gay? How’d he do that?

The real loser in all this is my involuntary lunch companion, who has now rejected the man he once would have, I imagine, supported for Congress. Good Grief!    

Here’s a link to Babeau’s web site. <click>

      

The Republicans’ Phony Meme

There have been a number over the years. “Tax and Spend Democrats,” and “Death Tax” are a couple of examples. About the time “Tax and Spend” was launched the Republicans were slashing tax revenues and borrowing and spending to support our two ruinous wars.

But that was then and this is now.

The latest slogan the Republican word magicians want us to swallow as God’s truth is “Job Killing Tax Increases.” Say that often enough and people will believe that it’s true; that increased federal income will (or has) stifled job creation.

There is not a jot of evidence that this is true. Think a minute, people. No jobs are being created now, when the tax laws are as forgiving as any in the modern industrial world. Forgiving taxation hasn’t done thing to produce jobs. Corporate America is sitting on record amounts of cash and we have 9.2% unemployment.

In the current debt limit debate the Republicans have fought any suggestion of tax reform that would increase revenue by closing loopholes, or removing some selected tax exemptions.

The Republican solution to the debt crisis is to slash expenditures in the area of the social safety net. If they don’t want to raise taxes, let’s cut 200 billion out of the defense budget instead.

Cross Posted from: http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I love the picnics and fireworks, the parades and marching bands-- but what I love most are the words of the day; the words of Jefferson and Paine, of the founding documents and the passionate speeches.

English is the mother tongue of democracy and no better political prose has ever been written. It’s muscular, direct, clear. It appeals to the mind as well as the heart and it expresses what we are as a nation. When we fall short of its ideals it reminds us what we ought to be.

The movements to deconstruct and reconstruct American history, to reveal the hidden hypocrisies at the heart of the nation’s founding, have tempted some into an attitude of world-weary dismissal of those ideals.

But imperfect men may yet have perfect thoughts, and slave owners may recognize the moral imperative of the rights of man.

On the morning of July 4th I’ll take my coffee out on the patio and read the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

These truths are the axioms of our political geometry. The assertion of them is not a scientific proposition, nor the deduction from some simpler or more evident truths. They are the bedrock on which we build a government. They are the commandments of a political faith.

Although all men have these rights, in a material and imperfect world they must be secured to us.

… to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The preamble to the Constitution echoes the theme. The Constitution is written to… establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Democratic government is not a burden, it is the condition of our liberty. Without it, as Thomas Hobbes earlier observed, we live in a state described as “the war of all against all” and lead lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Government cannot be left simply in the hands of others, as Thomas Paine reminded his fellow citizens in “The Crisis” (December 1776).

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women.

Not every crisis that our nation faces has the chilling dimensions of that winter in Valley Forge. Some may be purely local, springing up only in our own moral neighborhoods so to speak, but each to some degree requires that we shoulder the responsibility for protecting our fellow citizens’ unalienable rights, and promoting the general welfare.

To fail in this is to be no more than summer soldiers, espousing the right but not defending it.

Circling the interior of the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial is the following quotation.

I am quoting it from memory, and perhaps I have some single word wrong, but if I do, so be it.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

This is the great commandment of our political faith. Of course it implies freedom of speech, the press, expression… because a truth thought but not expressed is nothing.

There are other forms that tyranny over the mind can take, subtle, elusive, not always recognized for what they are: Hunger, prejudice and bigotry, poverty, the closing off of access to knowledge, the simple refusal to listen…all of these may stunt or cripple the mind by denying it the conditions to develop fully.

Finally, it is good to keep in mind that we are a country born of revolution.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. .( Jefferson.)

As a nation we might well remember this and take a more understanding and supportive view of other people’s revolutions.

Have a great Fourth of July.

The Republican Party vs The Rest of Us

There are two stories in today’s Arizona Daily Star that mesh nicely with yesterday’s “Loading Dock Manifesto” post.

The first was on the front page of the business section and headlined. “Recovery is most off-kiter since ’30s.”

