Archive for March, 2010

JOURNALASM

Monday, March 29th, 2010

In the new age of media, what used to be a distinguished career, journalism, has morphed into a cross between “journalism” and “orgasm”.  The need to sensationalize every story, as though most of them needed any help these days, has created a new breed of news hound.  First, the liberal slant of nearly every news outlet, in print and on television, can no longer even be argued.  Gone are the days of the serious news anchor or columnist, bound by the rule of unbiased, simple reporting of events.  Replaced with such carnival hucksters that even The National Enquirer now appears as one of the more serious newspapers.  Give them credit…they broke the John Edwards love-baby story with pure, old-fashioned gumshoe reporting.

The rest seem to have fallen prey to the American Idol format of shock and awe…mostly the former.  More important, culling fact from fiction is clearly not even on the to-do list at most news outlets.  Take the reporting of the Tea Party response to the passing of the Health Care Reform legislation.  The story of someone yelling the “N” word to a passing Congressman spread like wildfire, even without a single shred of proof that I have been able to find as of this writing.  Hard to believe, with dozens of news cameras and the omnipresent civilian cell phone capturing every moment, that there is nothing to corroborate the story, and yet it is presented as actually having happened.

If it did, it is a horrendous remark.  Also, if it did, it would be a big mistake for other reasons beyond the sheer ignorance and vitriol of it.  For behavior like that is exactly what will diminish the Tea Party movement.  To see what it is that Democrats fear most, look at what they are attacking the most.  The Tea Party.  They fear it, and with good reason.  However, the movement must be aware that every eye will be trained upon them, waiting for the tiniest of transgressions.  You may have noticed, none of us are allowed to be dismayed or angry at the flagrantly corrupt process that allowed this travestied piece of legislation to be passed.  We should look upon the indebting of our children and grandchildren with muted grief, I suppose.

Myself, I am incredulous at the notion that the democrats are surprised at the level of anger.  Certainly I am not condoning violence or threats against elected officials, but…c’mon…is there a single Democrat that wasn’t aware of the outcome here?  Was it not the very knowledge of the dire consequences of their “Yes” vote that allowed so many to rake in such handsome bounties for their vote?  The proverbial wet rock has been lifted, my friends, and we are all aghast at the slimy mess that lay underneath it.  Worse still…most of us will be expected to pay for the mess.

Still…it is most important now that we keep our collective stick on the ice here.  Remember, these same news agencies that are tripping over themselves to report a patently untrue story, are the same ones who reported the Tea Party march in Washington last September as being in the “tens of thousands”.  There were as many as 1.4 million there.  This crowd left not a single over-turned car, broken window, spray-painted scrawl or as much as a gum wrapper behind.  That rather noteworthy element got no press.  So be aware, our focus needs to be on the mid-terms and on maintaining decorum.  We are the ones who do things the right way, the legal way, the way that our Constitution demands things be done.  It is paramount that we maintain that dignity and respect, particularly as the other side leaves it behind with reckless abandon.  It is one of many things that separates us from them.

Anger?  Yeah…there’s plenty to go around.  I’m angry and I know a lot of people who feel the same way.  The election of Scott Brown sent a message, and had rules been followed, would have defeated this measure in a proper way.  It is clear though, that this administration and their agenda will not be stopped that easily.  It is going to take a thorough house cleaning in D.C. and we need to make sure that happens in November.

It’s odd, this Obamacare.  Not a single effort at Tort Reform.  Doctors promising to resign, retire or otherwise leave the profession.  M. Pelosi with an 11% approval rating.  A take-over of the student loan business.  Another 18,000 IRS agents to “oversee” the collection of fines and the implementation of government health care.  Tell me one thing the government got involved with and subsequently improved upon. Agriculture?  In only a few years we were paying farmers not to produce milk and buying their cows to have them destroyed.  Welcome to Federal Government intervention.

It shouldn’t be long before they’re paying doctors not to operate and paying them for their surgical tools so the Feds can melt them down into silver ingots which will probably be our new currency by then.  And you think we’re angry now?  Wait a while.

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E-BULLY

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

As though parenting weren’t challenging enough, the age-old dilemma of school yard bullying has taken to the internet and that expansion is yielding some tragic results.  In Massachusetts this past week, the State Legislature was about to water down yet another round of proposed laws regarding school policy towards, and around, bullying.

I am loathe to ever wish for more laws and increased government intervention in anything where some common sense and civilian input might work better.  Yet, I wonder if we are not witness to a change here that begs for some kind of intervention.

