October 31, 2021 by davefiskum

A BAD MIX: THE CHURCH AND POLITICS

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Back when I served in a leadership capacity as a Governing Board member at Salem Alliance Church here in Salem, Oregon, we made a critical decision.

It was this: We declined to allow politics to infect the church. Rather, we contended, church should be about God and the role of his son, Jesus, in our lives.

It should not be about politics.

Put another way, we declined to allow the church to become just another political organization, thus perverting its real purpose.

Peter Wehner, writing for Atlantic Magazine, produced an excellent piece this week on the subject of the evangelical church and its erosion into politics. The article appeared under this headline:

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IS BREAKING APART: Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church

Wehner, a a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, often for Atlantic Magazine. He also is the author of a book, The Death of Politics : How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

Here is the way he started his piece:

“The election of the elders of an evangelical church is usually an uncontroversial, even unifying event. But this summer, at an influential megachurch in Northern Virginia, something went badly wrong. A trio of elders didn’t receive 75 per cent of the vote, the threshold necessary to be installed.

“A small group of people, inside and outside this church, coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of a broader effort to take control of this church.”

Why?

Apparently, church members had been misled, having been told, among other things, that the three individuals nominated to be elders would advocate selling the church building to Muslims, who would convert it into a mosque. In a second vote on July 18, all three nominees cleared the threshold. But that hardly resolved the conflict. Members of the church filed a lawsuit, claiming that the conduct of the election violated the church’s constitution.

Beyond the election, the church’s pastor had been accused of proposing “wokeness” and pushing a “social justice agenda” from the left of center. Not clear whether the pastor did or didn’t do this, but the allegation was enough to bring down the church.

According to Wehner’s report, what happened in this church is happening all over the evangelical world. The account above simply serves as an anecdote to describe an infection – the church becoming political.

For my part, at Salem Alliance, now about 20 years ago, my colleagues and I experienced advocacy for political activity. In one case, we faced a demand to give sermons against abortion from a right-side political point-of-view. In another case, we were asked to develop a list of positions on political issues for the church to espouse.

We did neither.

Now, surely, when it comes to an issue such as abortion, there is scriptural advice on the subject, but we preferred to allow that advice to be individual in nature, not a collective admonition on one side or the other.

At any rate, buoyed by Wehner’s article, I developed list of what ails churches today when political action becomes an overriding objective, not honoring Jesus. [The quote marks below indicate that I drew material from Wehner’s article, though I did not necessarily use the individual names of sources to whom he talked, believing it was enough to attribute words to Wehner. He serves credit for sparking my thinking.]

AGGRESSIVE POLITICS FOMENTED BY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT: The aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset that characterizes so much of our politics has found a home in many American churches. The religious right is to blame for much of the intrusion.

“The coronavirus pandemic, of course, has placed religious communities under extraordinary strain. Everyone in America has felt its effects; for many Christians, it’s been a bar to gathering and worshipping together, sharing communion and performing baptisms, and saying common prayers and participating in rituals and liturgy. Not being in community destabilized what has long been a core sense of Christian identity.

“But there’s more to the fractures than just COVID-19. After all, many of the forces that are splitting churches were in motion well before the pandemic hit. The pandemic exposed and exacerbated weaknesses and vulnerabilities, habits of mind and heart, that already existed.”

The root of the discord, Wehner writes, lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of culture and politics. Churches become repositories, not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are made sacred.

THEN CAME DONALD TRUMP: The first step was the cultivation of the idea within the religious right that certain political positions were deeply Christian when, in fact, they were not.

Then came Trump.

What he did – and wants to continue to do – is to advocate hatred and resentment as the best approach, including for many who profess to be Christians. For these people, Trump is close to a god.

“The dominance of political religion over professed religion is seen in how, for many, the loyalty to Trump became blind allegiance. The result is that many Christian followers of Trump have come to see a gospel of hatred, resentment, vilification, put-downs, and insults as expressions of their Christianity.”

THE CHURCH AS ENTERTAINMENT, NOT BIBLE TEACHING: On another side, many churches aren’t interested in Biblical teaching at all. They focus instead on entertainment, because entertainment is what keeps people in their seats and coins in the offering plate.

Further, many people rely on the media as source for teaching. They consume media, or rather the media consumes them, and Biblical teaching ends up in second place.

“When people’s values are shaped by the media they consume, rather than by their religious leaders and communities,” Wehner says, “there are consequences.

“The media want is engagement, and, for purveyors of media messages, engagement is most reliably driven by anger and hatred. And so hatred migrates into the church, which doesn’t always have the resources to resist it.”

Teaching people how to think biblically would help, as well as teaching people how to disagree with one another according to Biblical standards, Wehner writes. There is a lot of disagreement in the New Testament, and it gives us a template for how to listen to each other to understand rather than just to argue. Note the word listen.

