Signs of the times

I've started writing for a local newspaper, The Washington County Observer. Here's a recent column:

It's about 5 in the morning and I can't sleep.

So online I start reading the Standard Highway Signs and Markings (SHSM) Book -- Interim Releases for New and Revised Signs of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices of the
Federal Highway Administration of the U. S. Department of Trnsportation.

That title alone should be enough to send me back to bed.

But there's somewhat interesting stuff here, at least to me, an individual who collects useless information (and who put it to good use by becoming a college professor). For highway engineers there are valuable instuctions that most of us don't think about. The online book has PDF files containing samples of what highway signs should look like and the entire effort is to make signs uniform in color, shape, reflectivity, and size. That way a driver anywhere in the country can readily understand road characteristics and hazards.

Of course. Makes sense.

But there is one area in which the Department of Transportation completely lost it and came up with sign regulations that were absurd, expensive, and, quite frankly, none of their business.

It was in the area of what we commonly call "street signs," the signs that tell us the names of streets. And the federal government decided that by 2018 municipalities, townships, and counties needed to have street signs that were uniform in size, color, type, style, and reflectivity. That meant taking down their current street signs and replacing them with the "new and improved" ones.

Faced with the $100 cost for each sign, local governments, the ones who have to pay the bills (with our tax money), let out such a howl that in August Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood backed off and said "common sense" (words rarely heard among big-government types) dictated that the street sign replacement requirement be scrapped.

There is a lesson here, something the Founding Fathers incorporated into the Constitution: some things are better left to the states; other things are naturally the sphere of the federal government.

Aristotle spelled it out in detail: basic human needs, he said, should be met by the most basic human unit, the family. What the family can't handle should be done by the local community, what the local community can't handle should be done by the next biggest entity, in our case the county, then on up the scale to the state and federal governments.

So the family decides its basic needs on health care, retirement, educating children, etc. At the other end of the scale, the federal government deals with things like defense. And local governments decided mundane things about potholes and sewage systems.

As as a result, families shouldn't preside over traffic court, counties shouldn't buy aircraft carriers, and the federal government shouldn't regulate street signs.

Despite Secretary LaHood's criticism of the street sign regulations, somehow I think they'll be back. It is, after all, about federal incursion into just about everything.

That, sad to say, is a sign of the times.

Creek of Consciousness

First the lemonade stands, now the treehouses. Did an interview on the radio a few weeks back with lawyer Dave Roland of the Missouri Freedom Center about how he's fighting cities outlawing children's lemonade stands (Thanks, Dave, for decriminalizing all the lemonade stands in Greeley, Colorado). Now Washington's WTOP Radio reports a Fall Church, Virginia, man has run afoul of zoning law for building his kids a treehouse. My question to lawyer Roland: why are cities doing this? His response: "Because they can"...The Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married received an e-mail from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) calling upon her to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Is it that when there is well orchestrated, well-funded ongoing disruption, we should look for the union label?...Wall Street Journal says GE getting concerned about Tea Party flack for GE's close ties to Obama administration. CEO Jeffrey Immelt is even catching it from Mom -- his parents are big conservative media consumers and she told him not to join President's jobs council. Journal says GE claims crony capitalism charges are overblown..Joplin, Missouri's big need is for cash, according to my latest check of the post-tornado situation ...What do five of the last six presidents have in common? Except for George W. Bush, every president since Gerald Ford was left-handed. Before that, you have to go back to Harry Truman. And prior to World War II we had no left-handed presidents (except maybe James Garfield, who was so ambidexterous that he could write a sentence in Latin with one hand while writing the same sentence in Greek with the other!). Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt wrote a few years back that the reason we have all these latter-day lefties-in-chief might be because of abandonment of the old practice of imposing right-handness on all children... Danger -- old jokes ahead: Hold up your left hand. If you hold up left hand, your right hand is left, right? -- How many people would give their right arm to be ambidexterous? -- Do left-handers fight for their rights? And, yes, I am left-handed (Left on, brother!)...Lions and Tigers and winners, oh my! Some of the best news writing shows up on the sports page. Regarding the turnaround of the 4-0 Detroit Lions, Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay says: "Your average sentient human chooses to endure only one Lions game per year, on Thanksgiving." And that, he says, is just "an escape hatch from family dysfunction."