There has been a spate of teen-suicides in Massachusetts, and every other state for that matter, in just the last several months.  I simply can’t imagine, as a parent myself, how you recover from losing a child to such a senseless, merciless, and almost invisible, villain.  Like many of us, at 52, I grew up in a simpler time.  Most boys I know, including me, figured out early on that, like prison, it was important to establish yourself as not available for teasing.  Any lingering questions regarding the pecking order would likely be settled with a bloody lip or black eye.  Then…the problem went away.

We all remember, too, how cruel other children can be as they navigate their way through those awkward years, where allegiances to friends have led from the inconsequential all the way to participating in homicides together.  How strong that pressure can be.  Evidenced in the wake of a recent suicide in Massachusetts, a young girl who came here from Ireland, for whom even after her death, the assaults continued to come on Facebook as heartless posts continued to pop up.  Think about that.

Hence, we have entered a new age in bullying.  It isn’t left at the school yard anymore, it follows you home by virtue of texting and the internet and any of a myriad of social networking sites that are barely monitored, if at all.  That new element seems to be taking a toll.  And it is interesting to hear usually silent voices in Massachusetts politics speaking up and actually sounding…gulp…outraged.  A little late to the party, in my opinion.

Where have these people been, year after year, as Jessica’s Law or any version of it gets roundly rejected with the regularity of sunrise?  It is odd, that this issue strikes such a chord, and yet the notion of making a solid effort to keep even known violent child sexual predators off of the streets is as popular as tuberculosis.

How about the adult workplace?  My goodness…we protect our adults with the vigor of Secret Service Agents covering the President.  Don’t remark on a co-workers hair, or touch a shoulder, because a reprimand or legal action will be as swift as the Colorado River.  Children, though, the most vulnerable and silent minority in the country, scream into the wind for even the slightest of protections that a civilized society should provide without provocation.

I wrote here last week about the issue of marriage and how it should be defined.  It is always a hot button issue, and people will write and email and are passionate about the subject.  Whether we agree or disagree, I appreciate anyone who feels strongly enough about something that they would take the time to sit and write anything.  For the gay and lesbian community there is never a shortage of articulate and intelligent people ready, willing and able to defend their position and put forth their case, and to fight for those rights that they feel they are being shorted.  Children, of course, have no such podium or anyone to stand at it amongst their own ranks.  They must rely on adults to do that for them.

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MARRIAGE

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Our local paper, The Cabinet, last week including a rather scathing editorial, admonishing Milford residents for voting in favor of the Constitutional amendment regarding gay marriage, or more precisely, for voting in favor of letting the people vote on the issue.  The writer mentions our “republican” form of government and how it is impractical to expect that voters can vote ” on everything” and that some issues are better left to our elected officials to decide.  An interesting time in American history to be advising us taxpayers to leave the important decisions to our “elected officials”.  They might better ask…”how’s that working out for you…?”

New Hampshire is one of the last bastions of personal freedom and we pride ourselves on it.  For generations, our creed of Live Free or Die has been the envy of other places.  We live it here.  Property rights, personal liberties.  For years I have defended our state to outsiders who buy into the notion that we are a redneck or racist or homophobic state.  What I have witnessed, as a second-generation native, is very much the opposite.

What we do abhor, however, is being told what to do, say or think.  That, I believe, is the issue that most riles the electorate.  For the record, I believe marriage is between one man and one woman.  I wear a ring, I am married, and I expect with good reason that the ring signifies that I am married, to a woman, not just to someone.  It is a centuries-old institution and now we find ourselves in the unenviable position of having to defend our rights.  At some point, the gay-marriage movement becomes an infringement on my rights, and I believe we have reached that point.

I will spare you the “I have gay friends and relatives” argument, although I do.  I wish them a happy life and a right to live together with the same protections and security that marriage offers, by virtue of a civil union.  I truly don’t understand the war over the word “marriage”.  It almost seems although it is designed to inflame, to rile up the masses, to stir up the argument.  The gay community would have everyone believe that if you are not gay, you are a homophobe.  What nonsense.

Perhaps, in keeping with Yankee culture, some of us prefer that personal proclivities and sexual orientation be kept private.
You may have noticed, there is no “Heterosexual Parade”, or “Heterosexual Pride” day.  I have never felt the need to discuss my sex life, marriage, or anything of that nature in a public forum.  It may be hard for some to believe, that most of us really don’t care what you do in the privacy of your home, until it affects the rest of us.  This is akin to New Hampshire’s long standing, though mostly unspoken, attitude towards property rights.  You are free to do with, and on, your property what you wish so long as it doesn’t affect your neighbor or their ability to enjoy their homestead.  Isn’t the gay marriage issue much the same?  We don’t care…we just don’t want to be told how, or what to accept, and how to accept it.  You can lead us to water, but you can’t make us drink.

