POLLSTERS AND POLLS, BAH, HUMBUG

         REPUBLIC INTO A DEMOCRACY OR THE REIGN OF THE POLLSTERS

In school I learned our government was not a democracy. In a pure democracy every person votes on every issue. Instead we are a republic, or a representational democracy, which means every person can vote to elect leaders or legislators, and these supposedly wiser men are empowered to pass the laws, and make the decisions necessary for running a government. A pure democracy could work only in smaller groups.  When clans gathered together into larger groups, forming towns and states, and technology allowed these groups to have food surpluses, which allowed different people to specialize in different things, some people were in charge of the hunting, some were farming, some became artisans, some soldiers, and some, usually braver, stronger, more experienced became the leaders. At first it was especially to the stronger, who often seized power, which then often became hereditary. We had our centuries of kings and despots, but eventually the demand to return to each person having a say in decisions affecting their lives, led to the idea of everybody voting on who the leaders would be, and then the leaders would vote on what their laws would be. The era of the grand republics was born. Of course I’m simplifying this, but it’s hard to condense centuries into paragraphs.

For the most part this system has worked admirably, as long as one person or group of persons, didn’t seize control, and refuse to relinquish it. If laws were passed that weren’t for the good of the group, the leaders could be voted out, and hopefully better ones put in their place. The world, and the problems each group faces, are constantly changing, which always calls for new tactics and solutions. As long as a society remains flexible, as long as it can continue to change to meet ever-changing challenges, as long as the electorate stays educated, and chooses even wiser people to lead them, they can have the best of governments. The United States was an example, not always perfect, in fact far from perfect, our Civil War an example of what can happen if we lose the path. Eventually we gatheried the strength of all the peoples who make up our diverse country to create one of the most powerful nations to ever exist. But suddenly we are standing on the brink of an era that could change all that.

With the advent of computers, and the revolution in communication technology, the Age of Instant Messaging, we are bombarded with multitudes of daily polls, on the spot analysis of what the pollsters are telling us the ‘Majority” wants. How we can ever believe their validity, when over and over again they are proven to be worthless, I’ll never know, but if our leaders start to make their decisions on the basis of these polls, instead of their own best judgments, we will have lost our republic and reverted to a democracy. I do not think this is in our best interest.

It is one thing to give everyone an equal vote to choose our leadership, hoping the majority can distinguish the dross from the gold. We know this isn’t always true, sometimes good looks and charm can outweigh wisdom and experience, sometimes it seems we even elect the village idiot to run our affairs, but for the most part, the people we elect usually rise to the occasion. And I hope they will continue to make the good judgments they were chosen to make, and not start letting the majority rule on every decision, based on whatever that day’s poll, flawed as it so often is, tells them the people want. Come on leaders, LEAD, that is what we chose you to do. Can you imagine running a household, with the children deciding, by popular vote, what food the family will buy and eat, what days they will go to school, and for how long each day, and what they will study? Can the factory line worker decide how much money a business should borrow to expand its business, or where to build its new factory? After you’ve chosen your doctor, do you try to tell him how to do the operation you may or may not need? Do you poll all your friends and then tell the doctor,” My friends say you must use method A and not B”? I’m taking it to the absurd, but when we have a poll for everything and our leaders become afraid to lead, or do so only on the basis of what the latest poll tells them “the people” want, it is equally absurd. I never hear figures on how many people they based their polls on, where the people came from, and if the numbers were statistically significant? When we are told 42 percent favor this and 44 percent favor that and 14 percent are undecided, it is meaningless. But that was one of the latest polls I heard on this morning’s news.

Enough with the polls and the pollsters! I don’t want them running our government. Even if they were infallible, and always correct, I do not want a return to every person voting on every issue. As people whose jobs lie in other directions, we do not have time to study in depth every issue; that is what we are paying our legislators to do. Even they break the almost overwhelming job into different committee assignments.