FOCUSING ON POLITICS PROMPTS CHURCHES TO ILLUSTRATE THE SAME TRAIT THAT MARKS POLITICS – LACK OF CIVIILITY: Many Christians are not inclined to heed calls for civility. They feel that everything they value is under assault, and that they need to fight to protect it.

Trump made aggressive name-calling, cruelty and derogation the norm. Through him, we saw the once-shocking seem routine; we saw anything short of personal cruelty to be a sign of weakness.

THE ROLE OF THE SOUTH: And then there is a regional component to the crisis of evangelical Christianity.

Some of the distinctive cultural forms present in the American South—masculinity and male dominance, tribal loyalties, obedience and intolerance, and even the ideology of white supremacism—have spread to other parts of the country and, in fact, to the church.

Look only so far as the dissension Trump spread in Charlottesville and in the January 6 insurrection. Many of those involved came from churches to do Trump’s bidding.

IT’S TIME FOR THE CHURCH TO RECLAIM JESUS: Jesus now has to be reclaimed from “His” church, from those who pretend to speak most authoritatively in his name, but don’t.

Too many Christians resist Jesus call radically to rethink attitudes toward power, ourselves, and others, especially the poor and down-trodden, including immigrants.

“Unlike in the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Good Samaritan—unlike Jesus’s barrier-breaking encounters with prostitutes and Roman collaborators, with the lowly and despised, with the unclean and those on the wrong side of the “holiness code,” with the wounded souls whom he healed on the Sabbath—many Christians today see the world divided between us and them, the children of light and the children of darkness.

“For many of us who have made Christianity central to our lives, the pain of this moment is watching those who claim to follow Jesus do so much to distort who He really was. “

Even as politics threatens the church, it also is important to note countless acts of kindness, generosity, and self-giving love that are performed every day by people precisely because they are Christians and, in fact, are part of a church. Their lives have been changed, and in some cases transformed, by their faith.

So, all is not lost for churches and for their real members.

Here in Salem, for example, I see kindness and generosity in the way many individuals have rallied around refugees, including recent ones from Afghanistan who are being re-settled in Salem.

Wehner concludes: “Something has gone amiss. The Jesus of the Gospels—the Jesus who won their hearts, and who long ago won mine—needs to be reclaimed.”

October 28, 2021 by davefiskum

THINKING ABOUT THE TOUGH PROCESS IN WASHINGTON. D.C. TO FIND MIDDLE GROUND – ON ANYTHING

If you are a political junkie like me, you don’t have to wait many moments each day before you hear whether there is a chance for bi-partisan action on issues in Congress.

At one moment, the headline will be that President Joe Biden is failing to do what he said he would do when he became president, which is to find middle ground on taxes, spending, infrastructure, and social issues.

At the next moment, you’ll hear about the fact that Democrats in Congress can’t reach agreement on anything to help “their president” gain any victory.

And, at the next moment, you’ll note that Republicans in Congress have no interest in getting anything done – they just want to oppose Biden and Democrats at every step.

Then, lurking in the background – sometimes in the foreground where he would rather be – is former president Donald Trump as he angles for the Oval Office again, despite the graphic inability he displayed to grasp anything about the role of president when he had the job for a disastrous four years.

All of this calls to mind for me the difficulty to reach consensus on any tough political issue. Of course, my arena was different than Washington, D.C. – it was at the Legislature in Salem, Oregon, where I worked for about 25 years as a lobbyist. I dealt with the 90 lawmakers, as well as statewide elected officials, including the governor.

I learned a few lessons from the experience, so I summarize them here.

Finding middle ground takes hard work. Success doesn’t happen overnight or without a lot of meetings.

Finding middle ground requires the ability to “give” and to “get.” That’s what compromise is – giving and getting — with a result no one may like, but which serves the common good.

Finding middle ground requires a commitment to avoid caring about who gets credit for good work, a tough act in today’s political landscape where credit or debit appears to be the main goal.

Example: The last Republican Governor in Oregon, Vic Atiyeh, provides the best example of someone in politics who didn’t care who got credit for positive actions. He just wanted the positive actions themselves. It was a pleasure for me to work with and for him, now many years ago. But I still remember his “I don’t care who gets the credit” example.

Finding middle ground requires those looking for it to be able to recognize it when they find it. They need to keep in mind the notion that agreement on public policy matters, not just personal, client or party beliefs.

Finding middle round requires leaders and followers. If a leader displays leadership traits – traits such as honesty, forthrightness, transparency, ability to see the big picture – then following is required. Not everyone can lead; some must follow.

Example: Over my years as a lobbyist in Oregon, the best example of leadership was Senator Neil Bryant, a Republican from Bend. When there were tough issues at the Capitol – when divergent interests had to be brought together to find common ground – Bryant usually got the assignment.

I often have said that “you know political leadership when you see it,” not when someone touts that they have it. With Bryant, you saw it. The good news is that he remains a good friend today.