I guess I’ll never understand why it’s not good enough the way it is.  I can’t think of another country more accepting of everyone, than America.  Is there anything you can’t do here?  Take a walk through Manhattan or San Francisco and tell me rights are being squashed.  If, indeed, there are any rights in jeopardy, it is the rights of average Americans, still working and raising their families in the tradition we were brought up with.  Who ever would have thought it possible?  It is us…we have become “the enemy”.

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CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?  You don’t even need aviation experience and you know what that means.  That clearance, delivered by a youngster to a commercial aircraft, has unleashed a storm of complaint across the country.

Days ago, an Air Traffic Controller at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, brought his young son to work with him and allowed him to issue that clearance.  The next day, he brought his young daughter to work and she had a similar opportunity.  You would think global aviation safety had been compromised given the unleashing of media coverage, and the controller waits as his fate is considered by the Federal Aviation Administration.

As a twenty-plus year private pilot, and father of four sons who have all done the same thing as these two New York kids, I am stunned at the over-reaction to this non-event.  My two older boys, when they were in their early teens, accompanied me to Boston Center, the FAA facility on Rte. 3 in Nashua, NH, where a friend of mine was a senior controller and manager.  They each were allowed to issue a benign clearance to a commercial jet.  “Cactus 121, climb and maintain 35,000…”.  The reply, in old-salt pilot parlance, “roger that Boston, Cactus 121 climb and maintain 350…” .  I still remember it.  You would have thought they had talked to God.  Both pilots, like the ones days ago in New York, not only took it in stride, but seemed a little lightened by it.  No surprise.

Aviation is an American institution that is rooted…rooted in, the fascination of youngsters in the wonder of flight.  I bet I don’t know a single pilot who didn’t spend a little of their childhood clinging to a chainlink fence at a small airfield somewhere in America.  Back then, stories of washing airplanes in exchange for a ride were commonplace.  Even now, at Boire Field in Nashua where I fly, a kid doesn’t have to hang around too long on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with too much of a forlorn look on his face, before someone is going to offer him a hop around the patch.

In over twenty years of flying, my greatest joy is bringing young people up for their first flight, and maybe a few minutes at the controls.  I’ll know right off, depending on their response, if they’re going to catch “the bug”.  No thought pleases me more than to think that, years from now, when that young kid, now a young man receiving his “certificate” (license), may remember his flight with me as the catalyst that sent him off on a lifelong romance with aviation.  I remember flying with my father and his instructor, Harvey Sawyer of the Silver Ranch Airport in Jaffrey, NH.  My father soloed but never went on to get his ticket, but I knew then that someday, I would fly airplanes.

The controller in New York is undoubtedly proud of his job, as he should be, and wanted to let his kids see…for just one day, what exactly he does at work.  What an invigorating, exciting and bracing job, watching and controlling airplanes in and around JFK Airport, with a view that is unrivaled and only a few will ever see at all.  Are we so tight now that we can’t allow a kid a chance, with father and controller by his side, to clear an airplane for takeoff?  C’mon.  I’ve listened to people on talk radio for days now excoriating this controller.  Lighten up.  This is how kids learn, get enthused, dream and grow.  It isn’t all about the classroom.

More importantly, if the flying public wants someone to get mad at…try the FAA itself, which will use this “incident” as a podium to demonstrate to the public how serious they are about safety.  What people don’t know, is that the FAA routinely denies safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board, year after year. decade after decade.  From the fuel tank explosion that took down TWA Flight 700 over Long Island Sound, to the events leading up to the ValuJet crash into the Everglades,both crashes caused by problems the NTSB had warned about years earlier, the FAA is always putting airline finances above passenger safety, time after time after time.

