THE STATE OF THE UNION

In the coming months, a number of our citizens who are not ideologues will take the time to reflect on their body politic over the past 2 ½ years.  These reflective voters, also known as rational readers, practical thinkers, centralists and Independents, will cancel out the political noise from progressives who expect more socialism from their President and tea party conservatives who want more individual liberty.  Those who do their homework and examine the record with an open mind will discover something encouraging about the state of the union.

They will find that since president Obama took office, our nation has made significant progress on domestic issues.  The Supreme Court has welcomed two new constitutional scholars who will hold the high ground against the Court’s conservative cabal for the next half century. The President’s economic policy has permitted the credit bubble to unwind in a measured fashion, while avoiding a second great depression. (As a stark contrast, austerity measures and bank band aids are crumbling the EU, and causing riots in Britain) The military, industrial and financial complex has been reined in by responsible cabinet members, regulation and legislation. Notwithstanding lagging revenue and high unemployment, our social obligations to students, the disabled, and the elderly have not been thrown under the bus and universal health care is a reality.

On the political front, Obama’s move from transformative candidate to transactional president has been marked by negotiation and compromise rather than ideological rants.  In this regard he reminds me of Regan and Clinton, who each in their own way knew it was their duty to serve all the people, not their ideological base.  This is not to say that the President’s election has not been transformative.  The pride of Afro Americans and other minorities is palatable.  Recognition of gay rights has exploded.  The youth of the world view the United States with its urbane President in a new and positive light.

On International policy, Obama’s approach differs from the previous neo cons in significant respects.  The President is carefully moving the country away from the war on terror, toward a domestic terror policy, where it belongs.  His administration knows that the Muslim kinship cultures of Southeast Asia and North Africa are not prepared to follow a western model to modernity and democracy.  Better to euthanize Al Qaeda, prepare a level playing field and get out of the way.  The president has treated other western nations with respect, while insisting that they contribute their fair share in policing the world’s trouble spots.

One could easily argue that most of the past 2 ½ years have centered on unwinding the mistakes of the previous administration in the wake of tumultuous new problems.  Unfortunately the former Bush mistakes have exasperated the new problems.  A careful analysis will show that the question to ask ourselves is not “how much worse off are we” but rather “where would we be, but for the actions taken.”  In the face of such an economic and international political tsunami, a defensive step backward is always better than drowning in the backwater.

ALASKA

But for a cheerful displaced cousin who urged us to visit, our vacation plans would never have included an overland trip through Anchorage, Seward and Denali Alaska.  After all, this is the State that elected Sarah Palin and all I could envision was a right wing gun culture that would make my trip unpalatable.  

My perception was wrong.  Alaskans are as diverse and outgoing as any place I have visited. This is the mysterious land of the June midnight sun, which only a few weeks later in August, is struck with the first “termination dust”, signaling a short fall and long winter.  This is a vast land where planes (big & small), trains, boats, buses and automobiles all come into play to transport natives and travelers into various venues, spread far apart. 

Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage provided our starting point and the first view of snow capped peaks.  A friendly place with a small town feel, Anchorage is just perfect for adjusting to the four hour time difference.  We took in two wonderful museums and a large weekend farmer’s and native craft market with even a booth supporting the Alaskan comic strip “Tundra”.  We began immediately to feast on “just off the boat” salmon and haddock, along with caribou. Occasional taxi and foot power are all you need for this easy to navigate town. 

We rented a car for three days to enjoy the trip to Seward on one of the world’s most scenic routes.  This is an easy four hour drive that passes Alaska’s major ski resort, Alyeska, a great place for lunch. Another stop is the Conservation Center at Portage, featuring Alaska’s big five: wolves, brown bear, caribou, moose and dall sheep.  There are also wood buffalo and musk ox reclamation projects on view.

 Seward is a charming fishing town that houses an aquarium featuring local aquatic life.  It is also the departure for an all day boating adventure in the bay, viewing sea life and calving glaciers.  We saw humpback and orca whales, sea otter, seals, bald eagles, puffins, dauphins and other unique nesting birds.  Shopping and restaurants abound in Seward. On the way back to Anchorage, we spent several hours at the Exit Glacier, which requires a fifteen minute walk and a fully charged camera.  Black bear and moose are commonly seen on this easy trek.

 Many travelers like us return to their anchor hotel in Anchorage to reboot for another phase of the trip.  This is great for checking luggage and dirty laundry you don’t need.  Early the next morning we caught our tour operator’s express bus for Denali National Park.  We elected not to stay at the Gateway of the Park and transferred immediately into a second bus to head for our back country lodge.  The lodges are not supported by the National Park Service and are privately owned.  The lodges are not inexpensive at $400.00 per person per night, but offer an incredible wildlife and landscape viewing experience.  No internet, phone or television service is available in the middle of Denali National Park.

