The Inaugural, Sports, and Bridgewater-Raritan Schools

At last Tuesday’s session of the Bridgewater-Raritan School Board in Martinsville, there were two events associated with the recent national elections. The first was a special slide presentation by Joe Walsh, Principal of the John F. Kennedy School in Raritan Borough.

During that presentation before a full house, Mr. Walsh proudly scrolled through slides that depicted the result of all the hard work that he, his staff and students had accomplished in setting up and executing a mock convention in which JFK students were the participants. One student represented Barack Obama and another, John McCain. Obama carried the day by a margin of 121 to 82.

Great job! The kids were motivated and the project was a success.

The second event was somewhat different. Most parents had showed up Tuesday evening in support of school athletic programs. Parent after parent stood before the mike urging the Board and Administration not to cut any of those programs from the 2009/2010 budget. Just about every person who got up to speak that night received comments, clarification, and support or became engaged in Q&A with individual members of the Board or Administration.

One parent, Judith Lee, an African-American, and a 14-year resident of Bridgewater with a daughter in middle school and another at the high school also came to the mike. She addressed the Board and Administration, stating that she supported a full and complete education, including sports. However, she went on to explain that her daughters had missed an opportunity to hear and see the full swearing-in ceremony for President Barack Obama, an historic first.

Her expectation was that the ceremonies would have been made fully available on school facilities to Bridgewater-Raritan students on inauguration day.

Lee calmly and deliberately went on to explain, “I was very upset that my daughters had not seen the inauguration.” Had she known that this might have been the case, the mother continued, “I would have kept my daughters home that day.” Finished with her comments, Lee returned to her chair, followed by silence from every one of the officials sitting at the conference room table. No follow-up questions. No clarifications. No comments. Nothing.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In the movie classic, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” there is a moment when the terminally ill family patriarch, played by Burl Ives, unexpectedly walks into the drawing room of his southern mansion and finds his two grown children and their mates quarreling among themselves about how they will split things up upon his death.

There is a moment of hanging quiet as they realize that he has heard them talking about him. Not having picked up the entire conversation, but knowing that he is on the carpet, Ives, in his heavy authoritarian voice, declares, “I smell mendacity in this room.”

After listening for months on end to the race for the White House as it has narrowed down to the remaining candidates, Obama and McCain, I also declare that, “I smell mendacity in this room.” Although one might think that McCain and Obama are as far apart as their ages, there is, in one respect, not even spitting distance between the two.

They each have or have had on their teams, key advisors who played a direct role in the developing financial debacle. As to Obama, mortgage executive Franklin Delano Raines is said to have “taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing matters," according to http://www.realclearpolitics.com/. Raines was chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae and walked off after earning $99 million in three years.

For McCain, it’s economic advisor Phil Gramm, the former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He led the fight to successfully poison financial markets by dismantling laws which separated banking, insurance and brokerage activities. Gramm got his reward by subsequently landing a job as vice-chairman for Swiss-based UBS investment bank.

The choice of these men and others like them for campaign advice underscores that both McCain and Obama have put personal relationships ahead of good judgment. There is no evidence that it will be any different when one of them is in the White House.

Blaah . . . Blaah . . . Blaah!

This is one of those times when I am happy to be an independent voter. Today, McCain and Obama responded to questions about what they would do to solve the financial tsunami once more threatening to spread from Wall Street into the cities and towns of mainstream USA. Their answers show how, in the midst of a major fiscal crisis, we are not being well-served by the rhetoric of either candidacy

First, McCain: He proposes to set up an independent, bi-partisan committee to address problems of the type caused by Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG. Nice try, but just ask the senior Tom Kean who headed up the 9/11 committee and who, to this day, maintains that the committee’s recommendations were never fully enacted. We don’t have the time for that.

Next, Obama: When asked what he would do about the imminent bankruptcy of the world’s largest insurer, AIG, the response from his staff is that his campaign will take no position, because he doesn’t know the status of AIG’s books. How nice: A Harvard education, mind you; and, while the rest of the world knows that investments made by AIG in mortgage-backed securities, as well as credit default swaps (insurance issued on those securities) would take down profitable units of this financial giant and spread to other firms, Obama doesn’t know seem to know this. How credible is that?

Somebody had to act, and now! Somebody just did: As of this writing, the U.S. government, according to a 9:15 p.m., web news release, “has agreed to provide an $85 billion emergency loan to rescue the huge insurer AIG, the Federal Reserve said Tuesday.”

We don’t have to agree with this particular course of action, but at least some people in Washington and on Wall Street have come together to assess the problem and have taken swift action.

Note: For a colorful reaction to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, see Jay Jefferson Cooke’s essay at, http://www.mycentraljersey.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008809160323
Disclosure: I have a son who works for a fiscally sound subsidiary of AIG.

Political Chicanery

If there’s one thing that gets my dander up, it’s some dolt tapping the keys of a PC, writing some missive about which he knows nothing, not having done any fact-checking. When the result is the savaging of the integrity of a genuine U.S. war hero, it gets my dander up even more.

A recent TV ad by the Obama campaign claims that McCain is out of touch with reality because he can’t send an e-mail and doesn’t know how to use a PC. I’d like to know: Since when did the ability to use these tools automatically impart intelligence, discernment and wisdom to a person? That’s the first argument.

The second is that the impulsive staffers who work for David Plouffe, Obama’s chief strategist, got the basis for their claim disgustingly wrong. Here’s an excerpt from a Boston Globe profile of McCain which appeared on March 4, 2000:

"McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan -- Ted Williams is his hero -- but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball."

Enough said. Thanks for reading, and take care of yourselves out there; it can be a vicious world at times.

Note: Regardless of your political persuasion, it never hurts to be informed. If you’d like to read the source for this post and see the Obama campaign video, you can view them at, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/obama-ad-email.html. Also, it you have the inclination to read the Boston Globe’s profile on McCain published in March, 2000, it can be found at, http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/McCain_character_loyal_to_a_fault+.shtml . The story begins with McCain’s response to a political thrust against the gay major of Tempe Arizona.