Not surprisingly the rich have gotten richer and the rest of us have been done the dirty. There are still 9.1% of us unemployed, but none of the 9.1% happen to be the CEOs of major corporations. .

An associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth.

In the meantime worker’s wages have slipped from where they were in the mid 2000s (64% of the economy) to 57.5 percent and any new jobs being created pay less than the ones that have been lost.

As this wealth-shift has gone on Republican legislators have persisted in their refusal to include tax increases in a program of budget balancing; and at the Federal level they have fought controls on the financial industry whose rascality got us into the recession in the first place.

Have our masters kept an eye out for the welfare of their workers?

Au contraire, mon frere...they have pushed for more tax cuts (the Laugher Principle...they cut taxes and laugh all the way to the bank) and cut the services that constitute the workingman’s safety net.

Mark Dayton, the governor of Minnesota, has shown remarkable courage in digging in against his Republican legislature’s refusal to make tax increases a part of the state’s budget. Absent a new budget the state is now idle.Turn out the lights...for now the party’s over.

The soft-spoken Dayton refuses to cave to the GOP's stance that higher taxes are verboten. Since taking office, he has championed tax hikes on rich Minnesotans - or at least some form of new state revenue - as a necessary part of any solution to closing the state's $5 billion budget deficit.

Read more

The Loading Doc Manifesto---John Hyduk

The Loading Dock Manifesto by John Hyduk

America isn’t long on working-class intellectuals, but surely John Hyduk is one of them...although he would sure be scornful of my calling him one. He’s a working guy who happens to write. Not a lot, not enough to quit his night job on a beverage company loading dock

“You want something higher, a prickly Everyman speaking half-truths to power, go scare up Joe the Plumber. All I know is this: I am a schlub walking a high wire between paydays in steel-toed shoes. And my name is legion.”

His wonderful essay on what the working life is, and its values, was recently published in Esquire.

“I grew up in a blue-collar Cleveland neighborhood, a little bit of Old Europe transplanted onto a bend of the Cuyahoga River. The men — Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Ukies, Hungarians — were scrappers and needed to be. Their wives stayed home, had gardens and babies, and could see the future in the bottoms of teacups.

I never needed a fortune-teller to see mine. It came shuffling past our porch every evening at 5:25, toting a lunch pail. At eighteen you were swallowed by the python and made your way through the beast like a lump. At the other end was a mill pension, casino trips on a bus charter twice a year, and church bingo every Wednesday.”

You don’t always have work. After losing a job, five months went by before the loading dock job came up.

Once a month I update my résumé. Why, I don't know exactly. When I was looking, five months spent on orange plastic interview chairs, with my livelihood hanging on reliable transportation and a willingness to pee in a stranger's cup, that was the mantra. "Make sure you keep your résumé updated," some hiring clerk would tell me.

So I walk the hall of mirrors. There I am at the beginning — my hair is black and my back is straight, and I'm sliding into my first Ford, heading off to work. "Honky Tonk Women" is on the radio. Then I'm gone, pushing, pulling my way down a tunnel. A page later you look up and that gray-haired daddy o' mine is ... you. That's the working life.

No illusions: The only way I will ever see Paris is on the Travel Channel. I will never taste cassoulet unless they put it on the menu at Sheetz. I'm okay with that. One day you stare into the bathroom mirror and Willie Nelson is staring back at you. I'm okay with that, too.

You tote a lot more to work in a lunch pail than Ring Dings. You pack alimony and autism diagnoses and car notes and the rest of the workingman's grind. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. Also braces, a better school, and a down payment on that spring field trip. And you chew whatever has been dumped on your plate in silence.

You don't go into therapy. You go to work.

Read More: http://www.esquire.com/features/essay/john-hyduk-0511

Gettysburg!

July 1, 1863

Our correspondent in the field reports the BMI (Bureau of Military Information) has confirmed Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia has crossed the Potomac River and after its march north into Pennsylvania has wheeled east. Units of the rebel Third Corps ( Lt. General A. P. Hill commanding) are approaching Gettysburg.

Two brigades of the Federal First Cavalry Division (Brig.Gen. John Buford commanding) are drawn up to interdict the advancing rebel army. Buford’s two brigades number just under 3,000 men.

