An Uncivil Dialogue

The national debate on healthcare issues in the United States has turned feral. Washington legislators returning home for the summer recess are holding town hall meetings (at least those who are unafraid to stand before their constituents) and, in many cases, are facing an unexpectedly shrill crescendo of opposition.

Seldom have I seen such disrespect and condescending language used so dismissively by high-ranking elected officials. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has called opponents “evil-mongers.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refers to them as “un-American.”

Recently, in his home district in Massachusetts, Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee stared down one of his female constituents, accusing her of yelling at him. Congressman Frank bluntly told the woman, “Trying to have a conversation with you is like trying to have one with a dining room table.”

Another volley came from former DNC Chairman, Howard Dean, who warned Republican dissenters to Obama’s healthcare initiatives that “you have to undermine the country in order to undermine the President.” Dean later denied saying that.

Nevertheless, the voice of citizens is having an impact: There now is word that MoveOn.org and Acorn are planning counter-offensives with their own supporter-filled Tea-Party type town hall meetings.

Did you know? Congressman Barney Frank was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. He was educated at Harvard College and, like many other students who graduate from Boston area universities, he chose to make the Bay State his home.

A Presidential Vacation

When President Barack Obama vacations on Cape Cod’s island retreat of Martha’s Vineyard, he is expected to pay for part of the $35,000 weekly rental for his family’s sojourn on a private 28-acre estate. The balance will be picked up by the Secret Service and the White House, since he will be accompanied by a large entourage.

I wonder to what extent this will be a time of rest and rejuvenation for the President, or if it will be as much an occasion to withdraw in seclusion outside the reach of all except a few choice guests and policy makers.

There very likely will be a mixture of pleasure and business – no president ever completely escapes his responsibilities while in office. (From ‘The Vineyard’ this morning, Obama – with Ben Bernanke at his side – went before the cameras to announce the re-nomination of Bernanke for another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.)

Maybe Obama would be well-served after his vacation to spend some serious time onshore visiting some of Boston’s 23 varied neighborhoods – like Dorchester, Roxbury and the South End – where he could walk and talk among his constituents, getting real feedback about what people think and feel concerning his healthcare ideas.

Yes, I know. I must be dreaming, you say. But remaining isolated with staff and other hand-picked influential guests in a high-priced private enclave on one of the nation’s most exclusive islands is not going to give him the insight he needs about the nation’s healthcare problem.

Still Taking Care of Business

On our way to the Bridgewater Commons Mall for an air-conditioned walk (hasn’t it been oppressive outdoors recently?), Priscille and I motored by the Bridgewater Municipal Complex which is undergoing its major additions and makeover. We passed by the older building facing Garretson Road and noticed that all the windows were open – probably to let the air circulate for the workers inside, as the major renovation of that building progresses.

The Public Works Department is no longer at that site, having been relocated to Route 22. I rely a lot on that department. Even though Priscille and I don’t have a very large lot, our place still has a lot of trees, and that means seasonal yard debris and leaves to bag in the fall – and someone to pick it up.

When we came back from our recent vacation, the tornado that devastated parts of Bridgewater had left many broken branches in its wake. That’s where Public Works came in. A few days after our return, I noticed a Township crew working quickly, picking up and chipping branches by the side of a home near our house.

I walked over to the man in charge and asked if he could do the same for me. “Just call Public Works and get on the list,” he said. Yesterday morning while Priscille and I were at the Mall, a crew came over and cleaned up everything that I had dragged down to the side of the roadway.

There’s a lot that’s going wrong with government in this state, but there’s also a lot that’s going well, especially at the local level where it counts the most. Bridgewater Township crews are earning their salaries this summer, as they sweat it out cleaning up the detritus of that last storm.

A Cold Brewski on a Steamy Bridgewater Afternoon

We returned to Bridgewater from vacation to find the yard a disaster area – broken limbs and branches all over. As a consequence, I found myself cleaning up the mess last Saturday afternoon in the intensity of that hot steamy day. Not wanting to overdo it, I called it quits after about three hours, satisfied that the job could be completed another day.

The work clothing was clearly ready for laundry: my cap’s sweat band was soaked with perspiration; the T-shirt could be mistaken for a wet towel (I went through two!); and my socks came off just as wet and speckled with dirt – all items testimony to a good afternoon’s worth of labor.

There is little like the all-enveloping muggy-hot weather of an August afternoon after completing outdoor chores to call up a thirst for an ice-cold frosty brew. The two bottles of iced tea and one of water which I quaffed while working had not quite done the job.

I pulled a chilled can of beer from the fridge, opened the cabinet door for a Cheese-It snack, stepped outside, plunked my butt down on a patio chair, and approvingly admired the blue of the sky and the bleached white clouds lounging in the background beyond the tree line – a good moment to contemplate the blessing of what nature gives us and for which we don’t even have to ask.

The simplest things can often be the most satisfying.

Healthcare Reform or the Bum's Rush?

When President Barack Obama insisted that his healthcare legislation be enacted into law before the August Congressional recess, I became highly suspicious. But if the nature of town hall meetings now taking place all over the nation is any indication of how Americans feel, I was not alone in that sentiment.

The Congressional healthcare bills seemed like too much too soon. They appeared disconnected and few specifics were explained to the public – yet they were accompanied by grandiose rhetoric. One of them runs to 1000 pages that few legislators have read or fully understand.

President Obama and his key advisors, sensing a rising tide of populist opposition, decided to take their case directly to the people. At his first town hall meeting on this topic in the seacoast town of Portsmouth, NH, Obama was hoping to win converts to the cause. He came prepared to take on some very hard questions.

But he went to the wrong place – it didn’t work: At one point, President Obama felt compelled to reach out to the audience by personally soliciting tough questions. No dice.