We must stay informed as best possible, we mustn’t be afraid to voice our opinions directly to our leaders, but they must still act, using all of their knowledge and not do just what pollsters, or the majority seems to tell them. I want wise people who devote their time to studying each issue in depth, in other words the person I chose to legislate and be a leader, making these decisions. If you agree with me, write your legislator, and tell him, do his job, put on his thinking camp and make decisions on the best information he can find on the issue and not what the man on the street knows about it.

       SMALLER GOVERNMENT- IN YOUR DREAMS!

Anybody whose mantra is "smaller government" is living in the past, when our country was smaller in population, and simpler in demands. Do you really want to go back to everyone having his own well, (no municipal water supply, or sewage collection), his own fireplace, make his own candles, (no nationwide power grid) and growing his own food, because there are no essential cross country farm to market roads? Do you want to give up all our highways, and trains, and planes that fly, and all the government actions that made these things possible, that keep them working with maximum safety? Do you want to go back to the danger of eating uninspected food, before the USDA and FDA went to work to save us? For years our government kept our mail circulating through the worst of conditions. There is nothing in your daily life that doesn’t depend on a functioning government, and the bigger our nation grows, and the more complicated our lives become, the more bureaus, and departments, and regulations we are going to need to keep everything working properly. The more we move about this great big country, whether it is moving merchandise or ourselves, whether for business or pleasure, the more we need nationwide laws, that allow us this freedom of movement. How would we like it, if we had to present a passport as we crossed each state border? How would we like it, if each state regulated how much of its coal or oil or water was allowed to leave its borders, and which state or states could share its resources?

We are one nation, for heaven’s sake, and if we attempt to Balkanize the United States of America by drawing lines, and more lines the UNITED states can’t cross, we will become as trivial as all the separate states of Germany or Italy would be today, if they didn’t act as a unified whole. Not only did all these separate states get together to make a unified and more powerful whole, but all of Europe is working hard to keep the European Union alive, a Herculean effort, but probably the best war deterrent there could be.

Let’s not let our powerful, most desirable country in the world fall apart because we are afraid of government, because we want to turn clocks back to a harsher time, because we believe the lies and hatreds that are being spewed by those who like to blame what ever problems they are having on anybody but themselves, and the government is often a good target. For a country as large and complex as we, and the world, has become, we need more laws and regulations, not fewer. We need to keep changing the laws, as situations change, and we need to be creative in making new ones, but every time one of our legislators refuses to do his duty of legislating, we take steps backwards. Every person that attempts to de-legitimize our government, is leading you down the thorny path to chaos and anarchy. Every politician who is afraid to legislate needs another day job. We don’t pay them to sit and do nothing, and we certainly should never vote into office someone whose program is “smaller government.”  That’s just a catch phrase that means to do nothing. It doesn’t work in the world we live in now, only in our dreams, imperfectly remembered, of an imperfect past.

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON

GRAMMAS INTERPRETATON OF THE CURRENT POLITICAL SCENE

Okay, die hard Republicans, you are probably not going to like this. I'm hoping some of you might agree with me, and I would like nothing better than those of you whom I consider "thinking" Republicans will decide it's time to take your party back!  Time to kidk the fringe element back to the fringes, and begin to listen to the wiser heads that exist within the party. 

My interpretation of what has happened to our country, struggling so to get anything done, is this. Once the reality of a Democratic sweep happened, some of the Republican party leaders put their heads together and came up with what they thought would be the quickest way to regain control, simply stymie every action the Democrats attempted to make, either by voting against all proposed bills, or threatening a filibuster, or putting out lies about proposed legislation, (the Death Panels, the compulsory Bail-Outs) or paying for ads promoting these lies. They have gone so far as to fund sound alike organizations, with look alike URL's that are against whatever their targeted organization is trying to help. If this sounds confusing, check out Rachel Maddow's show of April 23, for this amazing story. I'm sure you heard the outspoken remarks of wanting Obama to fail, even though he was dealing with situations whose failure could mean failure for the whole country. We were  on the brink of a financial meltdown, but causing the administration to fail was more important.

