By MARSHA MERCER
Washington rarely surprises anyone these days – not in the age of Twitter, wall-to-wall media coverage and strategic leaking.
When the president or Congress acts, many of us react with a shake of the head. “Ho hum. There they go again.”
But the Supreme Court proved Thursday that government can defy conventional wisdom, baffle the big brains in the news business and keep a secret. It can even do the right thing.
In its most highly anticipated ruling in decades, the court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s chief domestic achievement. The law will enable tens of millions of Americans to get health care. It reframes the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. And the announcement came off without even a drop of news in advance.
The ruling disappointed Republicans, buoyed Democrats and astonished everybody – even those covering the event.
“Supreme Court finds health care individual mandate unconstitutional” trumpeted Fox News. “Mandate struck down,” proclaimed CNN. Other news organizations grabbed the headlines and ran with them.
Except, of course, the court didn’t and the mandate wasn’t.
Virtually no one except the nine justices and some court employees sworn to secrecy imagined that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a staunch conservative, would join with the court’s liberal wing and be the pivotal figure in keeping “Obamacare” alive. The vote was 5 to 4.
The news media caught and quickly corrected the fast and spurious headlines, but the goofs reflect more than the hair trigger of today’s news business. Read 193 pages of opinion? Who can devote the time? Just spit it out in 140 characters.
But this 5 to 4 vote wasn’t a sports score. Roberts’ ruling was as thoughtful and complicated as it was significant. He first sided with the court’s conservatives in rejecting the Obama administration’s main claim that the individual mandate, which requires most people to purchase insurance in 2014 or pay a penalty, was permissible because the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. That vote was also 5 to 4.
Then, Roberts wrote, the penalty “may reasonably be characterized as a tax.” Congress can tax and spend, he wrote.
And “it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”
When the legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act were filed in 2010, most analysts thought the challenges were frivolous. Opinion shifted 180 degrees after oral arguments in March, when several justices asked tough questions of the government’s lawyer, solicitor general Donald Verrilli.
Before Thursday, the disappointment among the law’s supporters was so keen that the blame game for the law’s demise had already begun. The law’s supporters said Obama, a former constitutional law professor, and congressional Democrats should have realized the mandate would not pass constitutional muster.
It did, but not instantly.
Similarly, regarding Medicaid, the chief justice seemed at first to say the court was throwing out the law’s major expansion of the program that provides health care for the poor. Instead, the court left the expansion intact but stopped the government from pulling all existing Medicaid funds from states that choose not to participate in the expansion.
The health care ruling came as more Americans doubt the court’s even-handedness. In April, only 52 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of the court, the lowest level in 25 years, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
Roberts, anticipating critics, emphasized that the court’s role was not to endorse or reject specific policies.
“We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the nation’s elected leaders. We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions,” he wrote.
With polls showing many Americans disapprove of the mandate, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said the only way to get rid of Obamacare is to defeat the president in November. Romney promises to begin the process of repealing the law on his first day in office.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans vowed to renew their efforts to repeal the law. A vote in the House is scheduled for July 11. It’s another show vote that will go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Ho hum. There they go again.
©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Enough crust already -- it's time for Romney and Obama to roll out policy -- June 21, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wrapped up a bus tour of rural America in Michigan, where he rolled out a crust for an Honest Abe cherry-apple pie. When it came to policy, though, the five-day trip offered only crumbs.
President Barack Obama flew to an international summit in Mexico that yielded moody photos of the president on the world stage along with reassuring words about progress – and little of substance.
To hear Romney talk, Obama is a job-killing big spender who wants to put America on the path to Europe. Obama contends that Romney wants to slash taxes for the wealthiest while cutting the jobs of teachers, firefighters and police. Fact checkers say both camps are stretching the truth.
For voters who are sick of the endless “trust me – not him” attacks -- and that’s most of us, right? -- there’s good news. The stars may be aligning to force Obama and Romney to show their policy hands.
The Supreme Court likely will issue blockbuster decisions this week on health care and immigration. If, as many analysts expect, the court strikes at least part of the Affordable Care Act, Obama will be called on to explain the next phase of his health reform strategy.
Publicly, the president says he believes the law will be upheld and has made no contingency plans. At fundraisers behind closed doors, however, he reportedly has said he won’t give up on reform. He needs to tell the rest of us his plans.
Romney promises to repeal “Obamacare” his first day in office, but he also promises to save the most popular parts of the law, such as parents’ insurance coverage for children up to age 26. Romney has been vague about whether he’ll ensure that people with pre-existing conditions are covered under his plan. He will be pressed on how his plan would work, absent the linchpin of the individual mandate, which requires everyone to purchase insurance, spreading the cost.
On immigration, Obama showed the power of the incumbency last week when he announced that his administration would stop deporting young people who were brought to this country illegally as children, if they meet certain conditions. Up to 1.4 million children and adults who are in the country illegally could benefit from the change, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly two-thirds of likely voters support the change, a Bloomberg poll found.
Romney, who took a hard line during the primaries against illegal immigration, is heading for a kinder, more bipartisan stance. The immigration plan he sketched Thursday included more favorable treatment for “the best and brightest” immigrants and a path to citizenship for military veterans. Romney needs to say whether he would repeal Obama’s non-deportation rule.
Raising the stakes on immigration will be the Supreme Court’s decision on Arizona’s strict immigration law. The Obama administration challenged the 2010 law that requires police officers to ask for immigration papers if the officers believe individuals they’ve stopped are illegal immigrants. Other provisions make not carrying immigration papers and unauthorized work crimes.