Would commitments such as those listed above produce agreement in Washington, D.C.? Who knows? Probably not, with all sides so pitted against each other. But, it strikes me it would be worth trying.

Too much is at stake for the reverse to occur – doing nothing as disagreement and dissension controls. Plus, on many days, it appears to me that the very basis of our democracy is at stake as Members of Congress and the president are so far apart.

So, middle ground calls.

October 23, 2021 by davefiskum

OREGON GOVERNOR’S RACE BECOMES MORE COMPLICATED

……….This will probably be the first of several blogs on the upcoming election for Oregon’s new governor……….

Complicated.

Unusual.

Exciting. (Well, for this to be true, you would have to be a political junkie.)

I have heard all those words used to describe the race for governor next time around here in Oregon.

The incumbent, Kate Brown, is term-limited and, thus, cannot run again, so many political observers believe the field is wide open.

UPDATE ON “DEATH WITH DIGNITY” LAW BRINGS BACK TOUGH MEMORIES

More people than ever accessed end-of-life drugs and used them in the year 2020.

So says the Oregonian newspaper in a story yesterday that appeared under this headline:

Why more Oregonians took their lives through Death with Dignity in 2020 than any other year

The story started this way:

“Most people struggling through the final stages of a terminal illness have one choice: Wait for the disease to play out and kill them, no matter how gruesome or painful.

“For more than two decades, Oregonians have been able to choose a different path.

“Beginning in 1998, the Death with Dignity Act has allowed Oregonians who meet certain conditions to receive prescription medications to help them end their life. From its inception through 2020, 2,895 people have used the act to get prescriptions, and 1,905 have used those drugs to die.

“Last year, a record 370 people received prescriptions under the Death with Dignity Act, according to data compiled by the Oregon Health Authority, up 25 per cent from 2019. Of those, 245 died by ingesting prescribed medications, an increase of 28 per cent from the previous year.”

All of this recalled a tough period for me and my firm, CFM Strategic Communications.

In 1994, we ran the first campaign against an assisted suicide initiative. But we lost, by a 51 to 49 per cent vote in favor of installing a new law in Oregon.

It stood then as the only assisted suicide law among the 50 states, though since 1994, nine other states have joined the ranks of those permitting the practice.

Back in 1994, given the controversial and emotional character of the new law, the Oregon Legislature, in an almost-unprecedented decision voted to send the law back out to the people for another vote. My firm was not involved in the campaign this time.

It passed by a resounding 60 to 40 per cent margin.

What that meant then – and what the new statistics mean today – is that Oregonians are decidedly more comfortable with what has come to be labeled “death with dignity.”

Here is how the Oregonian put it, using words from one of its sources:

“For over 20 years, Oregonian’s Death with Dignity Act has not only provided those facing a terminal illness the ability to avoid unnecessary suffering. It has also opened the door to more open and honest conversations about each of our wishes at the end of life.

“The result has been increased use of hospice services, better symptom management and a culture that places value on the wishes of dying individuals.”

So, why has the number of those using assisted suicide spiked upward in 2020?

It’s part of a change in the law.

Generally, people who request end-of-life medications must wait 15 days between the first oral request and the second, but new rules allow people with less than 15 days to live to be exempted from that rule. Also, people with less than 48 hours to live no longer must wait 48 hours between their written request and the writing of the actual prescription. A doctor must officially confirm the patient’s death is imminent if he or she does not complete the waiting periods.

“In 2020, there were 73 more prescriptions written than in 2019,” according to the agency in charge of charting use of the law, the Oregon Health Authority. “There were also 75 patients who were granted exemptions from the waiting periods.”

Those are patients who presumably wouldn’t have qualified for assisted suicide before 2020.

So, in the last 25 years so, have I changed my view of assisted suicide? Good question. I am tempted to say “yes” and “no.”

The “yes” is that there clearly are cases where an individual should be in charge of their own life and when it should end, given huge and untreatable diseases that rack the body and the mind.

In the early years of the new law in Oregon, a critical component was that the individual had to be able to take and ingest pills on their own, without help from anyone else. That isstill be the case, but the waiting periods, as described above, have changed.

My “no” answer is that it always is very difficult to pass a law directing personal behavior when the law applies to everyone and to every circumstance. Better, if it were possible, to design individual specifics to fit individual circumstances. Of course, it’s not.

So, overall and on balance, I end up being relatively comfortable with Oregon’s law, which does not give wholesale permission for assisted suicide, but regulates the process effectively. The last 25 years have proved that point.

October 18, 2021 by davefiskum

NOW, ABOUT COLIN POWELLM, A GREAT AMERICAN

For me and many Americans, bad news came this morning when we learned that Colin Powell, at 84 years age, had died of complications from Covid-19, though he was fully vaccinated.

I thought Powell was a great American who served with distinction in the military, including a stint as chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, the youngest ever to hold the position.

He also worked for several presidents, including as Secretary of State.