This furious attempt to never vote for any proposed legislation, if a Democrat proposed it, continued on unabated throughout the health care debate. The Supreme Court debate was both laughable and tragic, and we are seeing the same thing in the attempt to rethink our financial legislation to try to prevent what just happened. In a true working democracy, we would have the two parties, each with their different approaches, recognize a problem, recognize the role of the national government to deal with it, put their heads together and actively propose their different approaches, duke it out until they get something they both can agree to, and then legislate, which is what they are being paid to do. But to sulk in the corner saying it isn't my party, and I don't want anything they want, even if I did want it before, even if my revered heroes of past administrations wanted it, Now i will try to see no one gets it. This  is not a solution, this is not even a good plan, and I think a number of Republicans are beginning to see the light.

I think, I hope, we have turned a corner. I think we will get  legislation of financial reform, maybe more or less than what a lot of people really want or we really need, but like with health care, we will be taking steps to do something. I think we will not see silly arguments over the next Supreme Court nominee, and I think we will see some rapid action finally, on the immigration issue. The problems seem insurmountable with this issue, but the Arizona legislation is going to force the hands of everyone to co-operate, and to really try to hammer out something that will do its best, to be best for our country, our economy, and the people involved.

I want a democracy that works, that works like a good marriage works. In a marriage we have two different people, often with different needs and different ideas, sometimes even different goals, but the union, is greater, and more important than the individual parts. We can fight for what we want, we can do our darndest to try to make the other person see things from our point of view, but at the end, we have to reach some sort of compromise and move forward, if we want the marriage to work. The same is true of our country. Anybody who mentions secession, is like a person mentioning divorce. We fought that bloody battle once, we don't want it repeated, and we must recognize these people for what they are, philanderers roaming away from the UNITED states of America.

I am hoping at least some of you will approach your favorite Republican legislator, and urge him to forget the effort to make the Democrats fail, and remember, his primary job is to make America succeed. He;s there to legislate, not sit on his behind and threaten filibuster, not to sow discontent and distrust. Quit wasting everyone’s time and get to work!

I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!

We've heard that a lot lately, but what does it mean? Back from what, or back to what? Back to the depression years I remember as a child, back to the terrors of world War 2, back to having my husband in Korea where I couldn't communicate except with snail mail,  back to the crazy times and suspicions and ruined lives of the McCarthy era, back to the years when economically we grew stronger and stronger while our place on the throne of moral leadership for everyone aspiring to freedom grew weaker and weaker, until now, when instead of being the most admired country and people up through WW2, we are the most distrusted and even hated country in the world. I'd sure like to go back to those times when we were so proud of our country and what we stood for, I'd like to feel that pride again, and feel the admiration of most people everywhere, but we can't go back, you can never go back. Why? There is no such thing as time travel, and, we can't dictate what other people think of us, even if we do everything absolutely right. There are those who won't like what we are doing because we may be threatening their way of life, they may be jealous of our success, or they may not like to see people of another faith, or skin color succeed. Imagine that! Do we think we are the only country with prejudiced groups? We have yet to see that not being an all white, all Christian nation, might become a great advantage!

How about taking us back to a country with a balanced budget, back to a point where our expenditures are no more than  what we raise every in taxes every year? Well, I'm all for that, but we can't just "take" our country back to that position. No, we have to make it happen, not by wishful thinking, not by ''reloading" for God's sake, whatever that means, and not just by cutting social programs, always the first target of the cost cutters. Why do we always look to programs like health care and social security, and schooling, things that are vital to the lives of all, as if they were the "icing" on the cake and not the foundation stones of society. We can cut inefficiencies in any program, we can make everything meaner and leaner, we can stop throwing good money after bad when something has proved to not work. But we can't cut the repayment on the massive amount of money we borrowed in the past administration, and the only way we can get back to square one, no matter how much we cut non essentials from our spending now, the absolute only way we can recover from the over spending and under taxing of the past, is to dig in our pockets, everyone's pockets, and start taxing more. No one dares say it, it is as if tax, a three letter word has become the most unsayable four letter word, but there, I've said it, WE MUST RAISE TAXES.