Although Nov. 6 is nearly five months away, the calendar also prods Romney and Obama to focus on issues. Thirty-two states allow early voting, and the start dates vary. Voting begins in Iowa Sept. 27. That’s fewer than 100 days away.
Iowa is one of the swing states Obama won last time that Romney visited on his “Every Town Counts” bus tour. The Obama administration released a 32-page report touting its help for rural areas, and the Obama campaign promises an unprecedented ground game in the battleground state.
In a close election, analysts say, rural voters in a few swing states could determine who wins the White House, or Hispanic voters could, or African American or gay voters.
One thing does unite voters as we choose the next president, and that’s the need to look past clever slogans and symbols. Policy may not be as easy as pie, but it matters a lot more.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wrapped up a bus tour of rural America in Michigan, where he rolled out a crust for an Honest Abe cherry-apple pie. When it came to policy, though, the five-day trip offered only crumbs.
President Barack Obama flew to an international summit in Mexico that yielded moody photos of the president on the world stage along with reassuring words about progress – and little of substance.
To hear Romney talk, Obama is a job-killing big spender who wants to put America on the path to Europe. Obama contends that Romney wants to slash taxes for the wealthiest while cutting the jobs of teachers, firefighters and police. Fact checkers say both camps are stretching the truth.
For voters who are sick of the endless “trust me – not him” attacks -- and that’s most of us, right? -- there’s good news. The stars may be aligning to force Obama and Romney to show their policy hands.
The Supreme Court likely will issue blockbuster decisions this week on health care and immigration. If, as many analysts expect, the court strikes at least part of the Affordable Care Act, Obama will be called on to explain the next phase of his health reform strategy.
Publicly, the president says he believes the law will be upheld and has made no contingency plans. At fundraisers behind closed doors, however, he reportedly has said he won’t give up on reform. He needs to tell the rest of us his plans.
Romney promises to repeal “Obamacare” his first day in office, but he also promises to save the most popular parts of the law, such as parents’ insurance coverage for children up to age 26. Romney has been vague about whether he’ll ensure that people with pre-existing conditions are covered under his plan. He will be pressed on how his plan would work, absent the linchpin of the individual mandate, which requires everyone to purchase insurance, spreading the cost.
On immigration, Obama showed the power of the incumbency last week when he announced that his administration would stop deporting young people who were brought to this country illegally as children, if they meet certain conditions. Up to 1.4 million children and adults who are in the country illegally could benefit from the change, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly two-thirds of likely voters support the change, a Bloomberg poll found.
Romney, who took a hard line during the primaries against illegal immigration, is heading for a kinder, more bipartisan stance. The immigration plan he sketched Thursday included more favorable treatment for “the best and brightest” immigrants and a path to citizenship for military veterans. Romney needs to say whether he would repeal Obama’s non-deportation rule.
Raising the stakes on immigration will be the Supreme Court’s decision on Arizona’s strict immigration law. The Obama administration challenged the 2010 law that requires police officers to ask for immigration papers if the officers believe individuals they’ve stopped are illegal immigrants. Other provisions make not carrying immigration papers and unauthorized work crimes.
Although Nov. 6 is nearly five months away, the calendar also prods Romney and Obama to focus on issues. Thirty-two states allow early voting, and the start dates vary. Voting begins in Iowa Sept. 27. That’s fewer than 100 days away.
Iowa is one of the swing states Obama won last time that Romney visited on his “Every Town Counts” bus tour. The Obama administration released a 32-page report touting its help for rural areas, and the Obama campaign promises an unprecedented ground game in the battleground state.
In a close election, analysts say, rural voters in a few swing states could determine who wins the White House, or Hispanic voters could, or African American or gay voters.
One thing does unite voters as we choose the next president, and that’s the need to look past clever slogans and symbols. Policy may not be as easy as pie, but it matters a lot more.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Campaign summer debate: the bacon sundae -- June 14, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
My fellow Americans, we meet today to note a milestone in American food history.
The wizards who brought us monster sandwiches, pizza crusts stuffed with pasta, and tubs of soda big enough for regattas are out with a new temptation. They’ve married sweet and salty, cream and crunch, fat and fatter. It’s the bacon sundae, brought to you by Burger King as part of its summertime menu.
Most of us were blissfully unaware that ice cream and bacon even knew each other, let alone that they enjoy a close personal relationship and have moved in together.
The BK bacon sundae is soft-serve vanilla ice cream drizzled with caramel and chocolate fudge, sprinkled with bacon crumbles, and topped with an insouciant thick strip of hardwood-smoked bacon. It costs 510 calories, 18 grams of fat, 61 grams of sugar and about $2.49 plus tax.
Naturally in this political summer, the dessert is controversial. Its fans say everything tastes better with bacon. Critics say we’re already too fat, and we don’t need help clogging our arteries. Yes it does. Yes we are, and no we don’t.
Can’t we all get along?
The outrage over the bacon sundae – obesity is America’s No. 1 health issue; how could they? – is misplaced. Fast food is a business. The marketplace – that’s all of us -- will decide whether Burger King is smokin’ or flaming out.
Going burger to burger against McDonald’s, BK retired the king from company logos, reportedly to attract women and younger customers. Hmm. This spring, it introduced truffle burgers in Hong Kong. A private equity firm led by Brazilian billionaires took over Burger King in 2010, but the company is about to go public again.
Denny’s offered a bacon maple sundae last year during its Baconalia promotion. Bacon sundaes may not be health foods, but they do generate buzz.
And nobody has to purchase the dessert.