For me, though, I give Powell credit for one of the great quotes about politics, when he declined to run for president in 1996.

He said then that the main reason “was that he bemoaned the loss of civility in politics.”

The quote has stuck with me all these years and I can only Imagine what Powell would have said today, given the state of politics in this country. Today, many politicians think it is better , figuratively, to yell and scream on the street corner, to view those who disagree with you as enemies, and to put a clown like Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

Such is the civility of politics that Powell bemoaned.

There is no better way for me to honor Powell than to repeat excerpts of a story in the Washington Post this morning that marked his passing.

**********

WASHINGTON—Colin Powell, who as a retired four-star general and former White House national security adviser went on to serve as the first Black secretary of state, has died at 84.

The statement said Mr. Powell died Monday, and that he had been fully vaccinated. The statement thanked physicians and staff members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for the treatment he received there.

Former President George W. Bush, who appointed Mr. Powell to the State Department post, praised him in a statement that cited his lengthy record of public service beginning as a soldier during the war in Vietnam.

“Many Presidents relied on General Powell’s counsel and experience,” Mr. Bush said. “He was such a favorite of Presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom—twice.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who was traveling in Tbilisi, Georgia, remembered Mr. Powell Monday as “a man who was respected around the globe.”

“Quite frankly, it is not possible to replace a Colin Powell,” Mr. Austin said. “We will miss him.”

Mr. Powell’s views on military conflict shaped a national security outlook that advocated against precipitous war and was popularized in the media as the “Powell Doctrine.” It was born of his experience in Vietnam and held that war should be a last resort, with clear objectives, strong public support and decisive action.

The philosophy served him well during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, during the George H.W. Bush administration, when as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had a central role overseeing Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The use of overwhelming U.S. military force led quickly to victory over Iraqi forces, with few American casualties.

Later, in Bosnia, then-Gen. Powell opposed a U.S. intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Serbs.

“As soon as they tell me it is limited, it means they do not care whether you achieve a result or not. As soon as they tell me ‘surgical,’ I head for the bunker,” he told the New York Times in 1992.

The Powell Doctrine, which was written into the U.S. National Security Strategy issued in 1992, would face its biggest test 10 years later, as the U.S. contemplated an invasion of Iraq and then-Secretary of State Powell faced a fateful moment.

He left the State Department in 2005, two years after the start of the Iraq war, capping a career that began in the Army after his graduation from college in 1958.

Mr. Powell served two tours in Vietnam that shaped his 35 years of service in the U.S. military. He was wounded twice, falling into a bamboo trap during the first tour, causing a poisoned spike to go through his foot.

During his second tour, he survived a helicopter crash. He was awarded the Soldier’s Medal for repeatedly returning to the burning helicopter to rescue others, including Maj. Gen. Charles Gettys, in 1968.

Mr. Powell rapidly rose through the military ranks in the years following his Vietnam experience, and he served as senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger from 1983 to 1986.

In 1989, he was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs by President George H.W. Bush. At 52 years old, he was the youngest officer to hold the position before or since, as well as the first Black officer to serve in the post.

As chairman, Mr. Powell oversaw more than two dozen U.S. military operational deployments and won support for a reorientation of U.S. strategy after the fall of the Soviet Union, including a 25% reduction in the size of the armed forces. He retired from the military in 1993.

He helped launch and chaired the children’s advocacy group America’s Promise, then returned to his last stretch of government service as Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 during President George W. Bush’s administration.

As secretary, he was known for traveling less than any predecessor in 30 years. He argued that his role was to manage the department and advise the president, and he believed that ambassadors and locally based staff should take more responsibility.

Mr. Powell made prolific use of the phone, making some 1,500 calls to foreign officials in the first two years after the Sept. 11 attacks. He advocated for a strong and rapid response against al Qaeda and demanded cooperation from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Never a sports enthusiast as a youngster, Mr. Powell enrolled in ROTC while in college, inspired by the stories he had heard of World War II and the Korean War.

When he first joined the Army, the country was still segregated and even as an Army officer, there were restaurants he couldn’t go into and motels he couldn’t stay at simply because he was Black. The Army had integrated, so soldiers couldn’t overtly show their racism.

October 15, 2021 by davefiskum

THE DEPARTMENT OF GOOD QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING IS OPEN AGAIN

Both readers of my personal blog probably thought the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering was no longer open.

While its doors mostly have been closed during the pandemic, it still is one three departments I run with full and complete authority to decide how each operates.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of “Just Saying.”

Today, without fanfare, I open the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

FROM A COLUMN BY EUGENE ROBINSON IN THE WASHINGTON POST

Kyrie Irving is a thrillingly talented basketball player, a former Rookie of the Year, a seven-time All-Star and a gold medalist for Team USA. But I look forward to not watching him work his magic this season — as long as he refuses to do the right thing and get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

This isn’t the first time Irving has courted controversy. But the skepticism he and other holdouts have propagated and the wishy-washy stances even some of their vaccinated colleagues have taken, are worth addressing seriously — and not just for what they say about the fight against the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The best way to show respect for athletes as political actors and philanthropists is to push back when they’re wrong — especially when the stakes are this high.