With the approach of July Fourth we naturally focus on the great events of 1776 and the Revolutionary War. That war was our great founding conflict.

But less than one hundred years later the nation was to be in another war, as important to the founding and character of our nation as the events of 1776.

We were “engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The key battle in that war, the one that marked its turning point, was a series of savage engagements fought around the small Pennsylvania town Gettysburg on July 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

One of the great ironies of the war was that Lee didn’t really want to fight the federals there, but on some other ground of his own choosing where he could defeat The Army of The Potomac under Maj. Gen. George Mead. Mead, for his part, had found the battle more or less forced on him (as it was on Lee) when A.P. Hill’s engagement with Buford’s cavalry grew out of hand.

It had been Lee’s hope to defeat federal forces and threaten Washington, forcing the North to recognize The Confederate States of America. Lincoln, for his part wanted Mead to crush the Army of Northern Virginia and pursue it to Richmond, ending the war. Although Gettysburg was a great victory for the North, Mead did not pursue the victory and Lee slipped away back to Virginia.

I’ve been reading two excellent books about Gettysburg as I holed up against the 110 degree heat.

The first, and probably most accessible to the average reader is Michael Shaara’s “The Killer Angels” for which he was awarded the 1975 Pulitzer Prize. This is a novelized but extremely accurate account of the battle told from the perspectives of major participants, among them Chamberlain, Buford, Longstreet, Armistead and Freemantle. Freemantle was a British observer with Lee’s army and Chamberlain was the hero of the Little Round Top defense. A Maine man, he survived serious wounds and lived to become the the Governor of Maine.

The second book is Stephen W. Sears’ “Gettysburg.” This is a serious book of historical scholarship, meticulously researched with detailed notes and bibliography. But don’t let me put you off, in it’s way it’s as much of a page turner as “Killer Angels.”

Gettysburg was a series of engagements which are collectively “the battle.” George Skoch’s maps of the stages of the battle are a big help in visualizing the events. My suggestion is to read Shaara first.

Anarchy and Anarchism

The English language is rich in words and complex in structure. Pay any attention at all to this richness and complexity and it is a more than adequate medium of expression.

Sadly, in the age of bullet points, run-on sentences, and tweets, this richness and complexity is either lost on, or completely baffles, the average writer.

Often it is with pairs of words that the careless writer has problems. Is it “shall” or “will”? Never mind, I’ll cover my indecision with an apostrophe.

There seems to be an epidemic merging of “valid” with “true” so that we feel free to use one for the other with little understanding of their difference. Validity is a characteristic of arguments; truth is a characteristic of propositions. Consider the following argument:

All celestial bodies are made of cream cheese,

The moon is a celestial body

Therefore the moon is made of cream cheese.

This is a formally valid argument, yet it is false that the moon is made of cream cheese because the major premise is false.

Well, this distinction probably makes no fine difference in the twitter-verse since we all, like, understand one another anyway. By the way, the subjunctive mood is essentially dead...at least amongst the ill-educated...so I wouldn’t worry about that either, if I was you.

Many of the technical terms of political discourse that appear in comment threads are used for little more than an acquired emotional tone. Marxist! Communist! Socialist! Fascist! are epithets thrown at opponents to indicate our disapproval of them. As readers we often wonder whether the commenter understands what they mean, or whether he understands his opponent’s position.

Now, consider “anarchy” and “Anarchism.”

Anarchy (with a small “a”) is the confusion and lack of order that follows on the failure or breakdown of law and government; or it’s confusion or lack of order of any kind.

Anarchism, on the other hand is a philosophy of social organization. There is a confusing wealth of “anarchisms,” however the the core belief of all is that government is a form of tyranny that must be destroyed.

But anarchists are not fools; they recognize that that modern society is complex and that mechanisms for the exchange of goods and services must be established. The Anarcho-Syndicalists, who flourished during the Spanish Civil War, conceived of a society organized from the bottom up through an integrated system of trade unions.