As for sugar content, giant soft drinks pack more sugar wallop than the decadent bacon sundae. A 30-ounce Classic Coke provides 77 grams of sugar and the 40-ounce delivers 102 grams of sugar, according to BK’s nutrition information.
There’s something very American about this particular melting pot of sweet and savory flavors.
Archaeologists say people living in what’s now Turkey domesticated the first pigs 10,000 years ago. Did they also discover bacon? The Chinese claim Emperor Tang (618 to 697 A.D.) invented a version of ice cream. Venetian explorer Marco Polo may have brought it back to Europe in the 13th century, or that may be myth.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both served ice cream and bacon, but never the twain did meet, as far as we know.
“Virginia ladies value themselves on the goodness of their bacon,” Washington wrote the Marquis de Lafayette in June 1786. Really, George?
Several American cities argue over which one invented the sundae. Ithaca, N.Y., says it was first in 1892.
Growing up with bacon and eggs, many Americans have strong views about bacon. On this side of the Atlantic, we insist on crisp strips -- no limp bacon here. Maybe that says something about American drive and determination or maybe it’s just about cooking time.
Any day now, I expect to see President Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney bring the bacon sundae to the campaign trail, rhetorically at least.
What this campaign needs is another Clara Peller, the diminutive octogenarian who charmed the country in 1984 with her whiny question: “Where’s the beef?”
The question -- from Wendy’s TV ads for its hamburgers -- became a catch phrase of that year’s presidential campaign. During the Democratic primaries, Vice President Walter F. Mondale, not particularly known for his wit, told Gary Hart in a debate that his vague promises about new ideas reminded him of the commercial.
“Where’s the beef?” Mondale asked.
In case you’re wondering, I won’t be indulging in any bacon sundaes. When I need a bacon fix, I’ll stick to what can be the world’s best summer sandwich, the BLT on toast. With mustard.
You can have yours with mayonnaise. It’s a free country.
(C) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
My fellow Americans, we meet today to note a milestone in American food history.
The wizards who brought us monster sandwiches, pizza crusts stuffed with pasta, and tubs of soda big enough for regattas are out with a new temptation. They’ve married sweet and salty, cream and crunch, fat and fatter. It’s the bacon sundae, brought to you by Burger King as part of its summertime menu.
Most of us were blissfully unaware that ice cream and bacon even knew each other, let alone that they enjoy a close personal relationship and have moved in together.
The BK bacon sundae is soft-serve vanilla ice cream drizzled with caramel and chocolate fudge, sprinkled with bacon crumbles, and topped with an insouciant thick strip of hardwood-smoked bacon. It costs 510 calories, 18 grams of fat, 61 grams of sugar and about $2.49 plus tax.
Naturally in this political summer, the dessert is controversial. Its fans say everything tastes better with bacon. Critics say we’re already too fat, and we don’t need help clogging our arteries. Yes it does. Yes we are, and no we don’t.
Can’t we all get along?
The outrage over the bacon sundae – obesity is America’s No. 1 health issue; how could they? – is misplaced. Fast food is a business. The marketplace – that’s all of us -- will decide whether Burger King is smokin’ or flaming out.
Going burger to burger against McDonald’s, BK retired the king from company logos, reportedly to attract women and younger customers. Hmm. This spring, it introduced truffle burgers in Hong Kong. A private equity firm led by Brazilian billionaires took over Burger King in 2010, but the company is about to go public again.
Denny’s offered a bacon maple sundae last year during its Baconalia promotion. Bacon sundaes may not be health foods, but they do generate buzz.
And nobody has to purchase the dessert.
As for sugar content, giant soft drinks pack more sugar wallop than the decadent bacon sundae. A 30-ounce Classic Coke provides 77 grams of sugar and the 40-ounce delivers 102 grams of sugar, according to BK’s nutrition information.
There’s something very American about this particular melting pot of sweet and savory flavors.
Archaeologists say people living in what’s now Turkey domesticated the first pigs 10,000 years ago. Did they also discover bacon? The Chinese claim Emperor Tang (618 to 697 A.D.) invented a version of ice cream. Venetian explorer Marco Polo may have brought it back to Europe in the 13th century, or that may be myth.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both served ice cream and bacon, but never the twain did meet, as far as we know.
“Virginia ladies value themselves on the goodness of their bacon,” Washington wrote the Marquis de Lafayette in June 1786. Really, George?
Several American cities argue over which one invented the sundae. Ithaca, N.Y., says it was first in 1892.
Growing up with bacon and eggs, many Americans have strong views about bacon. On this side of the Atlantic, we insist on crisp strips -- no limp bacon here. Maybe that says something about American drive and determination or maybe it’s just about cooking time.
Any day now, I expect to see President Obama or his Republican challenger Mitt Romney bring the bacon sundae to the campaign trail, rhetorically at least.
What this campaign needs is another Clara Peller, the diminutive octogenarian who charmed the country in 1984 with her whiny question: “Where’s the beef?”
The question -- from Wendy’s TV ads for its hamburgers -- became a catch phrase of that year’s presidential campaign. During the Democratic primaries, Vice President Walter F. Mondale, not particularly known for his wit, told Gary Hart in a debate that his vague promises about new ideas reminded him of the commercial.
“Where’s the beef?” Mondale asked.
In case you’re wondering, I won’t be indulging in any bacon sundaes. When I need a bacon fix, I’ll stick to what can be the world’s best summer sandwich, the BLT on toast. With mustard.
You can have yours with mayonnaise. It’s a free country.
(C) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Good morning, Vietnam -- June 6, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
It’s the 50th anniversary of a war most people would rather forget. So, with typical American subtlety and restraint, we’ve plunged into public commemorations that will last 13 years.