Irving plays for the Brooklyn Nets, and the city of New York mandates that Nets players be vaccinated before they can play in their home arenas. Irving is the only stubbornly unvaccinated Net. Since he would have to sit out roughly half the team’s schedule, Nets management has wisely decided it’s best he not play at all.

Cue the violins.

I don’t respect his “choice” at all. As for why we’re “putting it on” him, we are battling together to defeat a highly infectious virus that has killed more than 720,000 Americans. We have a trio of safe and effective vaccines that slow the spread of the virus and confer miraculous protection against serious illness and death. Irving’s choice threatens not just his own health but also, should he be infected, that of his fellow players, his coaches and trainers, the referees who call the games, and the fans who come to see the Nets play.”

Comment: Yes, Irvin’s stance deserves ridicule and derision, not applause. The example he is setting – if it is, actually, an example – indicates the right decision has been made by his employers. He should not be allowed on the basketball court.

FROM A COLUMN BY MICHAEL GERSON, ALSO IN THE WASHINGTON POST

“Poor is the nation that has no heroes,” Cicero said. But poorer still is a nation with the kind of heroes celebrated on Fox News.

The nation’s leading purveyor of lethal medical advice during a pandemic (trademark pending) has recently elevated the resisters against coronavirus vaccines — an airline pilot here, a nurse there — as models of citizenship. These abstainers are risking their livelihoods in the cause of … what? Well, that depends on your view of the vaccines themselves.

For generations we’ve had vaccine mandates, particularly for childhood diseases, in every state plus D.C. Few thought to call this tyranny because communities have a duty to maintain public health, and individuals have a duty to reasonably accommodate the common good — even if this means allowing your child to be injected with a substance carrying a minuscule risk of harm.

So there can be no objection rooted in principle to vaccine mandates, unless you want to question them all the way down to measles, mumps and rubella. The problem must be covid-19 in particular.

Comment: Gerson is right to contend that anti-vaxxers – including Fox News — deserve no credit. They risk their own lives, and, what’s worse, they risk infecting others, all in the name of what they believe is personal freedom.

FROM ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

The United States was unprepared for the scope of President Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. By Election Day, Trump had spent months calling the election “rigged,” and historians and democracy experts warned of the damage that these false claims could make.

But when the president stepped to a lectern in the White House late on Election Night and insisted he’d won, many Americans were taken aback. Much worse was still to come: Trump calling Georgia’s secretary of state, asking him to find 11,000 votes; attempting to weaponize the Justice Department; and instigating the failed January 6 insurrection.

Americans are ready now. If anything, they’re overprepared. Many members of the uneasy coalition of Democrats and former Republicans who oppose Trump are frantically focused on the danger of Trump and his GOP allies trying to steal the 2022 and especially 2024 elections.

This is not without justification; many of Trump’s henchmen, meanwhile, are frantically focused on stealing it. But these watchdogs risk missing the graver danger: Trump could win this fair and square.

Trump winning in 2016 was a serious wound to the American experiment. His clinging to power in 2020 poured salt in that wound. Trump losing in 2024 and trying to steal the election would be even more catastrophic. But a straightforward victory—a very real possibility—could be a mortal injury.

Comment: I cannot think of a result worse for this country than that the epitome of a narcissist, Donald Trump, rises again.

October 14, 2021 by davefiskum

TEXAS GOVERNOR GRANDSTANDS AGAINST VACCINE MANDATES

I continue to be puzzled about why so many people, including some high-level public officials like Texas governor Greg Abott continue to rail against mandating Covid-19 vaccines.

The reality is that lives are at stake and it appears that, for one, Abbott, could care less.

To illustrate, he enacted an executive order this week barring vaccine mandates in Texas. The good news is that some major companies doing business in Texas are not complying, believing that presidential orders in favor of vaccines carry more weight.

Meanwhile, consider this fact from Texas:

“On average, about 260 people in Texas died from Covid-19 every day in the last month.”

President Joe Biden’s decision to mandate vaccines for businesses with more than 100 employees is having the desired impact. Big companies are complying, and more Americans are getting vaccinated every day, protecting themselves, their families and the world around them. New daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining.

Here’s the way the Washington Post put the Biden-Abbott contrast this morning:

“…in a misguided bit of political grandstanding, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has banned vaccine mandates in the state.

“Ideally, vaccines should not require mandates at all. They are highly effective, free and widely available. But millions of Americans are still hesitant. In a small number of cases, they can and should get religious or health exemptions.

