Category Archives: PC

Look the Other Way

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Other than ShumpleCare, Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) has been acting pretty much like a good Repuglican.

His $4.8 billion 2011 budget proposal slashed human services spending. Even the Vermont House Repuglican leader was pleased that the governor was “mostly sticking to not raising taxes and he is looking at ways to cut structural costs.”

In the wake of Irene, Gov. Shumlin eschewed the big government solutions, supporting and cheerleading community volunteers where they could help and building infrastructure where the government should. He even hired former top Repuglican aide Neale Lunderville as Irene-Czar.

And then he reminded us that he is a Big-D Demorat after all.

See, Demorats don’t believe in law. Oh, they believe in making law. But the law doesn’t apply to them unless it’s a “good” law.

Vermont state troopers made a routine traffic stop on I-89 about a week ago. In the stop they discovered that two migrant farm workers from Mexico were in the country illegally.

That’s an important distinction. The two migrant farm workers from Mexico had entered the country illegally.

Let me make that clear. The two migrant farm workers from Mexico had broken the law entering and staying in this country.

A decade or so ago, the U.S. Border Patrol, stretched thin, seconded Vermont police to that agency. In addition to enforcing all the law, Vermont police have the explicit duty to enforce customs and immigration laws. The driver of the car they stopped, a U.S. citizen, received a speeding ticket.

The staties turned the farm workers over to the Homeland Security. The Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project has branded the incident “racial profiling.” They ginned up a protest that included a human chain to block the Border Patrol vehicles from transferring the illegals to another facility for processing. Police arrested three protesters. I’m thinking they should have checked for green cards.

Reporter Stewart Ledbetter of WPTZ-TV interviewed Gov. Shumlin about the brouhaha. The governor said Vermont should “look the other way” when dealing with the illegal “guest workers” on Vermont farms. “We have always had a policy in Vermont where we kind of look the other way as much as we can.”

Gov. Shumlin said “look the other way” is Vermont policy on “undocumented” farm workers because the state dairy farms cannot survive without them.

Any end. Any means.

Apparently, I couldn’t buy any milk today unless it came from illegally squeezed teats.


“Every officer, whether judicial, executive, or military, in authority under this State, before entering upon the execution of office, shall take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation …” [Vermont Constitution]

Then Governor-elect Peter Shumlin’s big moment came when the Paul Rieber, Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, administered the oath of office:
Shumlin OathPaul Rieber: “I do solemnly swear … according to law.”
Peter Shumlin: “I do solemnly swear … according to law.”
R: “I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution
S: “I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution”
R: “Of the state of Vermont”
S: “Of the state of Vermont”
R: “And the Constitution of the United States”
S: “And the Constitution of the United States”
R: “So help me God”
S: “So help me God.”
R: “Congratulations, Governor.”

I need milk today, so I guess it is in my best interest that the Governor is a law-breaking Demorat.

UPDATE: November 4, 2011

Governor Peter Shumlin (D-VT) today announced his new “bias free” policing policy for Vermont State Police.

Vermont will commit no resources to prevent illegal immigration.

The new policy orders Vermont state troopers not try to identify people whose only suspected violation is that they are present in the United States without proper documentation; troopers clearly should investigate any suspected criminal activity.

crim·i·nal /ˈkrimənl/ Of or relating to a crime, a person who has committed a crime.

crime /krīm/ An action that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.

I’m thinking the crime here is that the governor of a state has made as policy that the state will investigate any suspected criminal activity as long as they don’t investigate that criminal activity.

Press 1 for …

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Since I speak a creole originally from an island nation, I have an angle.

I took French in grades 7 and 8. My first teacher was Madame Volkenharrrrrrrrrrrrrr who spoke Frahnsh with a combination of rolled Rs and glottal stops. I can still count in French and curse a little but my seventh grade average was a C. I attained Ds the next year.

Sensing a bad trend, I switched to Latin in ninth grade.

That seemed like a wise choice. My mother took four years of Latin. My grandfather and grandmother took four years of Latin. You have to start in grade 9 to fit in four years of Latin. I really really wanted to do that.

My second year French teacher also taught first year Latin.

Uh oh.

Yeppers, I earned Ds in Latin.

Sensing a bad trend, I switched to Spanish in tenth grade.

Aced it. Senora Reagan even called me “Querido Ricardo” in my yearbook. Wrote a nice note there. I think she wished me good luck.

Spanish is a vital language in home life, business, culture and politics in South Puffin and even up north around Miami in the United States. The Miami Herald reports that “one might expect a good report card there when it comes to the quality of the Spanish being spoken.” But the reality that educators and linguists face every day is “an atrocious Spanglish”; they want to clean it up.

I have a better idea. Why don’t the Spanish speakers just learn English?

My friend Nola “Fanny” Guay bridled at that. “There’s no shame in pidgin languages and they help foster a sense of tribal belonging and community among those. It also fosters separateness, which is probably why ‘mericans and educators/linguists want to clean it up. Preferably they’d foster belonging to the fuller community,” she said.