Yes, you read that right. For the next 13 years, the federal government will join with local governments, private groups and communities across the country in events aimed at ensuring we remember the Vietnam War.
Congress authorized the 50th anniversary commemoration and President Barack Obama signed a presidential proclamation last month, starting the clock on Memorial Day and ending it on Veterans Day 2025.
That’s a long hello to a tumultuous era. By the time it’s over, the oldest boomers, born in 1946, the once-young pups who vowed not to trust anyone over 30, will be pushing 80.
Half a century after the war started, Americans are haunted by the shoddy treatment some who served in Vietnam received when they came home. It was “a national shame, a disgrace that should never have happened,” Obama said in his Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The president seemed poised to repeat the familiar claim that returning servicemen were spat upon. He didn’t, and we’ll have 13 years to argue about that.
Jerry Lembcke, a sociologist and 1969 Vietnam vet, researched the claims for his 1998 book, “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam.” Lembcke found not one verifiable instance of spitting and has been trying to convince people ever since.
“Stories of spat-upon Vietnam veterans are bogus,” Lembcke wrote in the Spring 2003 issue of “The Veteran,” published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “Born out of accusations made by the Nixon administration, they were enlivened in popular culture (recall Rambo saying he was spat upon by those maggots at the airport) and enhanced in the imaginations of Vietnam-generation men – some veterans, some not.”
Make no mistake, though, even if returning vets escaped saliva, they weren’t routinely welcomed home by strangers bearing bouquets, hugs and kisses.
Honoring Vietnam veterans is the right thing to do, but how? If we’re serious, we will make sure the vets have solid benefits and the finest of medical care. We shouldn’t just pretend we care with pretty words and parades.
Plus, more than 1,600 American soldiers are still missing in Vietnam. New efforts are underway to find their remains. That’s important work.
Vietnam was wrenching, and the commemoration will force us to confront its ugliness. We lost trust in our leaders and institutions, and it never came back. We’ll hear again about napalm, Agent Orange, Lt. William Calley and the My Lai massacre, and other war crimes and atrocities.
The wall at the Vietnam memorial starts low and rises ever higher until it towers over visitors, a graphic illustration of the escalation of the conflict and its toll. The wall is dated 1959 to 1975, but a name of someone who died in 1957 was added later. Every year a few more names of war-related deaths are chiseled in the black granite.
Critics will say the commemoration is a cover for politicians who haven’t served in the military. This is the first presidential election since 1944 in which neither presidential candidate is a veteran.
Emphasis on Vietnam naturally focuses on the presidential candidates. Like most people 50 and younger, Obama, born in 1961, has few wartime memories. Romney, born in 1947, first supported the war and later changed his mind. A May 1966 photo has surfaced, showing Romney, 19 and neatly dressed, picketing a sit-in against the draft by anti-war protesters.
Two months later, though, he received a draft deferment as a “minister of religion” and kept it until February1969, according to the Associated Press. During most of that time he was a Mormon missionary in France. Afterward, a high lottery number kept him from the draft.
From Hanoi this week came news that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and his Vietnamese counterpart had exchanged “artifacts” from the war -- letters from an American soldier killed in 1969 and a Vietnamese soldier’s diary.
Artifact is an awfully cold word for someone’s handwritten, heart-felt thoughts.
I hope that commemorative events over the next 13 years remind us that soldiers in any war are young people who love, hope and dream. They fight for all of us. And some never get the chance to grow old.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
It’s the 50th anniversary of a war most people would rather forget. So, with typical American subtlety and restraint, we’ve plunged into public commemorations that will last 13 years.
Yes, you read that right. For the next 13 years, the federal government will join with local governments, private groups and communities across the country in events aimed at ensuring we remember the Vietnam War.
Congress authorized the 50th anniversary commemoration and President Barack Obama signed a presidential proclamation last month, starting the clock on Memorial Day and ending it on Veterans Day 2025.
That’s a long hello to a tumultuous era. By the time it’s over, the oldest boomers, born in 1946, the once-young pups who vowed not to trust anyone over 30, will be pushing 80.
Half a century after the war started, Americans are haunted by the shoddy treatment some who served in Vietnam received when they came home. It was “a national shame, a disgrace that should never have happened,” Obama said in his Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The president seemed poised to repeat the familiar claim that returning servicemen were spat upon. He didn’t, and we’ll have 13 years to argue about that.
Jerry Lembcke, a sociologist and 1969 Vietnam vet, researched the claims for his 1998 book, “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam.” Lembcke found not one verifiable instance of spitting and has been trying to convince people ever since.
“Stories of spat-upon Vietnam veterans are bogus,” Lembcke wrote in the Spring 2003 issue of “The Veteran,” published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “Born out of accusations made by the Nixon administration, they were enlivened in popular culture (recall Rambo saying he was spat upon by those maggots at the airport) and enhanced in the imaginations of Vietnam-generation men – some veterans, some not.”
Make no mistake, though, even if returning vets escaped saliva, they weren’t routinely welcomed home by strangers bearing bouquets, hugs and kisses.
Honoring Vietnam veterans is the right thing to do, but how? If we’re serious, we will make sure the vets have solid benefits and the finest of medical care. We shouldn’t just pretend we care with pretty words and parades.
Plus, more than 1,600 American soldiers are still missing in Vietnam. New efforts are underway to find their remains. That’s important work.
Vietnam was wrenching, and the commemoration will force us to confront its ugliness. We lost trust in our leaders and institutions, and it never came back. We’ll hear again about napalm, Agent Orange, Lt. William Calley and the My Lai massacre, and other war crimes and atrocities.