The buses run by the private lodges are more comfortable and less crowded than the public Park Service buses.  They provide the opportunity to meet your lodge mates, from around the world, and facilitate viewing space and photography.  The drivers double as spotters and guides.  The ninety mile six hour ride is not quite as eventful as the African Serengeti, but provides some of the best wildlife viewing in North America.  On our trip in and out, we saw many brown bear, dall sheep and caribou, one moose and no wolf.  We were treated to 15 minutes of a stalking lynx and a brown bear sleeping on a stone covered caribou carcass that provided some of our best photographs.

The highlight of Denali is of course Denali Mountain (Mt. McKinley) the “great one.”  The highest peak in North America sits at the end of the Alaskan Chain, thirty miles from the back country lodges.  If the timing and weather cooperate, the sight from base to peak is magnificent.  We saw the mountain in its full glory on two of our three days.  My wife took a small plane to photograph the peak on the third day, when clouds obscured the view.

Activities at the lodges are numerous including morning and afternoon hikes, fishing, panning for gold (not a bad choice in this economy) and nature and history talks.  One morning we shed all of our layers as the temperature reached 70.  The next we were in the alpine tundra on a ridge above the lodge in a snow storm.  The grub is family style and wholesome.

At the end of our lodge experience, we returned to the park Gateway and boarded the Alaskan Railway for the return trip to Anchorage. The first class excursion cars offer glass dome viewing, standing platforms for photography and dining cars.  We saw numerous bald eagles, tundra swan, sand hill cranes, and glimpses of moose.  Again, the scenery was breathtaking.

We talked to other travelers who planned quite different itineraries, including extended cruises, small plane trips to view brown bear catching salmon, and of course fishing trips into the interior.  Small children and families appeared to be having the time of their lives. 

The overriding social perspective I took away from our experience was the conservation mindset of the Alaskan people.  It reminded me that like Teddy Roosevelt, who started our National Park system, outdoorsmen, fisherman and hunters have often led the call for preservation in our country.  Many of the eco systems are unique and fragile.  Alaskans want the lower 48 to know that saving the tundra, glaciers and salmon runs are of utmost importance.

 One can only guess why Sarah Palin is leaving this beautiful State for Arizona. The locals did not seem to mind my Obama 2012 button or her departure one bit. Take my word for it.  Put Alaska on your short list.

CONSERVATIVE ATTACKS ON LIBERAL ARTS

I have never been comfortable with anyone who believes that all the answers to moral, spiritual, economic, or political questions, can be found in one book.  Whether the book is the Bible, the Koran, Das Kapital, Atlas Shrugged or Alcoholics Anonymous, one book fundamentalism has always struck me as narrow and dangerous to the social discourse.

 I am not saying that one book can’t change someone’s life for the better, or form the basis for a positive belief system.  My point is that a “one book fits all” view of the world, taken to the extreme, results in the Italian “bonfire of the vanities” or totalitarian book burnings.  At the less extreme, a “one book” outlook makes the world appear much less complex than it really is and encourages non yielding dogma rather than rational discussion.

With these dangers of narrow mindedness, my liberal antenna has been vibrating over recently published conservative attacks on the benefits of a liberal arts education.  John Stossel argues in an ob-ed piece:  “We don’t know if students learn anything during their college years.  Do kids learn anything at Harvard?”  These attacks use the economic recession as camouflage to suggest that a liberal arts education is too expensive, benefits only the liberal ivory towers and will not produce a job following graduation.  After all, Gates & Zuckerberg dropped out of college and made billions.  Why pay for expensive professors teaching obscure topics, when an internet degree can spew practical information at much lower cost?

 Dig deeper and you realize something more sinister is at work.  John Stossel graduated from Princeton with a BA in Physiology.   He knows that billionaire college dropouts are one in a billion.  Conservative commentators would much prefer a “one book fits all” technician or a Sarah Palin clone to a liberal arts graduate. The latter has developed strength of mind and an ordered intellect by being exposed to comparative classes in religion, economics, political systems and philosophy. Not a good candidate for Glenn Beck.

Among other benefits, a liberal arts education encourages students to think for themselves.  The diverse body of knowledge gained from a four year institution, together with the tools of examination and analysis, enables our youth to develop their own opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs.  This system is based not upon ignorance, whim, or prejudice, but upon their own worthy apprehension, examination, and evaluation of argument and evidence.  Rather than the passive recipient of a hundred boring facts on the internet, a liberal arts education permits one to see the relationship between ideas and subject areas.

During this recession we may well end up with 80,000 bartenders with liberal arts degrees.  The recession will soon be over and these students will fan out over our enterprises to make us all proud.  They will be our best parents, physicians, poets, plumbers, lawyers, journalists, engineers, electricians and political philosophers, both liberal and conservative. We will be much better off than having 80,000 working technicians with internet degrees who believe the answer to the world’s problems can be found in one book.