To think you could take the country into a trillion dollars in debt, then leave it staggering on the brink of a depression with no hope of a quick fix, or immediate regrowth of the economy, and not have to change our life style by cutting back on personal pleasures to make up the shortfall, is hiding our heads in the sand. The people out of work can't pick up the burden, they need our help, but the rest of us can live with a little less of this and that,(and if its less junk food we will save money two ways, not wasting money on non nutritional food and much smaller medical bills), and help buy our way out of the predicament we put ourselves in. We all share in the guilt of doing the wrong thing, those who chose a path that didn't work, and those who didn't protest loud enough, but relaxed into lethargy when the money was flowing in. So quit getting angry now, its too late for anger, stop with the cries of "Take our country back," knuckle down, prepare to sacrifice a little and say, let's "Make our country back!" We danced, oh how we danced, now we have to  pay the piper. 

So much of the money is just to pay the interest on what we borrowed, nothing we will ever see results from, other than our credit rating, which is very important after all. And much of it, I hope much of it, is to move us into the future. You don't see the immediate results of better roads and trains, ports, or a new electric grid,  not while they are being built, except in creating those all important jobs, but no nation moves ahead without these things. We don't immediately see the results of the effort we put into educating our youth, but they are our inventors and innovators and people who keep the machinery working in the future. The future that is going to demand more and more skills at every level, unless we want to be the country who does the sweat shop work for those countries, who right now, are stepping beyond us. Come on everybody, lets MAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK,BACK TO THE FUTURE, the future that will be better for all of us, and, we hope, all the world.

DOLLY PARTON VS. SARAH PALIN

                                    DOLLY PARTON VS. SARAH PALIN

Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton, well hello, Dolly Parton. If you are looking for someone with wit, and charm, sex appeal, and the ability to entertain, look no further than Dolly Parton. If you want someone with a lot of good common sense, someone who represents all we can imagine as a fine American woman, with that heart of gold, who worked and won all these plaudits for herself, she is the doll. She doesn’t pretend to be anyone else, or more than what she is. I am sure she would give a hearty laugh if anyone suggested she could be, or should be the President of these United States.

Then we have Sarah baby, someone with vigor, but no staying power. She has left a trail of half finished and unfinished jobs in her wake from forever. Look at her college records. Look at her governorship. Listen to her speak. She even has trouble finishing a sentence with any sense to it. Good thing she had a cooperative hand at writing her book, or that never would have happened. But would she laugh at the idea she could be or should be the President of the United States? You know the answer to that.

So why do we as a people fail to recognize what just “ain’t fittin’, no way no how”. Dolly Parton would make a stunning ambassadress to represent our country, with her warmth and charm, thrown in with plenty of business savvy. I’ve never had the feeling you need to be afraid to cross her; I don’t know why anyone would want to cross her. But Sarah Palin has a string of bodies in her wake, the bodies of people who didn’t agree with what she wanted done, or didn’t agree with her ideas, or, in her eyes, simply insulted her.

Wake up America, listen to me! We have got to stop thinking anyone with a “little star quality” is fit to lead us in any capacity. If they have entertainment value, then let them entertain you, but if that is all they have, go no further than that. And I am one who agrees that so much of our foolishness is media driven. If all the talking heads would stop hanging on to every bit of foolishness people like Beck, and Limbaugh, and Palin utter every day, they’d be like a meteor, a brief flash, and gone, baby, gone.

THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR

I don't very often write about where we have been or what we are doing, but for this I will make an exception. It is that time of year when so many of you boaters are "heading south", and so many of you end up in Miami or someplace close by. I am urging you to give consideration to the Miami book Fair, as a must stop, on you way to where ever. Unfortunately, this year the dates coincided with the Seven Seas Cruising Association's annual Gam in Melbourne, but I am hoping this won't happen again.

 I have always loved the Gam, and the one we attended in Annapolis, in October was superb. I always credit the Gam with giving us the impetus to go to the Med, one of our life's happier decisions, but are we sorry we missed it this year? Not on your life. Will we go to the Book Fair again next year? You bet!

Our only disappointments were Barbara Kingsolver and Orhan Pamuk, who basically read from their books, and we decided, unless you are truly funny, like Wally Lamb, and Susie Essman, reading on in a droning voice is a quick inducement to sleep, at least for me. But everyone else, from Al Gore, (standing ovation), to Ralph Nader, Sam Tanenhaus, Don Senor, Chris Hedges, Norman Podhoretz, Gwen Ifill,  and the dozens and dozens more, gave us something to think about, something to laugh about, something to cheer about, and something to worry about. The world is full of great writers and deep thinkers, and this was a feast of so many of this year's best. Dave's comments as we left each all day session on the week ends, was, he didn't miss hearing another Bob Smith talk on diesel engines one bit.

 I would love to go into details about each and every session, but I think you can find it on U-Tube. Sooner or later it will appear on C-Span's Book program on the weekends. For my grandchildren and their mother's, try to see Susie Essman reading the first chapter of her book, What Would Susie Say?, about how teen agers know it all, eye roll, eye roll, and then how the roles are reversed. I don't know if it is as funny just being read, because she is a master comedienne, so if it comes in a talking book, get it. We feel that way about Wally Lamb's latest, and he does do the talking book himself. I also want  to read Al Gore's latest. That along with Friedman's book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, may give you a different perspective about what is possible, nay necessary, for our country's energy needs, including some of the downsides of nuclear you may not have thought about. Actually I want all my family and especially the youngest to read this book. it is the world they are inheriting, and if they don't get the generation in power to do something now, they are going to be inheriting maybe more than can be fixed.

 Google the Miami book Fair web site for details, you will be amazed at what was included. Vendors selling street food from around the world were on site, along with hundreds of booksellers, from new to old and every genre.

Best thing about all of this, was a five dollar admission fee, ten if you are not a senior, on the week end days, and other than the big names that spoke during the weeknights, for ten dollars a ticket, which also bought you a drink and appetizers, the rest was free.  Even parking was free. There were people who drove down from many parts of the state. They hired buses, or came as a group, staying overnight at a local hotel like Holiday Inn, on the doorstep of Miami Dade College. So all of you who live anywhere in the vicinity, put in your next year's November Calendar, to get the information on the Miami Book Fair. For the big name speakers, you must apply for tickets, (on line) which are free, but the room only seats about a thousand people, and they do run out of space. If you come by boat, anchoring by the Miami Yacht Club is very handy, a walk for the vigorous, or a short taxi ride for us lame ducks. Maybe some sort of deal could be made with them to use their dinghy dock for this occasion, without paying a fortune. When something this great is on your path of travel, it is a pity to miss it.

MORE BOOKS TO READ

If you haven't read Thomas Friedman" Hot Flat and Crowded, I have little to say to you. And if you haven't read Jeff Sharlett's The Family, you have little to say to me.

What do I mean by this? There is no point in arguing environment, or job creation, or what the future can hold, or how we boost the development of cheap alternative clean energy, if you haven't read Friedman.

And right now, if you haven't read The Family, you can't discuss with me what I find most interesting, nay fascinating, at the present time. If only Thom Friedman, or anyone who writes with his very readable, very understandable style could rewrite Sharlett's book. He needs a very good editor, so it is a bit of a struggle, ( a number of well placed commas would help), but still, so worth reading. Do so, and get back to me.