The wall at the Vietnam memorial starts low and rises ever higher until it towers over visitors, a graphic illustration of the escalation of the conflict and its toll. The wall is dated 1959 to 1975, but a name of someone who died in 1957 was added later. Every year a few more names of war-related deaths are chiseled in the black granite.
Critics will say the commemoration is a cover for politicians who haven’t served in the military. This is the first presidential election since 1944 in which neither presidential candidate is a veteran.
Emphasis on Vietnam naturally focuses on the presidential candidates. Like most people 50 and younger, Obama, born in 1961, has few wartime memories. Romney, born in 1947, first supported the war and later changed his mind. A May 1966 photo has surfaced, showing Romney, 19 and neatly dressed, picketing a sit-in against the draft by anti-war protesters.
Two months later, though, he received a draft deferment as a “minister of religion” and kept it until February1969, according to the Associated Press. During most of that time he was a Mormon missionary in France. Afterward, a high lottery number kept him from the draft.
From Hanoi this week came news that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and his Vietnamese counterpart had exchanged “artifacts” from the war -- letters from an American soldier killed in 1969 and a Vietnamese soldier’s diary.
Artifact is an awfully cold word for someone’s handwritten, heart-felt thoughts.
I hope that commemorative events over the next 13 years remind us that soldiers in any war are young people who love, hope and dream. They fight for all of us. And some never get the chance to grow old.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Gloomy about USA? Visit a national park -- May 31, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Roughly three in four Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
That means President Barack Obama faces re-election trouble. Or maybe not. A coin toss is as good as any poll at this point for predicting who’ll win in November, says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.
So let’s stop trying to handicap whether Mitt Romney or Obama is ahead in the horse race and consider how the rest of us are doing. Americans have been grumpy a long time, and it’s not healthy to live perpetually under a cloud.
Here’s an idea: The next time the state of the Union makes you feel blue, turn off the TV, unplug from the web and head for a national park. Oh, and it won’t kill you to leave your smart phone in the trunk.
I’ve tried this antidote myself recently, walking Civil War battlefields, historic sites and a national seashore. Each trip taught me something about our rich and quirky history. America has faced challenges before and triumphed over them. We’re stronger than we think we are.
I know, I know. Congress is dysfunctional, the economy fragile, the presidential campaign toxic, and the public discourse relentlessly depressing.
And yet, violent crime is down, marriage is up and at least one federal agency actually works. The rate of visitor satisfaction at national parks over the last several years is an astounding 97 percent.
There’s one thing even Obama and Romney, his Republican rival, can agree on. The national parks are beloved.
In 2008, candidate Obama promised to boost funding for national parks and national forests, and he signed a law in 2009 that did so, modestly. PolitiFact rated it “a promise kept.”
Romney talks fondly about boyhood vacations in which his family piled into the Rambler (his father ran American Motors which made the car) and toured national parks.
“We went from national park to national park,” Romney has said. “And they were teaching me to fall in love with America.”
Over Memorial Day weekend, I climbed the 248 iron spiral stairs at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. It’s the equivalent of climbing a 12-story building, and I asked some people on their way down the narrow staircase if it was worth it.
“Oh, yeah!” they agreed, all broad smiles. And they were right. At the top, a wild, happy wind blew away cares and the coastal views were endless.
Built in 1870, the nation’s tallest lighthouse would have been lost to the sea had Congress not spent $10 million to move it half a mile inland in 1999. Engineers lifted the entire structure with hydraulic jacks, placed it on steel mats and slid it on rails, inch by inch.
The plan was fraught with controversy. Local people feared the engineers would fail, leaving a pile of bricks where a major tourist attraction once stood. But the amazing plan succeeded, and the beacon draws 3 million visitors a year.
The Hatteras lighthouse is safe from the encroaching ocean for another hundred years, if we’re lucky.
In Fredericksburg, Va., earlier in May, National Park Service historian John Hennessy led a walking tour that traced President Lincoln’s route around town in 1862. Lincoln met with his generals to plan what was to be a major assault on Richmond. As it happened, the attack was called off.
Lincoln’s visit was not unlike Obama’s recent trip to Afghanistan, Hennessy said, in that few in the Army and press knew about the visit. In Lincoln’s case, the occupied city refused to be impressed.
Fredericksburg’s Unionist newspaper, The Christian Banner, reported that, “There were no demonstrations of joy” among the citizenry – but neither had residents shown joy when Confederate President Jefferson Davis had visited the previous winter.
“The citizens of Fredericksburg seem to have little partialities for presidents,” the paper observed.
Some would say Americans haven’t changed much in 150 years.
So, before the campaign grows even more hateful and off-putting, take a clue from the men running for president. Visit a national park this summer and remind yourself why this country is special.
America’s national parks are waiting.
(c) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Roughly three in four Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
That means President Barack Obama faces re-election trouble. Or maybe not. A coin toss is as good as any poll at this point for predicting who’ll win in November, says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.
So let’s stop trying to handicap whether Mitt Romney or Obama is ahead in the horse race and consider how the rest of us are doing. Americans have been grumpy a long time, and it’s not healthy to live perpetually under a cloud.
Here’s an idea: The next time the state of the Union makes you feel blue, turn off the TV, unplug from the web and head for a national park. Oh, and it won’t kill you to leave your smart phone in the trunk.
I’ve tried this antidote myself recently, walking Civil War battlefields, historic sites and a national seashore. Each trip taught me something about our rich and quirky history. America has faced challenges before and triumphed over them. We’re stronger than we think we are.
I know, I know. Congress is dysfunctional, the economy fragile, the presidential campaign toxic, and the public discourse relentlessly depressing.