“A larger share of people has been exposed to destructive disinformation and misinformation about vaccines, accelerated by social media. The latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates are that 79.1 per cent of eligible Americans are vaccinated with at least one shot or definitely plan to get it, 8 per cent say they probably will or are unsure, and 13 per cent say definitely not. That latter figure is down from 19 per cent in early June.”

Abbott is one of those engaging in destructive disinformation and misinformation.

The Post calls Abbott’s action “vaccine demagoguery” and “lethal partisanship.”

And, finally, from the Post:

“Republicans lately have been rallying against Biden’s vaccine mandate as an infringement on personal liberty. This is foolish logic. The mandate is intended to save lives, and thus jobs, economies, and families.

“Do the Republicans intend next to rebel against mandatory automobile seat belts? Do they think a mandatory stop at a stop sign limits their freedom? Do they dislike mandatory fire alarms? After so much loss and death last year and this, it is time to accept that vaccine and mask mandates protect us all. Let’s get on with ending the pandemic.”

The Post is right to point out the duplicity of opposing vaccines at the same time as anti-vaxxers stop at stop signs (the signs are there because the government put them there), accept mandatory fire alarms (yes, alarms were placed by the government), and pay taxes (yes, taxes are enacted by government).

A friend of mine this week expressed profound anger with this fact: At an event he/she attended, one person there was not vaccinated and that reality risked infection for others, including one person who came down with Covid-19 as a direct result of exposure.

Which illustrates that one person’s freedom – being unvaccinated – risk’s another person’s health, if not life.

I was struck this week by another routine, down-to-earth reality. We took our family dog in for his routine examination, including vaccinations. No one was there at the vet’s door to stop us or protest.

Normal every-day business? Yes.

So, I ask Abbott and other anti-vaxxers this simple, straightforward question: Why take action that literally risks lives?

Instead, just get and endorse vaccines!

October 13, 2021 by davefiskum

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A “STARTER” IN OREGON GOLF ASSOCIATION TOURNAMENTS

In a way, I am hesitant to write this blog because it is – let me just say it, about me.

Oh well! I have almost nothing else to do today, so here goes.

The subject? The role of “starter” in golf tournaments.

Interested? Perhaps not.

But, as we have seen in many professional golf tournaments, the role of starter is important. Before players tee off on the 1^st tee (or the 10^th tee) they are introduced by a starter.

In my favorite golf tournament, the Masters, the starter simply says this – “Fore please, now driving, __________.”

Simple and straightforward. No list of the player’s previous winnings, even if the list includes the Masters.

In many other events, if the player won a previous version of the tournament, he or she would be introduced by name and then by recognizing the winning achievement.

So, how do I carry out the assignment as a starter volunteering at tournaments for junior and older amateurs conducted by the Oregon Golf Association (OGA)?

For junior golfers, the idea to use a starter gives players an example of what they will encounter if they continue to play in tournaments in years to come when having a starter is standard practice. For more experienced players, they probably already know the role of starter, but they get to see it again.

In OGA tournaments, in recognition of the important role, starters always wear a white shirt, tie, and sport coat. It’s part of the dress code.

So here are specifics I try to follow as a starter:

First, I welcome players to the tee. Then, I introduce yourself. I also ask them to introduce themselves to other players in the same group. [Most regular amateurs do this automatically; with some junior players, especially, the youngest ones ages 8-11, not so much, so they need to learn this etiquette.]

Second, I inform the players about the order of play off the 1^st tee.

Third, I pass out official scorecards for the event, and, again, with the youngest players, make sure they know to fill out the cards which are specially prepared for each tournament. It’s new for many of them because the card is unlike regular ones.

I emphasize how important it is to keep score carefully on a hole-by-hole basis. And, I often tell players that golf is unlike any other sport where someone else keeps score; in golf, you keep score yourself.

Fourth, I review rules for the tournament, which, at least to a degree, are different for each tournament. [Before engaging in my role as a starter, I always meet with the tournament director to note any points he or she wants me emphasize on the 1^st tee.]

Fifth, I ask players if they have any questions and, if they do, I answer them. Or, if the question involves a specific golf rule, I don’t provide an answer; instead, I call for the tournament director or a rules official to come to the 1^st tee. As a starter, I am not a rules official, so I studiously avoid giving rules advice.

Sixth, before the tee-off time arrives, I feel free to engage in just a bit of small talk with the players, but not so much that it deflects them from doing what they most need to do, which is focus on their first shot.

Seventh, I call players to the tee one-by-one in the order on the tee sheet – and I do so at the exact time listed on the pairings sheet. If, for some reason, players are late teeing off late, I relay that information by radio to the tournament director, to rules officials and to what are called “checkpoint officials” spread out over the course The latter are volunteers who take two actions – (a) monitor pace of play in an effort to avoid slow play, and (b) take and report scores for the previous holes, so tournament officials can post scores on-line friends and family can monitor results away from the tournament site.

Eighth, after all players have teed off, I wish them well by saying something like “play well and have fun.”