Oh, To Be A Reporter in Arkansas

In my reckless youth I committed random acts of journalism. There were stints in television, radio, and newspapers in Michigan, Colorado, and Missouri.

And while I've started writing a column for a local newspaper, I've never been a reporter in Arkansas.

It's a pity.

What an easy life -- somewhat like being a fisherman where the fish jump into the boat. In Arkansas, the news stories write themselves.

Like this one: seems a local small town mayor and a woman were fooling around with a BB gun. She shot him in the leg. In response, hizzoner da mare shot her in the abdomen.

She was treated and released at a nearby hospital. And did not file charges.

Only in Arkansas (for another jewel, see the last story I posted).

Perhaps the state should adopt a new motto, crediting Dave Barry, of course: "Arkansas. Where we don't make this stuff up."

I love this place.

Where the fish just jump into the boat...

Only in Arkansas: Two Candidates Unopposed; Both Lose

I frequently quote Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg's statement that editors in Arkansas and Louisiana have it easy: where other editors have to punch up the news to make it interesting, editors in Arkansas and Lousisiana have to tone it down to make it believable.

Indeed.

Here's this morning's the top story of the Northwest Arkansas Times:

Two area school board candidates who faced no opposition in their races last week nonetheless lost their elections because no one, not even the candidates, cast a vote for them.

Indeed.

So What Did You Learn At School Today?

Looking over titles, descriptions and online trailers of educational videos that appear at my office from time to time, I see falsehoods wrapped in some dimensions of truth.

And given contemporary production techniques, I fear the viewer will come away remembering the falsehoods more than the truths.

Which is in some cases the whole idea.

Examine some of the titles with me:

Not Just a Game: Power, Politics, and American Sports. This laments the corporatism that taints professional sports. True. But the video then makes the weird case that contemporary athletes are cowed by big money and refuse to make political statements like Muhammed Ali and others did years ago. Perhaps. But it just might be that because people see sports as a means to escape the realities of politics and other pressures on their lives, that athletes and others in the game are just giving them what they want. Besides it's not the '60s anymore.

The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. There's a justified critique of the harmful effects of pornography, but the promotional material tells me that by end of this film the overall message will be that all men and boys are evil. The entertainment culture, claims the film catalogue, teaches that "it's not only normal -- but cool -- for boys and men to control and humiliate women." Note the language: "boys and men." Not "some," not "many," not "a minority." Just "boys and men." Evil creatures, all of them.

The Purity Myth: The Virginity Movement's War Against Women. Okay, I guess some of these films are devoid of any truth. This might be one of them. ("...an unholy alliance of evangelical Christians, political activists, and policy wonks who have been spreading irrational fears about women's sexuality..."). The film is also critical of father-daughter social events aimed at institutionalizing the concept of purity. I see the problem with that: it might make men look good (see Bro Code above).

And this one's great:

The Billionaires' Tea Party: How Corporate America is Faking a Grassroots Revolution. This might be another film where one really has to go searching for the truth. The filmmaker finds "...irate voters parroting insurance industry PR; [he] learns that home-grown 'citizen groups' challenging the science behind climate change are funded by big oil companies; and infiltrates a tea party movement whose anti-government fervor turns out to be less the product of populist rage than of corporate strategy." Yeah. Right. I've been a Tea Party activist for more than two years and I'm still waiting for my corporate check.

And on it goes: films about oppressed Palestinians (nothing, of course, about Israel), the evils of capitalism, consumer overspending (true) and so on.

These are educational films. Actually, they are propaganda pieces posing as educational material. I'm sensitive to this stuff because I'm a university professor. Of course, there are times when my biases creep into what I teach as much as there are biases in the films I've noted. That's life; that's humanity -- you can't write a grocery list without bias (you put the ice cream first). Yet, there are times when my professional responsibility dictates that I must say to my students that what I am telling them is my opinion, that they are free to accept it or reject it.

That's unlikely with some of these videos. Especially the one claiming corporate control of communications. It's called The Myth of the Liberal Media.