And yet, violent crime is down, marriage is up and at least one federal agency actually works. The rate of visitor satisfaction at national parks over the last several years is an astounding 97 percent.
There’s one thing even Obama and Romney, his Republican rival, can agree on. The national parks are beloved.
In 2008, candidate Obama promised to boost funding for national parks and national forests, and he signed a law in 2009 that did so, modestly. PolitiFact rated it “a promise kept.”
Romney talks fondly about boyhood vacations in which his family piled into the Rambler (his father ran American Motors which made the car) and toured national parks.
“We went from national park to national park,” Romney has said. “And they were teaching me to fall in love with America.”
Over Memorial Day weekend, I climbed the 248 iron spiral stairs at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. It’s the equivalent of climbing a 12-story building, and I asked some people on their way down the narrow staircase if it was worth it.
“Oh, yeah!” they agreed, all broad smiles. And they were right. At the top, a wild, happy wind blew away cares and the coastal views were endless.
Built in 1870, the nation’s tallest lighthouse would have been lost to the sea had Congress not spent $10 million to move it half a mile inland in 1999. Engineers lifted the entire structure with hydraulic jacks, placed it on steel mats and slid it on rails, inch by inch.
The plan was fraught with controversy. Local people feared the engineers would fail, leaving a pile of bricks where a major tourist attraction once stood. But the amazing plan succeeded, and the beacon draws 3 million visitors a year.
The Hatteras lighthouse is safe from the encroaching ocean for another hundred years, if we’re lucky.
In Fredericksburg, Va., earlier in May, National Park Service historian John Hennessy led a walking tour that traced President Lincoln’s route around town in 1862. Lincoln met with his generals to plan what was to be a major assault on Richmond. As it happened, the attack was called off.
Lincoln’s visit was not unlike Obama’s recent trip to Afghanistan, Hennessy said, in that few in the Army and press knew about the visit. In Lincoln’s case, the occupied city refused to be impressed.
Fredericksburg’s Unionist newspaper, The Christian Banner, reported that, “There were no demonstrations of joy” among the citizenry – but neither had residents shown joy when Confederate President Jefferson Davis had visited the previous winter.
“The citizens of Fredericksburg seem to have little partialities for presidents,” the paper observed.
Some would say Americans haven’t changed much in 150 years.
So, before the campaign grows even more hateful and off-putting, take a clue from the men running for president. Visit a national park this summer and remind yourself why this country is special.
America’s national parks are waiting.
(c) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
At 150, taps links us to past -- May 23, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
I grew up hearing taps. My dad was in the Air Force, and on many of the air bases we temporarily called home, the mournful notes of taps were a steady punctuation, signaling the end of another day.
We were living in Japan when the bugler cracked a note of taps the day President Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Now as then, taps calls us to reflect on those who have given their lives for our country. Taps stirs patriotic feelings in the jaded; it wrings out every drop of cynicism I think I have.
Until a few days ago, though, I had no idea where taps began. On this, the 150th anniversary of taps, here’s its story.
One July day in 1862, Union Brigadier Gen. Daniel Adams Butterfield, commander of a brigade camped at Harrison’s Landing in southeastern Virginia, sent for his bugler.
It was just after the bloody Seven Days battles, where Butterfield was wounded and 600 of his troops were killed. In his tent, Butterfield showed bugler Oliver W. Norton some musical notes written in pencil on the back of an envelope and asked him to play them.
“I did this several times, playing the music as written,” Norton wrote long after the Civil War. “He changed it somewhat, lengthening some notes and shortening others, but retaining the melody as he first gave it to me. After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed me to sound that call for taps thereafter, in place of the regular call.”
The regulation call for “lights out” was a tune borrowed from the French that Butterfield found too formal. That night, bugler Norton played taps.
“The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard far beyond the limits of our brigade,” Norton wrote in a magazine in 1898. “The next day I was visited by several buglers from neighboring brigades, asking for copies of the music which I gladly furnished.”
And so taps spread, not by directive from Washington but by commanders along the James River and farther afield who heard the haunting melody. It was soon played at the burial of a cannoneer killed in action in Virginia.
Jari A. Villanueva, a retired Air Force bugler and the nation’s leading taps historian, tells the history of taps in his booklet, “Twenty-Four Notes that Tap Deep Emotions,” and his website.
Villanueva, who has devoted many years to taps history research, concluded that Butterfield did not compose taps but revised an earlier bugle call.
No matter, the melancholy music also caught the ear of Confederates. Ten months after it was composed, taps was played at the funeral of Confederate Lieutenant Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Taps was made an official Army bugle call after the Civil War. Today taps is played at the end of the day on most military bases and at funerals of military personnel and veterans.
On its 150th anniversary, taps is getting fresh attention. About 200 buglers from around the country gathered at Arlington National Cemetery Saturday to play taps. Taps is being remembered this week at the Trumpet Guild Conference in Columbus, Ga.
A commemoration of the first taps is scheduled for June 22 through 24 at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, Va., where Civil War re-enactors will portray the Union Army camped at Harrison’s Landing. A rededication of the taps monument there is planned for June 23.
In case you’re curious, the Army says that taps – and reveille – are not capitalized or put in quotation marks because they are bugle calls, not songs or official titles.
The name taps is thought to be shorthand for a “tattoo” or signal that soldiers should quit carousing and return to quarters, according to the Veterans Administration. The Dutch word “taptoe” is a command that means shut the tap of a keg,
Villanueva scotches as myth the oft-repeated tale that Robert Ellicombe, a captain in the Union army, found the music for taps in the pocket of his dead Confederate soldier son on the battlefield and then had the notes played at the boy’s funeral.