So, at base, think of it this way. Without a starter in a golf tournament, the tournament would not occur. It’s that important.

But, for me, it’s more than that – it’s fun and purposeful.

October 10, 2021 by davefiskum

REVISITING A SIGNAL ACHIEVEMENT: DEEPENING THE COLUMBIA RIVER CHANNEL

I had time on my hands this morning, so I reviewed a number of my past blogs.

Soon, I came across one that described a lobbying achievement for me a number of years ago – gaining State of Oregon money to pay the state’s share of costs to deepen the Columbia River channel.

I doing this, I represented the Port of Portland and the State of Washington and the federal government also bore equal shares of the cost.

The result represents a solid contribution to the economic health of the region – and I take pride in the role I and my colleagues played in the achievement.

So, today, I post my earlier blog as I remember that is possible for good things to happen in state government in Oregon.

*********

COMBINATION OF ART AND SCIENCE WORKS TO PASS COLUMBIA RIVER CHANNEL DEEPENING BILL

All in favor of the bill say “oink, oink.”

That strange request was the culmination of the first step, in 2003, toward approval of a major piece of legislation to pay State of Oregon costs to deepen the Columbia River channel.

In many ways, it was a day like any other in the six-month legislative session. The weather outside was cold, so it was good to be inside watching what could be called “democracy in action.”

At about 10 a.m., 60 members of the House Representatives convened in their chamber to consider a roster of about 50 bills as they continued to drive toward “sine die,” the end of the legislative session.

But, for the channel deepening project, it was a special day.

At the time the bill was due for consideration on the House floor, the legislator at the rostrum was Representative Bill Markham, a Republican from the small town of Riddle in Southern Oregon. He was not known as a “policy guy.” Rather, he was a person with a glib tongue who could tell a tale with the best of them, often with a dry twist of humor thrown in.

As the bill came up for consideration, I, as the lobbyist for the primary advocate, the Port of Portland, had done what any good lobbyist would do, which is count votes. I had gotten up to 32, enough for passage, but not enough to offset what could have been erosion on the floor.

When an unpopular legislator from Eugene – Representative Cynthia Wooten — got up to oppose the bill, I smiled from my post outside the chamber, where all lobbyists gather. I knew that, as she spoke, votes would come my way simply because she did not have the good grace to sit down and shut up – and that was true on nearly every bill on any day’s calendar. She loved to hear herself talk to the chagrin of many of her colleagues.

I wish I would have written her speech as she railed against the idea of deepening the Columbia River channel.

The result: The bill passed with 40 “yes” votes.

Before the vote, to guffaws from legislators on the floor, as well as the audience gathered in the third-floor gallery, Markham deadpanned: All of those in favor of the bill, say “oink-oink!”

It was a not-so veiled reference to the fact that the bill, in addition to providing money to start the channel deepening process, included funds for three local, unrelated projects in Southern Oregon – the epitome of pork-barrel politics, thus Markham’s “oink-oink” reference.

Markham himself laughed, then watched the total edge up to 40, thus setting the stage for the bill to move over to the Senate.

The pork barrel projects benefited three legislators in key positions to influence the fate of the channel deepening bill, House Bill 2048. They were Representative John Watt, R-Medford, the chair of the Economic Development Subcommittee of the Joint Ways and Means Committee; Representative Bob Repine, R-Grants Pass, the House co-chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee; and Senator Steve Harper, R-Klamath Falls, a key member of the Joint Ways and Means Committee.

Representative Watt got funds to build a softball park in Medford. Representative Repine got funds for a pet project in Klamath Falls. Senator Harper got an extension of the airport runway in Klamath Falls.

All solid projects. And all pork.

For the Port of Portland, no problem. The votes were there to begin funding the channel deepening project.

Now, on to the Senate.

There, I only had to lobby one legislator, Senator Gene Timms, a Republican from Burns who served as Senate co-chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee. With his support, it was a done deal. No need to count votes. No would dare oppose the Ways and Means chair.

Plus, the bill was solid in its own right.

The result was that, in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, the bill passed the Senate floor and went on to the governor. In truth, I was not there to see the result; it was too late for me. I was home asleep.

But, very early on that Sunday morning, I went down to the Capitol and managed to get a look into the back door of the Senate Chamber, which, unusually, was open. Sen. Timms’ desk was at the far back of the chamber.

I was able to see papers on the top of his desk and, making sure no one was watching, I climbed over the ropes barring access to the chamber and picked up the paper on his desk. It confirmed what I hoped, which was that the bill passed. It included his Senate floor “carrying speech,” which was typically short and to the point.

The last stop was the governor’s desk and there was almost no question but that Governor Ted Kulongoski would sign the bill. Several days later, he did, armed with a letter from the Port of Portland asking for approval.