           

REAL ESTATE REASSESSMENT

I must respectfully disagree with the O-R editorial of 7/3/11 which took the position that the recent legislative moratorium on property tax reassessment earned lawmakers applause for their action. I find their efforts not only unconstitutional, in applying only to Washington County (by violating the Uniformity Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution) but also patently unjust in that the law perpetuates the blatant unfairness of property taxes in our county and in our state.

Both Judge Wettick, in Allegheny County and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court have held that application of the base year assessment system (as employed in Washington County) results in such disparate treatment of the county’s taxpayers as to again, violate the Uniformity Clause. Accordingly, we have a constitutionally unsound law put in place to avoid coming to terms with a constitutionally unsound practice that happens to be one of the greatest tax inequities of our time.

I would be the first to admit that the finer points of tax assessment reform require some thought and research on the part of the average citizen.  The Judge Wettick and Supreme Court opinions are lengthy and difficult enough for a seasoned lawyer to follow.  In a nutshell, local Judges, like our own President Judge are compelled to follow the Supreme Court directive.  When a taxpayer or taxing body brings an action, the Judge must direct county government to begin reassessment. The Commissioners of numerous counties, including Washington, are waiting for legislative reform or for our Supreme Court to revisit and expand its opinion and establish a test for fair reassessments that will apply equally to all counties. The Supreme Court has hinted it might do so, but believes it is preferable for the general assembly to address fundamental matters of taxation. Our valiant lawmakers prefer to get reelected rather than have their voters receive a reassessment notice that justly values their property.  Unconstitutional moratoriums they can deal with, fixing property taxes they cannot.

In the middle of this game of political musical chairs the poor and elderly citizens of Washington County continue to pay property taxes that are too high.  Base Year Assessments always discriminate against owners of property in lower value neighborhoods. 

There are two well worn arguments against taking the just action of reforming property tax law.  Both inflame the public, attempt to throw cost in front of basic equality and are misunderstood.  The first is that taxes will go up and municipalities and school districts will receive a windfall.  It is true that many assessments will be higher.  It is also true, for many less fortunate citizens, assessments will be lower.  But before an actual tax increase, the higher assessment will have to be higher than the average county wide increase.  If the average County increase is 10% and a property owner’s assessment is only 8% higher, no tax increase.  Regarding revenue windfalls, there are already state laws in place to limit municipalities and school districts from unfairly raising taxes after a reassessment.  In some jurisdictions, like Allegheny County, the results of reassessment must be revenue neutral.  This means that the total amount of money school districts and municipalities collect at current tax rates cannot increase when new assessed values are assigned.

The second misunderstood issue is the cost of reassessment projects to the Counties.  We should first ask ourselves whether this expense should be assumed by state government.  This would assure uniformity and save money overall by not duplicating services.  If the state falls down and punts this responsibility to the counties, there will be significant upfront expenses to put a system in place. Assessment appeals will initially be high.  However, once the system is up and running, both costs and legal challenges will decrease.

Other states have bit the bullet and developed equitable taxing plans.  Pennsylvania can save time and expenses by studying these systems.  What Pennsylvania cannot afford to do is perpetuate an archaic, unjust taxing scheme that violates its own constitution.

IN DEFENSE OF LOCAL NEWSPAPERS

I have wanted to convey my thoughts on small town newspapers in general and the Observer Reporter (O-R) in particular for some time.  The topic didn’t percolate to the top of my list until the Facebook posts of a local politician and his cronies caught my eye.  The posts painted the O-R as biased, inaccurate and to coin a phrase: “not worth the paper it is printed on.”  This attitude struck me as immature and shortsighted at best.  At worst and by all appearances an accurate conclusion, this position smacks of another example of the misplaced conservative cultural revolution.  The self serving individual voice is more important and accurate than the journalistic voice, representing the community as a whole.

No one would argue that the O-R prints typos and occasional inaccuracies.  When I first came to Washington my wallet was stolen at the Cameron Wellness Center.  By the time the police report was documented in the paper, my twenty dollar loss had grown to a two thousand dollar theft.  Some of my new friends in Washington thought I was wealthy.  The others thought I must be a drug dealer.  In either case I had a new found notoriety.

Humor aside, what is amazing to me about the O-R is not the number of misprints, but rather the high quality of local journalism that is published, day in and day out, seven days a week, both in print and on the internet.  Fact checking and proof reading are expensive and time consuming endeavors which involve a cost benefit analysis.  Do we want all of the local news, published timely, or a mistake free publication that is shadow of the present newspaper. 