Of course.

Socializing

So I'm having a conversation with the 11-year-old son of some friends. It was a wide-ranging talk: he discusses all the books he reads and how he likes fantasy works. I speak to him of the wonders of the old Jack London books and London's great short story "To Build a Fire." We go to other subjects: sentence diagramming, for instance. He hates it, but I think it's necessary to really learn grammar. He disagrees. I tell him I can see he reads a lot, because he has a great vocabulary. He laments that his vocabulary isn't as good as those of his older brothers or his mother. I've never known an 11-year-old to regret he can't speak as well as his parents.

In the course of our conversation, my young friend talks of the D-Day invasion of Normandy in World War II, plus he rattles off the names of battleships at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked in December, 1941. I tell him of the strategic shift during that time from battleships to aircraft carriers as he notes that the aircraft carriers stationed at Pearl weren't there when the attack took place. He talks of the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan's General Yamamoto. Although he gets the name wrong, I know whom he means and tell him how American code-breaking allowed for the shooting down of Yamamoto's plane later in the war. He recounts how Yamamoto liked America and lived here for awhile and how Yamamoto opposed the strategy of the Pearl Harbor attacks. I tell him he needs to see the old movie Tora, Tora, Tora, and recommend he watch another old film, Midway. He says he's heard of Midway as a place and I talk to him of how the battle there was a turning point in World War II, how the Japanese navy suffered a defeat that eventually resulted in Japan losing the war.

On we went, talking of World War II, the role of Abraham Lincoln in American history, of Ronald Reagan. Heavy-duty conversation with an 11-year-old, no? But not really -- after all this young man is home schooled. As the result of his first rate, personalized education, he's able to hold his own in an intelligent conversation with a college professor.

Which makes me think of the tired old argument against homeschooling: the lack of peer socialization. You don't hear about it as much as when the Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married did some homeschooling at different times with our children. The argument has probably diminished since it's impossible to ignore the characteristics of so many homeschoolers: poised, confident, articulate, knowledgeable individuals comfortable with all kinds of people at all kinds of ages.

But I'll grant that homeschoolers do lack some socialization: they are not continually exposed to drugs, alcohol, bad language, poor influences, nutty educational techniques, and lesson plans designed to destroy traditional concepts of God, family, community, and country.

In that they are deprived.

I think it's great.

And they might learn diagramming, too.

Back on the Campaign Trail...

The Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married put up a lemonade stand to raise campaign funds. And Randy spoke about how over-reaching government is shutting down children's lemonade stands.

An even-numbered year is coming; can elections be far behind?

Tooling up to again work in an election campaign for Randy Alexander. This time I think he'll win. Spent a lot of time and effort campaigning for the 2010 U. S. Senate Republican nomination for Randy. Thought he would be a great U. S. Senator. But 97% of the people voting felt otherwise.

Randy got into politics for the same reason as the Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married and I did: got tired of watching the professional pols wreck the country. So he decided to run, representing "we the people." And why start at the bottom? He went right for the U. S. Senate. And, of course, got creamed.

But he and by extension those of us who worked in his campaign learned lots. We learned about name recognition (of which he gained a great deal in the Senate campaign) and the awkward but necessary role of money in politics. And about door-to-door campaigning, and about political media, and about yard signs, and about whom to talk to, and about more things than most people would ever want to know.

And now, given what we've learned, we think we have a good chance of seeing Randy elected to the 88th House District of Arkansas. After travelling all over the state in the Senate race, Randy is relieved to campaign in an area consisting of not too many square miles.

The incursion of what Michelle Bachmann terms "gangster government" plus other political nonsense has resulted in a whole new group of activists. Some are in Tea Parties, some are running for office, some are writing blogs, some are producing videos, some are calling government officials, some are attending political meetings, some are paying attention to government proceedings.

While there's something for everyone to do, my primary focus is this: to see men and women of integrity and ethics elected to the Arkansas legislature. While there are important battles at all levels, I believe control of the states is critical. And we need state officials who will not be corrupted by the lures of money, sex, and power.

We sent some great people to Little Rock in the last election. Now it's time to send the next group.

And we're counting on Randy Alexander to be among them.