The bill was now law and specific planning could start to deepen the channel, with all of the positive economic development prospects for a port on which the entire state depends – and even the region beyond Portland, including the State of Washington. Deepening the channel from 40 to 43 feet would allow deeper draft ships to traverse the 90 miles inland off the Pacific Ocean to upriver ports, including St. Helens, Longview, Kalama, Vancouver and Portland.

A June 2015 study of the project confirmed that it was bearing fruit, five years after the work had been completed. It had produced approximately $1.08 billion in public and private investment. And another $5.15 billion was being planned in facilities and expansions along the West’s mightiest river.

The study outlined how completion of a 43-foot-deep shipping channel on the Columbia “opened a floodgate of investments at terminals and ports along the river” and gave shipping and commodity firms “certainty that ports, terminals and vessels can manage the mix of commodities and tonnage that today’s global economy requires.”

“Many terminal operators indicated that, without the deepening, they would not have invested in upgrading their facilities,” the study said. “With growing demand from China and other countries along the Pacific Rim, this would have been a significant lost opportunity for terminal operators.”

October 8, 2021 by davefiskum

HOW DUMB CAN A NATION GET AND STILL SURVIVE?

I draw this blog headline from a opinion piece by Eugene Robinson that ran in this morning’s Washington Post.

Robinson’s post fits very well with a couple of blogs I have written, though surely not as well as he does. My posts used the headline “You Can’t Fix Stupid.”

That’s right — and Robinson is right.

So, rather than edit or draw from his work, I simply post his column today with full and due credit to him. It’s worth reading.

**********

T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends “not with a bang but a whimper,” but I fear our great nation is careening toward a third manner of demise: descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy.

How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?

Read the headlines and try not to weep:

Our elected representatives in the U.S. Senate, which laughably calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” agreed Thursday not to wreck our economy and trigger a global recession — at least for a few weeks. Republicans had refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, or even to let Democrats do so quickly by simple majority vote. They relented only after needlessly unsettling an international financial system based on the U.S. dollar.

The frequent games of chicken that Congress plays over the debt ceiling are — to use a term of art I recall from Economics 101 — droolingly stupid. In the end, yes, we always agree to pay our obligations. But the credit rating of the planet’s greatest economic superpower has already been lowered because of this every-few-years ritual, and each time we stage the absurd melodrama, we risk a miscalculation that sends us over the fiscal cliff.

Today’s trench-warfare political tribalism makes that peril greater than ever. An intelligent and reasonable Congress would eliminate the debt ceiling once and for all. Our Congress is neither.

In other news, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was speaking to a crowd of Republicans at a country club in his home state Saturday when he tried, gently, to boost South Carolina’s relatively low rate of vaccination against the coronavirus. He began, “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you ought to think about getting it because if you’re my age — ”

“No!” yelled many in the crowd.

Graham retreated — “I didn’t tell you to get it; you ought to think about it” — and then defended his own decision to get vaccinated. But still the crowd shouted him down. Seriously, people?

Covid-19 is a highly infectious disease that has killed more than 700,000 Americans over the past 20 months. The Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines all but guarantee that recipients will not die from covid. I have, or had, an acquaintance who refused to get vaccinated, despite pleas from his adult children to protect himself. He got covid-19, and it killed him. Most of the deaths the nation has suffered during the current delta-variant wave of the disease — deaths of the unvaccinated — have been similarly needless and senseless.

Covid-19 is a bipartisan killer. In the tribal-political sense, the safe and effective vaccines are a bipartisan miracle, developed under the Republican Trump administration and largely distributed under the Democratic Biden administration. People in most of the rest of the world realize, however, that vaccination is not political at all; it is a matter of life and death, and also a matter of how soon — if ever — we get to resume our normal lives.

Why would people not protect their own health and save their own lives? How is this anything but just plain stupid?

We are having other fights that are, unlike vaccination, partisan and political — but equally divorced from demonstrable fact.

Conservatives in state legislatures across the country are pushing legislation to halt the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools. I put the term in quotes because genuine critical race theory, a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals, is not actually being taught in those schools at all. What’s being taught instead — and squelched — is American history, which happens to include slavery, Jim Crow repression and structural racism.

I get it. The GOP has become the party of White racial grievance, and this battle against an imaginary enemy stirs the base. But the whole charade involves Republican officials — many of them educated at the nation’s top schools — betting that their constituents are too dumb to know they’re being lied to. So far, the bet is paying off.

And then, of course, there’s the whole “stolen election” farce, which led to the tragedy of Jan. 6. Every recount, every court case, every verifiable fact proves that Joe Biden fairly defeated Donald Trump. Yet a sizeable portion of the American electorate either can’t do basic arithmetic or doesn’t believe that one plus one always equals two.

How dumb can a nation get and still survive? Idiotically, we seem determined to find out.

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Perspective from the 19th Hole

Thoughts from a lobbyist who has represented clients in Oregon and Washington, D.C. for more than 40 years.

Month: October 2021