I do not believe the readers of the O-R are primarily seeking investigative reporting, in depth analysis of national and world events, or Pulitzer Prize winning journalism.  Although some of this material is available to O-R readers through the wire services, there are hundreds of news sources for this type of reporting.  O-R readers want to know what they can find nowhere else. They are interested in who died, who graduated, who got engaged and who was arrested, along with the other vicissitudes of life that reflect the character and personality of Washington and Greene Counties.  They want Editorials that impact them directly.  Leave it to other sources to scope the newest Lindsay Lohan crisis. O-R readers want to know the latest crisis facing Washington parking meters.

I have no idea what the business model of the Observer Reporter calls for in the long run.  I do know that small town and local newspapers are a dying breed because the cost structure of many publications is not sustainable.  Print advertising has plummeted.  Internet access is free of charge.  Young people do not purchase subscriptions.  I will go on record as saying that the O-R is important to my daily socialization, typos and all.  I would gladly pay an increased subscription rate or internet access fee to keep the paper viable.

Lastly, I will return to our friends on Facebook.  I pray to the Gods of Journalism that there never comes a time when the O-R building becomes a tattoo parlor and I must rely on social networking for my local news. Politicians and other hyper active types on social media, who push their individual self serving agendas, with a chorus of believers, are a frightening proposition.  This is particularly so when they attack the local newspaper.  They forward the neo con agenda of individual rights and opinions at the expense of society as a whole. “Listen to my version of events because the media is biased.”

Consider a public meeting in Washington. No one would have the time or patience to review the tweeter feeds of the Mayor, the members of counsel, the speakers, the solicitor and all the involved family members to understand what happened.  That is why we have journalists.   A good newspaper, and the O-R is a good newspaper, presents fair reporting with opinion representing all points of view.  It represents all of us, every day.

UNEMPLOYMENT & DEFICIT REDUCTION

The Republican leadership is counting on unsophisticated citizens and those who dislike the President on any account, to swallow the tea party/conservative economic fantasy that somehow unemployment and deficit reduction spring from the same set of problems and require the same solutions.  Of course this is nonsense.  The dilemma has always been that lowering unemployment requires more borrowing, lending and spending to jump start the economy.  Attacking the deficit requires the opposite.

Jobs are created through economic growth and demand for goods.  Balancing the federal budget, without raising taxes on wealthier Americans, requires the draconian cutting of federal entitlement programs and employment initiatives to the middle class and poorest of Americans. This makes less money available to grow the economy and impossible to increase the demand for goods. 

One recent example of this  point is that without the payroll tax cuts to the working poor and middle class and the extension of unemployment insurance negotiated by Congress last autumn, we would likely be facing a double dip recession.  Without these deficit increasing policies in place over the last 10 months (agreed to by republicans) there would have been inadequate individual cash flow to keep the economy moving.  To grow jobs you must grow demand by putting disposable income in the pockets of the unwashed majority.

Accordingly, it is irresponsible if not ludicrous to talk about cutting the unemployment rate and reducing the deficit through cutting entitlement programs in the same breath.  Any politician who claims to “have a plan” to do both “with the same policies” is either uninformed or untruthful, or both.  If Grandma cannot get her medicine under Medicare, she will not be shopping at Wal-Mart or buying graduation gifts for her grandchildren.

My view is that the Republican agenda is to lower the deficit on the backs of our less fortunate citizens by giving lip service to unemployment and to blame Obama for both spending too much and keeping unemployment too high.  Hopefully, the well informed independent voters who will ultimately be called upon to reelect our President will see through this voodoo economic fallacy.

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TEA PARTY MEMBERS ARE SELECTIVE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS

I have a new definition for tea party members. One who uses this title: “is a selective social democrat who believes the individual and the family are paramount to society as a whole unless a certain public policy or program benefits them or their family.”  Under this definition, ethanol subsidies are wrong unless the tea party member is an Iowa farmer. Support for higher education is an affront unless there is a student who needs it.  Universal health care is an abomination unless the bread winner is out of work and without health care.  Medicaid is socialism for the poor unless a close relative suffers from a severe handicap.  We can do without the Post Office unless the family’s small business needs 6 days of postal service.  Extended benefits for veterans are a governmental handout, unless a son or daughter is returning from Afghanistan.

            Of course, it is laughable to believe that an individual can cherry pick their political and moral beliefs.  But it is also human nature.  Unless confronted with a threat to their security and well being, people chose the easier and softer way.  Nancy Regan was a strong opponent to stem cell research until her husband suffered from Alzheimer’s. Dick Cheney had no kind words for homosexuals until his daughter announced her sexual preference. Many an NRA member renounced their membership, only after a senseless act of gun violence close to home.

            Our country faces many tough decisions in the coming months.  The budget debate and the fate of our less fortunate citizens should not be a “show down at high noon”, but rather a rational discussion about priorities.  We must let our political leaders know that we reject the nihilistic individualism of the far right, which in the final analysis, very few citizens actually want or believe in.