“There is no evidence to back up the story or the existence of a Captain Ellicombe,” Villanueva says.
The spirit that prompted Civil War commanders to embrace taps also animates buglers in the 21st century. Buglers Across America was founded in 2000 to ensure that veterans’ funerals have taps performed live.
Congress decided in 1999 that most veterans should get a two-person military color guard at their funerals to fold the American flag and to play taps. There are too few military buglers to go around, so Congress also said playing a recording of taps was acceptable. An enterprising company came up with an electronic gizmo that fits into bugles and plays taps digitally.
No, the nation’s buglers said, that’s not good enough. More than 7,500 buglers around the country now volunteer to play at veterans’ funerals. Bravo.
Thank you, buglers, for finding the time to honor our veterans with taps.
And, thank you, General Butterfield and bugler Norton, for giving us a melody that connects America’s past and present.
(Marsha Mercer writes from Washington. You may contact her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
(c) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
I grew up hearing taps. My dad was in the Air Force, and on many of the air bases we temporarily called home, the mournful notes of taps were a steady punctuation, signaling the end of another day.
We were living in Japan when the bugler cracked a note of taps the day President Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Now as then, taps calls us to reflect on those who have given their lives for our country. Taps stirs patriotic feelings in the jaded; it wrings out every drop of cynicism I think I have.
Until a few days ago, though, I had no idea where taps began. On this, the 150th anniversary of taps, here’s its story.
One July day in 1862, Union Brigadier Gen. Daniel Adams Butterfield, commander of a brigade camped at Harrison’s Landing in southeastern Virginia, sent for his bugler.
It was just after the bloody Seven Days battles, where Butterfield was wounded and 600 of his troops were killed. In his tent, Butterfield showed bugler Oliver W. Norton some musical notes written in pencil on the back of an envelope and asked him to play them.
“I did this several times, playing the music as written,” Norton wrote long after the Civil War. “He changed it somewhat, lengthening some notes and shortening others, but retaining the melody as he first gave it to me. After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed me to sound that call for taps thereafter, in place of the regular call.”
The regulation call for “lights out” was a tune borrowed from the French that Butterfield found too formal. That night, bugler Norton played taps.
“The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard far beyond the limits of our brigade,” Norton wrote in a magazine in 1898. “The next day I was visited by several buglers from neighboring brigades, asking for copies of the music which I gladly furnished.”
And so taps spread, not by directive from Washington but by commanders along the James River and farther afield who heard the haunting melody. It was soon played at the burial of a cannoneer killed in action in Virginia.
Jari A. Villanueva, a retired Air Force bugler and the nation’s leading taps historian, tells the history of taps in his booklet, “Twenty-Four Notes that Tap Deep Emotions,” and his website.
Villanueva, who has devoted many years to taps history research, concluded that Butterfield did not compose taps but revised an earlier bugle call.
No matter, the melancholy music also caught the ear of Confederates. Ten months after it was composed, taps was played at the funeral of Confederate Lieutenant Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Taps was made an official Army bugle call after the Civil War. Today taps is played at the end of the day on most military bases and at funerals of military personnel and veterans.
On its 150th anniversary, taps is getting fresh attention. About 200 buglers from around the country gathered at Arlington National Cemetery Saturday to play taps. Taps is being remembered this week at the Trumpet Guild Conference in Columbus, Ga.
A commemoration of the first taps is scheduled for June 22 through 24 at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, Va., where Civil War re-enactors will portray the Union Army camped at Harrison’s Landing. A rededication of the taps monument there is planned for June 23.
In case you’re curious, the Army says that taps – and reveille – are not capitalized or put in quotation marks because they are bugle calls, not songs or official titles.
The name taps is thought to be shorthand for a “tattoo” or signal that soldiers should quit carousing and return to quarters, according to the Veterans Administration. The Dutch word “taptoe” is a command that means shut the tap of a keg,
Villanueva scotches as myth the oft-repeated tale that Robert Ellicombe, a captain in the Union army, found the music for taps in the pocket of his dead Confederate soldier son on the battlefield and then had the notes played at the boy’s funeral.
“There is no evidence to back up the story or the existence of a Captain Ellicombe,” Villanueva says.
The spirit that prompted Civil War commanders to embrace taps also animates buglers in the 21st century. Buglers Across America was founded in 2000 to ensure that veterans’ funerals have taps performed live.
Congress decided in 1999 that most veterans should get a two-person military color guard at their funerals to fold the American flag and to play taps. There are too few military buglers to go around, so Congress also said playing a recording of taps was acceptable. An enterprising company came up with an electronic gizmo that fits into bugles and plays taps digitally.
No, the nation’s buglers said, that’s not good enough. More than 7,500 buglers around the country now volunteer to play at veterans’ funerals. Bravo.
Thank you, buglers, for finding the time to honor our veterans with taps.
And, thank you, General Butterfield and bugler Norton, for giving us a melody that connects America’s past and present.
(Marsha Mercer writes from Washington. You may contact her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
(c) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Scariest words in politics: If the court... -- May 17, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
For a politician, nothing is worse than yanking away someone’s benefits in an election year.
It’s always easier to give than to take away, even if the budget is strained or the goodies are part of a health care reform law many Americans love to hate. It’s fine to hate a law as long as it’s in place, however tenuously.
With the Supreme Court expected to rule on the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, by the end of June, the scariest word in politics is If.
If the court overturns the law, what then?
