Regular Order

You may remember the late US Senator John McCain’s famous call for the Senate to return to “regular order” while it considered an unorthodox Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act some years ago.

The debt ceiling increase vote is not the regular order for dealing with spending decisions. As has been stated many times, the need for an increase not about future spending, but about paying debts already incurred. But with what seemed to be a gun to its head, the Biden administration agreed to negotiate with the GOP House leadership over a series of Republican fiscal demands, and a tentative deal was reached. There were sacrifices – and benefits – for both sides, and we’re hearing some “attaboys” about bipartisanship, but the deal is far from done, and the wings of both parties have lots of unhappy campers.

There will be more attaboys (and girls) and sighs of relief if the crisis is averted at the last second, but why should it have been permitted to get this close in the first place? Did we really need this thrill ride? The doubt that has been planted in our minds, and the minds of others all over the world, about our full faith and credit has done plenty of damage already. As many of us learned in school, deadlines do force us to get something done, but simply beating a deadline doesn’t mean it was done well.

Meanwhile, we have a former President out there who hints that maybe default isn’t such a bad thing. So, we’re getting financial advice from someone who has suffered several business bankruptcies and who has a reputation for not paying HIS bills. Thanks very much.

This debate smacks of children playing with explosives. The fact is, the House already has the power of the purse, and there is a regular-order budgetary process to work out fiscal issues. True, a dispute even under the regular order process could force a government shutdown later on - a terrible thing, but not nearly as bad as welching on our debts.

What’s going on now may seem like an inside-the-beltway squabble among politicians, but those of us outside can’t be blamed for feeling left out of a critical discussion that affects us. This isn’t just their debt, it’s ours too. We have to do better than sit on the sidelines, shake our heads and say, “Ain’t it a shame?”

Fort Sumter Moments

In our school history classes, we were taught that the first shots of the US Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861. South Carolina had seceded from the Union the previous year and demanded that Union troops surrender the fort at the entrance to Charleston harbor.  The demand was refused, and in response, the secessionist forces began shelling the fort with cannon fire.

The firing of weapons is usually said to be the first phase of such conflicts, but in truth, the seeds had been planted and were germinating underground for a long time before these first sprouts appeared above it. The first Civil War, it could be argued, was well underway already. And for all intents and purposes, so is the second.

This one has already had its Fort Sumter moment, known as January 6. And we have had more than our share of smaller Fort Sumters, carried out at shopping malls, schools, and synagogues by those who were armed with what are considered weapons of war.

Some pundits have characterized Donald Trump’s appearance on the CNN “town hall” in New Hampshire as a wake-up call. I know that most are blaming CNN for the way it handled that event, but what came out of Trump’s mouth was not entertainment, even though the audience reacted that way. At least some of it could be in our future. We do need to stay awake. I believe we should be at least mentally on a war footing right now.

This doesn’t mean that everyone needs a gun. As voters, we all have a weapon at our disposal already. Each election is a battle, and the battlefield is the ballot box. The weapons issued to us have “bullets” in them, so to speak: our votes. This ammunition is way more powerful than anything in an AR-15.

It may be harder to fire that electoral weapon in some places than in others, but It is still capable of bringing about true change. If we want to employ heavier weapons, at least some of us have to run for office ourselves or support someone we believe in who is.

The current President and some historians are telling us that the upcoming state and national elections represent fights for the soul of America. If we were NOT cheering and laughing along with the town hall crowd in New Hampshire, what are we going to do about it? Answering that question can’t wait until November 2024. The work has to start now.

 

 

Secrets and Liars

 

 

Among our recent news stories has been the apparent theft of highly classified material by a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman in Massachusetts, who then allegedly shared it with his video-gaming buddies. The young man was arrested almost immediately.

He is said to be one of more than a MILLION with legal access to such information. Many of us have trouble keeping secrets among our co-workers or family members. How do we expect to trust a million people to do so?

There’s a scene from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! about the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. If I’m recalling the story correctly, two military intelligence officers, one from the Army and another from the Navy, are staying alert for signs of an attack, as it will fall to them to put out the warning to a special group of top officials, including the President. The two go into a room where there is a locked cabinet on the wall, and one of them opens it with a key. This reveals a small blackboard containing the names of only a dozen or so authorized to receive the highest-level secret information. How quaint was that?

Breaches of secrecy are almost common now. Some folks think that people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are heroes for revealing information they thought the public should know. I still haven’t made up my mind about that. But over-classification is indeed a problem.

Some information goes back such a long way in history that it’s hard to see how making it public would harm anyone. I saw a PBS American Experience episode recently about Elizabeth Friedman, an Illinois woman who basically created the US codebreaking program used during two World Wars. Her work saved many thousands of servicemembers’ lives, but the details of it were kept secret for decades, and in the meantime, no less a figure than J. Edgar Hoover took credit for much of what she had done.

Perhaps the most famous secrets revolve around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, of which this year is the 60th anniversary. Most related classified materials have been released now, but not without redactions. The conspiracy theories on this event turned into a genuine industry, and for some, it all may never end.

We often hear it said that if you or I were found to have even one classified piece of paper or digital file in our possession illegally, we would be in jail the next day. Well, most of us, anyway.