People of the Granite State respect the man and were not about to tangle with him in a public forum. Obama’s handlers completely miscalculated the nature of that audience. These voters express their differences in the voting booth, not in the glare of a nationally televised event where they can be set up for personal embarrassment.

There is a crucial reason why Obama wanted so badly to have healthcare legislation enacted before the August Congressional recess: The Administration was very concerned that, should this self-imposed deadline not be achieved, Americans would begin asking questions during the remaining summer weeks and into the fall – not good for the President’s strategy.

Pushing a major untried concept through the Congress without a sufficient public airing of views and alternatives is a classic move. It is a political blitzkrieg designed to establish permanence before anyone can figure out what happened.

The most favorable time to mount opposition to an untested idea is before it becomes cast in stone as the law of the land.

That is why Obama is in such a rush.

Where The Elements Dominate

Here in the central and northern reaches of New Hampshire, the weather rules and regulates the lives and fortunes of its residents – this is tourist country.

Businesses are dependent upon the vagaries of nature, whether it be balmy sunshine in the summer to warm the waters of deep spring-fed lakes; or, whether it be a consistent cold during winter to bring and to build the dense snowpack that beckons skiers north on I-93.

It’s good to get away, however briefly, from the highly populated eastern seaboard, and from the illusion which it tends to create that man is in complete control of his destiny. Less people, more space, and more time outdoors away from the large population centers of the BosWash corridor bring out a respect for the impact of nature.

It would be naïve and foolish to deny the significant progress which civilization has built up over the centuries; but, it would be just as foolish to deny how utterly irrational civilization has been in the destruction which it has brought upon itself through sloth, uncaring, and warfare.

We have built great economic systems and erected magnificent building and construction projects. But the mountains and valleys built by nature will survive long after the street canyons of cities like Manhattan and elsewhere in the world have disappeared.

Perhaps with a little common sense, less greed, and a touch of wisdom, our leaders could improve our economic and social systems and make them last a little longer.

(Photo by Dick Bergeron, Franconia Notch, N.H., August 4, 2009)

New Jersey's Own Very Old Bee

According to Hattie Ellis, author of Sweetness & Light, a history of the honeybee, the first concrete evidence of these very energetic social creatures was found in New Jersey. The proof was discovered preserved in the form of the oldest known such fossil, a female honeybee “entombed in the hard orange glow of amber.”

It’s thought that the presence of bees on this planet may go back to even before the existence of people, possibly before the existence of flowering plants upon which modern bees have come to depend for their existence through the production of honey.

These highly prolific insects have a favorably symbiotic relationship with the plants which they pollinate in gratitude for the nectar that is the source of their golden sweet product.

There are at least 22,000 named species of these little bugs, and they exist everywhere on the planet: From the Himalayas to the Arctic tundra and to all of the world’s climactic regions in between.

It wasn’t at all surprising, then, that I should have come across one of these busy little creatures making a momentary stop on one of the many flowers lining the boardwalk to the swimming beach. These creatures work fast – very fast. There is no wasted motion and no stopping to rest as they carry out their highly specialized task.

(Photo by Dick Bergeron, July, 2009)

Different States, Same Problem

Some of the budget problems faced by the Granite State are not so different from those of the Garden State. This week, the Concord (NH) Monitor reported that New Hampshire’s pension system has a shortfall of $3.4 billion on an asset base of $4.7 billion. That may be peanuts by New Jersey standards, but for a small state like NH, this shortfall represents a very low funding ratio of 59%.

Most New Hampshire state and local employees contribute 5% of payroll, while police and firefighters pay 9.3%. Any shortfall to the pension system is made up by NH cities and towns which are being stressed by the early 2009 drop in the stock market.

Unlike a 401K retirement plan, in which a participating employee assumes all risk for the ups and downs of the retirement portfolio, government pensions – like those in New Jersey – guarantee pension payments: No matter what happens to the value of the portfolio, the state, school boards, and local municipalities must ante up any deficit.

When it comes to the fiscal stability of its pension obligations, New Jersey has nothing to brag about. The State Management Report Card for 2008 by the Pew Center reports that “New Jersey faces a newly revealed $58 billion tab for post-employment retirement benefits – a whopper by anyone’s standards.”

The same performance report by the Pew Center gives New Jersey an overall evaluation of C. This grade is comprehensive and includes four components: Money, People, Infrastructure, and Information. The ‘People’ measurement received a grade of B. The other performance measurements pulled a C.

What is the Basis of Your Identity?

“We are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think of us.” The quandary presented by those claims is that many of us believe just the opposite – that we want very much to be what we do; what we have; and – most insidiously – what others think of us.

The conundrum associated with that apparent contradiction becomes obvious when we stop to think of how we obsess with not having enough; worry excessively about what others think of us; try to appease the unappeasable; and try to force our jobs into our personalities.

The person quoted in the first paragraph above is Henri Nouwen (Nouen in French). He was a brilliant 20th century mind who taught at the Menninger Foundation, Notre Dame, Harvard and Yale. But this Dutch priest, sensing a life of incompleteness, gave up those scholastic endeavors and devoted the last years of his life to the personal care of someone at L’Arche Daybreak, a community of mentally and physically handicapped people near Toronto, Canada.

Nouwen’s choice to turn his back on an eminently successful academic career is an extreme example of how one person dealt with the puzzle of the what-we-do, what-we-have, and what-others-think-of-us challenge.

Let’s put it in a business context: What would the business, technical and philanthropic world look like today, if Bill Gates had not left Harvard against all conventional wisdom to nurture the seeds of what would subsequently become Microsoft?

Executed well and for the right reasons, such life-altering moves can have a profound effect on both the individual and society.