Nope. The paper reported it correctly as Spanglish. Pidgin is a more simplified language that traders construct from pieces of their common languages plus some new words like finiptitude they make up to fill in the gaps. Most people learn a pidgin as a second or third language as they need it. The South Florida Spanglish, on the other hand, incorrectly uses actual Spanish words plus Spanish-sounding English cognates; they end up speaking badly, adopting bad habits from the shared tongue, and trying to keep what-they-think-is-Spanish as the master language.

So why don’t the Spanish speakers just learn good English?

“‘zackly,” Ms. Guay said. “It’s okay to have your own lingo. It’s better to know what the rest of the people around you are speaking, and to communicate with them clearly. Useful, you know.”

Perhaps those educators and linguists feel guilty about English dominance and want to further fragment American society. After all, America grew strong because people could love a country that accepted them and taught them its language and customs.

I called English a creole. Old English grew first as a pidgin as the islands assimilated the Iron Age Picts, Angles and Saxons and Gaels and Danes and Romans. It became a creole language when a generation of English children learned it as their first language and later became a mother tongue in its own right. It is still the most adaptable of languages, free to accept words and rules from other tongues.

And now we have to Press 1 to speak it.

I’m perfectly happy doing business with you in this country if your robotic auto-attend asks me politely to Press 1 for Spanish or French or Moonese. As long as the default selection is English.

Bloody Hell, Part 1

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It’s the media’s fault.

It’s the Tea Party’s fault.

It’s the Demorat’s fault.

I have spent the last week or so watching the news coverage and Innertoob noodlings that blamed pretty much everyone but the Man in the Moon for the Arizona shootings.

I’m tired of the Blame Game.

Paul “Buster” Door, a now-retired North Puffin car dealer and Democratic party official, has spent the entire time railing at me about the “climate of hate and blame” that set Jared Loughner off on his path of disintegration. “Dupnik proved his case without lifting a finger,” he said about Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. “And now the Party of Hate and Violence has turned its lie machine loose on him.”

Hello?

Buster doesn’t think the lie machine will get much traction there in southern Arizona where the 75-year old “anti-Sheriff Joe” has been re-elected seven times since 1980.

“The lunatic right-wing conspiracy theorists created the atmosphere that drove Loughner to act,” he said. “Their Dupnik spin comes through loud and clear about how hard they’re working to ‘prove’ their conspiracy theory about Mr. Loughner’s actions.”

Right wing conspiracy theories? Hello?

The NY Times reported that Mr. Loughner’s comments were “strikingly similar in language and tone” to the voices of the Internet’s more paranoid, extremist, right-wing militia writers. The NY Times.

I did have to correct Buster a few other times on the facts in a conversation he started about the wonderfulness of the sheriff.

Arizona seems to be the national capitol for wack jobs. Sheriff Dupnik comes through loud and clear, alright. Last year he said out loud that he would refuse to enforce his state’s immigration law. This year, when he should have been investigating the shootings, he spent his time building the defense’s “debbil made me do it” case by telling everyone who would listen that it was all the fault of the right wing media.

I can understand why Buster want this guy for his sheriff. I don’t understand why anyone else would.

To set the record straight, over the past week even the MSM news admitted that if Mr. Loughner is political at all, he leans left. Funny thing about jumping to conclusions.

“Since we’re engaging in sophistry,” Buster said “Dupnik’s comment was simply that, should the bill become law, he wouldn’t enforce it.”

No sophistry. Dupnik said he wouldn’t enforce the law.

Period. Paragraph.

“Nice job trying to steer the discussion from the real point,” Buster said “and off into a total non issue.”

We do agree on that. It’s what leftwingnuts do.

See, every single MSM outlet including the NY Times jumped all over Mr. Loughner as driven by “that hateful national political rhetoric” that drove his murderous fantasies. And, in spite of what the ongoing investigation shows, Buster still want to blame “that hateful national [conservative] political rhetoric” for the murders instead of blaming Mr. Loughner.

A. Man. Killed. Six. People.

But Buster keeps pushing “that hateful national [conservative] political rhetoric.”

A. Man. Killed. Six. People.

But Bernie Sanders is fund raising to combat “that hateful national [conservative] political rhetoric.”

A. Man. Killed. Six. People. He killed 9-year-old Christina Green and Federal Judge John Roll and wounded 14 others, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, his apparent target.

But all Buster can talk about is us hateful conservatives and our rhetoric.

It’s what leftwingnuts do when they can’t dispute the facts.

So Buster changed the subject.

“You saw that Sarah Palin got into it, right?” he asked. “She deliberately riled up her gun nuts with that reprehensible comment about the mainstream ‘journalists and pundits [who] manufactured a blood libel to incite hatred and violence against them.”

I know the stories that Jews used human blood and the particularly blood of innocent Christian children to bake the matzos of Passover. I didn’t remember the term “blood libel” nor did I associate it with the Jews when I did.

I’m a pretty fair country wordsmith and I use metaphor and allegory in most teaching and most of my editorial writing. “Blood libel” is not a word pairing I would have dreamt up so I have to believe Ms. Palin’s speech writers knew exactly what it meant.