To learn a bit more about this form of anarchism look at this:

Cross-posted from The Data Port

Vibrant, Gannett, and a Reader’s Complaint

A regular reader of TucsonCitizen.com, and of The Data Port, forwarded us the following letter sent to Editor Mark Evans:

I often read blog on the Tucson Citizen website and have found the use of what appears at first to be links to further knowledge are advertisements of unrelated "stuff". One recognizes the income that might flow from such techniques, but it sure interferes with the manner in which people will desire to use your source for obtaining knowledge which is so generally and readily available elsewhere without such distractions. I doubt I'm the first one to take note of this technique and likely not the first to voice a negative feeling gained by the mis-use of reader's time and attentions. Just count me as one more reader who thinks this is a poor choice for gathering advertising dollars where many better choices exist in harmony with Internet content on a very broad basis.

Just to remind everyone, here’s a quote from the letter Vibrant sent me in response to my complaint about their using my copy for advertising for which I’m not paid.

Can you disable these ads?

Vibrant In-Text Ads are found on over 3,500 premium websites. Some of these websites choose to offer a disable switch. You can find this by going to the website and moving your mouse over a double-underlined word or phrase. Once you see the Vibrant In-Text Ad unit, click on the "?" in the upper right corner. If the website has chosen to offer the disable feature it will be found on this page

I clicked. No disable feature was offered by Gannett.

I have no objection to advertising copy (I’ve written it for pay) and I don’t object to being paid for what I write, which is not the case here at TC.com.

But imagine you’re at the flicks watching a jungle thriller and the hero is under attack by army ants. Suddenly the action stops and a pitchman appears on screen with a fifteen second ad for “Ants-Be-Gone” inserted there by Vibrant In-Film Advertising. How would the producers of the movie feel about that? Really.

As the reader quoted above indicates this in-text advertising nonsense does violence to all the advantages of web 2.0

Cross-posted from http://tucsoncitizen.com/dataport

Good Editors Make Good Writers

It is the rare writer who doesn’t benefit from the thoughtful attention of his or her editor. Part of what distinguishes TucsonCitizen.com from fully-fledged online newspapers is the absence of editorial supervision.

What gets written here, according to Gannett, are blogs. As bloggers we are independent entities, for whom our publisher accepts no responsibility.

This is not necessarily a good thing.

No assignment editor is pointing us in the direction of a reportorial task and no copy editor is vetting the copy for style or fact. This accounts for the occasionally rackety and unrestrained nature of a good deal of what goes on here.

A case in point is a recent posting over at “The View from Baja Arizona.” I’m a big booster of Hugh Holub’s coverage of the border. That said, this piece could have used the helpful hand of a fair-minded editor.

Holub draws a stark picture of cartel violence and of the apparent inability of the Mexican government to control it. He will eventually ask the sorts of “what is to be done” questions that could stimulate thoughtful debate: Should we make cross-border military incursions? Should we legalize drugs to kill the profit motive?

Fair enough; but first he introduces the question of Aztec human sacrifice and wonders if there may not be something in Mexican cultural history that explains cartel savagery. The implication seems to be that Mexicans are genetically predisposed to violence

And the ‘chit’ hits the fan. An editor might well have pencilled out the Aztecs on the grounds that they are really a distraction from his central concern, or factually dubious. I can hear the editor saying, “It’s the blue pencil or the spike, take your choice.”

Cross-posted from: TucsonCitizen.com

Read Holub’s column here

http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja-arizona/2011/06/20/drug-cartel-violence-in-mexico-the-aztecs-are-still

Giffords-Kelly Memoir Inked by Scribner

The New York Times reported today that Scribner, a Simon and Shuster company, will publish Mark and Gabrielle’s memoir.

From the Times article:

“The book will be an account of their courtship, Ms. Giffords’s political career and the attack in Tucson in January that left Ms. Giffords gravely wounded with a gunshot wound to the head, according to a statement from Scribner. “We are deeply honored to publish Mark Kelly’s and Gabby Giffords’ memoir, which will fully unfold the remarkable story of two exceptionally brave public servants,” said Susan Moldow, the publisher of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.”

Mark and Gabby will be assisted in the writing by Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.