The FAA might trouble itself with keeping “kids” from flying commercial airplanes, like the two horrendously under-experienced pilots who crashed the Continental flight in Buffalo,NY last year.  Flew an approach through bad weather, knew they were picking up ice, and when the airplane finally stalled, the pilot pulled back on the stick instead of applying full power with stick forward.  Exactly the wrong input and everyone on board died.  The “time-in-type” and minimum experience requirements, along with pay, have dwindled to the point where pilots beginning the climb up the ladder to “Captain” may not even be shaving yet.  I’ve seen Captains on commercial flights I’ve taken that looked like Doogie Howser, like someone’s nephew was flying the plane.  I still prefer to see a little gray hair, or a bald spot, in the left seat.  There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

The rest of the world can mamby-pamby itself into a sterile white room where nothing bad ever happens, but I will choose to take as big a bite of the apple as I can, and I hope my kids will too.  Life is about experiences, and experiences shape who we are and influence which and how many doors will open along our journey through life.  I salute the controller who took his kids to work.  Look…if that was where I worked…I would have a new guest everyday because let’s face it…that’s a really cool job!

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RECONCILING

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Wow…there’s one of those words.  “Reconcile”.  Many uses.  It usually brings my checkbook to mind, and the arduous monthly task of “reconciling” the account.  For obsessive-compulsives like me it can be heart wrenching.  It’s got to match to the penny.  The second thing that pops into my mind is the use of the word in the context of relationships.  Reconciling after an argument or break-up.  It doesn’t happen often these days, or too often the “reconciliation” is delivered via a sawed-off shotgun.

The sawed-off shotgun analogy works best with the current reconciliation effort underway in Washington, D.C. .  In an effort to plow through the wildly unpopular health care reform legislation, the Obama administration is considering use of a process called, oddly enough, “reconciliation”.  It is a rarely used twisting of the voting rules used in the United States Senate, that allows for a bill to be passed with less votes.  In this case, 51 instead of 60.

The thing is, it is usually reserved for, and supposed to be reserved for, budget crises that demand federal borrowing that would normally be forbidden.  The democrats are ready, willing and able to use the tool to win some sort of health care reform bill, come Hell or high water.  It has been fascinating watching the gyrations.  In the wake of the Scott Brown victory, the message from Capital Hill was that patience would rule, more discussion and bi-partisan efforts were needed.  That didn’t last long.

With Obama’s approval ratings winning the Gold in downhill, there is an impending sense of urgency as November creeps closer and closer.  Obama has chosen, apparently, the “Thelma and Louise” approach here, choosing to accept his one-term fate, accepting his second two years in office as most likely being seriously hampered by the results of the mid term elections, and putting pedal to the metal and heading straight for the cliff.

They can’t possibly not know what will happen if they ram this through.  Close to two thirds of the country is against it, or at least against it in the middle of a deep recession.  Yet this President seems oddly unmoved by that overwhelming sentiment.  It has seemed, even since he took office, that this health care bill is the only issue for which he has heart.  He just can’t seem to connect with middle-America.  We are unemployed.  Our futures are more uncertain than at any other time in our memories.  Hard working folks who have taken pride in making their own way, in not reaching out for help, are more and more incensed with the notion that what little they have left, should be given to the government to distribute to the less fortunate.

Maybe that’s the rub right there.  The “less fortunate”.  Too often, the folks who need the hand out are not at all less fortunate, but are simply folks who have chosen not to strive in a nation that was built on, and by, strivers.  I don’t know a decent person who is not willing and wanting to help anyone who is truly in need.  Someone who has fallen on hard times, by circumstance or even in the wake of one’s own mistakes.  Yet I know a lot of people who are reticent to just keep shelling it out to a government that seems to have no lucid pre-qualifications for receiving other people’s money.

I’m in the dirt business for almost thirty years now.  Never taken the handout.  This time of year, it is not unusual to work all day, then climb into a different piece of equipment and plow snow for another 24 hours.  It’s not unusual to work in excess of 36 or 48 hours without sleep.  I’m not the only one.  Lots of Americans work that hard.  We do it to provide more for our families, to perhaps set aside for retirement, or college for the kids.  But I don’t do it so I can send a check to someone else who is not willing to try.  Hence, the Tea Party movement.  Hence…lots of angry Americans.  It’s so simple, and yet our President is so disconnected he doesn’t understand it.  He doesn’t understand why we don’t want to pay millions to try terrorists in New York City.  They may not do it…but that doesn’t change the fact that he wanted to, and doesn’t understand why it is so wrong.

Reconcile?  I wouldn’t count on it.  Should the democrats decide to run the table and push through an almost incomprehensible piece of legislation, the reconciliation is going to come in the form of a complete overhaul of both Houses in November.  It may happen anyway, but it will surely happen if they decide to simply change the voting rules so as to secure the outcome they desire.  That’s not a democracy…that’s an oligarchy.

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