Blood libel is, frankly, no worse than Mr. Obama calling Congressional Repuglicans “hostage takers” then offering to negotiate with them. Sends terrorists a great message that does. Blood libel is, frankly, no worse than calling a budget bill a “rape of the American people.” There wasn’t a woman in America untouched by that statement. Blood libel is, frankly, no worse than Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) saying “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him” about then candidate and now Governor Rick Scott (R-FL).

Mr. Kanjorski issued a pretty explicit call to violence. And yet. And yet Buster and Jon Stewart ignored it. If Rep. Joe “you lie” Wilson had called for Nancy Pelosi to be put against a wall and shot, the Demorats and the MSM would have eaten his shorts.

This is a bad trend. Next thing you know, we’ll start equating our politicians to Catholic priests.

It’s what leftwingnuts do when they can’t dispute the facts.

This column started out spinning the giant Blame Game wheel. Let’s see where the ball landed.

It’s the media’s fault. Yeppers.

It’s the Tea Party’s fault. Sho ’nuff.

It’s the Demorat’s fault. Exactly.

That’s all true but the real truth is simple. It’s your fault.

You, dear reader, buy the newspapers. You, dear reader, tune to those television stations. You, dear reader, spread these exaggerations and untruths. And the media, the political parties, and your neighbors echo you.

What a Disaster!

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Policemen police. Runners run. Writers write. And we all look over our own shoulders now and then.

This week I write about what I missed. And what I didn’t.

I cherish a few beliefs about myownself. This blog isn’t about me. These columns are what Faux News calls fair and balanced. And I AM™ never w-r-r-rong.

OK. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Last month, in writing about millionaires, I admitted that I’d rather be a millionaire than not. I’m not going to increase my personal wealth much by putting a Paypal button on this site. The week before that, I confessed that I now understand why liberals don’t geddit. And just two weeks before, I told the story of my mom at the corner of High and Gay.

This is my 333 entry since I started blogging in 2008. 220 of them have been in the op-ed category I call Random Access. Many of those (151) fell in the Politics and News category. I imagine you can figure out what topics I covered.

“Politics is like the weather,” I wrote in 2008. “Everybody talks about it. People think they can predict the weather. Or change it.”

The pieces that had more impact were more personal. 2010 was a busy year. Liz Arden sent me a family picture of herself with her parents and I riffed that into a story about my mom as an elderly woman who could have been slain by a taxi. We learned that “full” in a small town parking lot is different than “full” in Miami or New York. gekko and I wrote an ongoing series together.

My family didn’t have a lot of stuff when I was growing up. We had a boat but not a lot of cash. My dad’s job was the typical junior exec and we shared the homestead with my grandfather; we all had to work for what we did have. I came out of that feeling depraved but not deprived.

Rufus missed [bleep]ing Asbestos Dust back in May. He was amazed. The rest of us about died. A week earlier, I had written that “Kids aren’t allowed to eat dirt.” Number One daughter had been banned from classes because she wore a t-shirt to school.

I did spend some time wondering why my friend Swampy Swamtek, with all his brainpower, with all his education, with all his belief in conservation, can’t remember to turn out the lights when he leaves a room. I remembered that, since the heady days of Apollo 13 forty years ago, no man has had to walk twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill, barefoot. Both ways. According to this president’s plan no American man ever will again.

And I took some time off from worrying about the claim that women’s hot flashes are responsible for Global Warming to reminisce about my sports car races in the 70s.

I somehow missed the fact that the Mets did not make the World Series. I didn’t once write about the United/Continental airline’s merger that brought together 700 planes, dropped employment from 88,000 to 77,000, and shared 7 bags of 2003 peanuts among us. Airlines put fares up $20 across the board. I never once mentioned Christine O’Donnell’s Rhodes Scholarship in comedy which is at least as credible as her candidacy turned out to be.

I’ll keep hammering the small town politicians who want you to believe that paying twice as much for half as many police officers in your town is a way to save you (tax) money. And when Congress acts on H.R.6907, a measure to ban further activity at Eyjafjallajökull, you’ll hear about it here first. Most important, in the spirit of WikiLeaks, pretty much everything personal rattling around between my ears will sooner or later fall out on these pages.

Politics is like the climate. Everybody talks about it. People think they can predict the climate. Or change it.

People’s Republic of Vermont

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While North Puffin joined much of the country in leaning more to the right, Vermont Democrats won the guv’s office and will continue to strongarm the Legislature. Dems will control the Senate, 21-8, and have a 94-47 majority over Repugs in the House. The People’s Republic of Vermont, long envisioned by Howard Dean and Cheryl Rivers, has finally come to be.

Turnout was high across Vermont yesterday; towns around North Puffin posted record numbers of voters at the polls. It didn’t help.

You know about all the states banning ObamaCare? In Vermont, Peter Shumlin and Company’s first move will be to pass the entire 12,000 page federal act as a state law. They will make some changes, though. None of the namby-pamby “you have to buy private insurance” rules. ShumpleCare will ban private insurers.

Don’t be surprised if your taxes go up a skoch.