The court has many options, and the consequences are uncertain. It could blow up the entire law, although most analysts think not. It could scrap the “individual mandate,” which requires almost all Americans to have medical insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty, and leave the rest of the law intact. It could strike the mandate and other provisions as well. It could let the law stand, as is.
Americans by substantial margins say they favor repeal, mostly because of the hated mandate. No matter that only 7 percent of Americans actually would be required to buy insurance and 93 percent would be covered through employer-sponsored plans and other exemptions, according to a study the Urban Institute released in March. The idea that Congress can compel the purchase goes against some grains.
At the same time, people love allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance plans, closing the “donut hole” that requires some seniors on Medicare to pay more for their medications, and ensuring that people with pre-existing medical conditions get coverage.
The White House’s official position is that the court will uphold the law, so it’s making no contingency plans. Congressional Republicans have managed so far to play to both sides.
The Republican majority in the House has voted 29 times to repeal the law, knowing that the votes are all theater because the Senate would never go along. The Republicans insist they intend to “replace” the law but never explain which provisions they’ll keep beyond the most popular, including children under 26.
How the court’s ruling may affect health care is anybody’s guess, but the politics are clear. Come November, no one running for office wants to explain to the parents of a jobless college grad that their son is going to lose his health insurance.
No politician wants to tell Grandma she has to dig a little deeper for her meds or that her grandchild with a pre-existing condition may lose coverage because insurance companies can again deny coverage.
No one wants to tell some 32 million people near the poverty line who were in line for coverage under Medicaid that they won’t be covered after all.
The court could leave all this up to Congress to sort out. And that would put House Speaker John Boehner in a ticklish spot, trying to win House seats while appeasing the Tea Party set.
News reports say Boehner is quietly making plans for the Republicans’ next step, post-Supreme Court. He told the House Republican Conference behind closed doors Wednesday, “When the court rules, we’ll be ready,” Politico reported, relying on tidbits gleaned from those in attendance.
“If all or part of the law is struck down, we are not going to repeat the Democrats’ mistakes,” Boehner told his party, according to Politico. “We have better ideas on health care – lots of them. We have solutions, of course, for patients with pre-existing conditions and other challenges.”
Really? Let us see the solutions.
Ah, but that was in private. A day later, for public consumption on his House speaker blog, Boehner declared, “Anything Short of Full ObamaCare Repeal is Unacceptable.”
Once the court rules, Boehner said, the House will “work on step-by-step, common-sense legislation that will help lower health care costs for families and small businesses, and protect American jobs.”
It was a familiar refrain. He didn’t say what any of those steps might be.
It’s spring, and politicians tremble for what may come this summer. If the court overturns…
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
For a politician, nothing is worse than yanking away someone’s benefits in an election year.
It’s always easier to give than to take away, even if the budget is strained or the goodies are part of a health care reform law many Americans love to hate. It’s fine to hate a law as long as it’s in place, however tenuously.
With the Supreme Court expected to rule on the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, by the end of June, the scariest word in politics is If.
If the court overturns the law, what then?
The court has many options, and the consequences are uncertain. It could blow up the entire law, although most analysts think not. It could scrap the “individual mandate,” which requires almost all Americans to have medical insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty, and leave the rest of the law intact. It could strike the mandate and other provisions as well. It could let the law stand, as is.
Americans by substantial margins say they favor repeal, mostly because of the hated mandate. No matter that only 7 percent of Americans actually would be required to buy insurance and 93 percent would be covered through employer-sponsored plans and other exemptions, according to a study the Urban Institute released in March. The idea that Congress can compel the purchase goes against some grains.
At the same time, people love allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance plans, closing the “donut hole” that requires some seniors on Medicare to pay more for their medications, and ensuring that people with pre-existing medical conditions get coverage.
The White House’s official position is that the court will uphold the law, so it’s making no contingency plans. Congressional Republicans have managed so far to play to both sides.
The Republican majority in the House has voted 29 times to repeal the law, knowing that the votes are all theater because the Senate would never go along. The Republicans insist they intend to “replace” the law but never explain which provisions they’ll keep beyond the most popular, including children under 26.
How the court’s ruling may affect health care is anybody’s guess, but the politics are clear. Come November, no one running for office wants to explain to the parents of a jobless college grad that their son is going to lose his health insurance.
No politician wants to tell Grandma she has to dig a little deeper for her meds or that her grandchild with a pre-existing condition may lose coverage because insurance companies can again deny coverage.
No one wants to tell some 32 million people near the poverty line who were in line for coverage under Medicaid that they won’t be covered after all.
The court could leave all this up to Congress to sort out. And that would put House Speaker John Boehner in a ticklish spot, trying to win House seats while appeasing the Tea Party set.
News reports say Boehner is quietly making plans for the Republicans’ next step, post-Supreme Court. He told the House Republican Conference behind closed doors Wednesday, “When the court rules, we’ll be ready,” Politico reported, relying on tidbits gleaned from those in attendance.
“If all or part of the law is struck down, we are not going to repeat the Democrats’ mistakes,” Boehner told his party, according to Politico. “We have better ideas on health care – lots of them. We have solutions, of course, for patients with pre-existing conditions and other challenges.”
Really? Let us see the solutions.
Ah, but that was in private. A day later, for public consumption on his House speaker blog, Boehner declared, “Anything Short of Full ObamaCare Repeal is Unacceptable.”
Once the court rules, Boehner said, the House will “work on step-by-step, common-sense legislation that will help lower health care costs for families and small businesses, and protect American jobs.”
It was a familiar refrain. He didn’t say what any of those steps might be.
It’s spring, and politicians tremble for what may come this summer. If the court overturns…
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
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