By The River

Time may be catching up with Fidel Castro, the erstwhile dictator of Cuba who has ruled his country for nearly 50 years. Today he signed over powers to his younger brother, Raul, in preparation for gasto-intestinal surgery. He turns 80 in a couple of weeks, although on certain days he is still able to give a three-hour speech. That's somewhat shorter than he is known for. Castro probably talked more people to death than shot them.

I always found him a fascinating figure, despite his faults. Re-reading the New York Times coverage today from 1957-59, which is posted on the website, I understand why so many American leftists found him a romantic figure. Castro, the son of a wealthy sugar planter, defeated a brutal, rightist dictator and actually tried to do something lasting and permanent for the poor of Latin America. They still badly need somebody's help. One of the images that stuck in my mind during my own travels down there were the walls around the homes of the wealthy minority in those countries. Atop the walls you saw broken glass embedded in the concrete to keep poor criminals from climbing over. Given the choice between helping the poor or suppressing them, too many in Latin America always chose the latter option.

Cuba prior to Castro was run by American business interests and their client president, Gen. Fulgencio Batista, who seized power in 1952 to prevent democratic elections. Few in the West shed many tears for Batista when Castro overthrew him. Among the American businessmen with large interests in Cuba was Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey Chocolate. He liked to spend time at his sugar plantation, smoke cigars, and gamble in the casinos.

Castro has been demonized into caricature by conservatives in the U.S., especially the Cuban exiles in South Florida. Eventually he will die, and Raul will die, and we will finally, perhaps, get a true, unideological assessment of his reign. I don't know whether it will be net good or net bad. Like the Communist states in eastern Europe, there were good and bad aspects to Cuba. Clearly, health care was a high point for Castro. The Cuban medical system is said by relatively neutral observers to be better than that of any other Third World country and, in a few areas, on par with those of more modern, wealthy countries. Because of the U.S. embargo first put in place by President John F. Kennedy, the Cuban economy was forced to make do. After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989, the guaranteed market for Cuban sugar dried up along with all the other subsidies the USSR sent to its Latin American compadres. Yeah, they're poor, but so are a lot of other Latin Americans.

Like most Americans, I've never been to Cuba. When I worked on the student newspaper back in the early 1970s at Hope College, we received a subscription in the office to the English language version of Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper. No one was sure how we got it (I have my suspicions, but will keep those to myself for the sake of the possibly guilty party), but it came regularly. Really dreadful propaganda, usually with the Great Leader's latest stemwinder reprinted in full. Anyone who longed to live in Cuba after reading Granma deserved a permanent job cutting sugar cane in the Venceremos Brigade.

My greatest fear in all this is that Bush will launch an invasion of Cuba (though one wonders with what troops) if Casto doesn't fully recover from the surgery, that he will listen to the exiles and believe the Cuban people will welcome an invasion with open arms. Just like in Iraq. We got a severe ass-kicking the last time we tried that, albeit with Cuban exiles doing the actual Bay of Pigs fighting. In theory, the Cuban Air Force could bomb Key West (90 miles) or Miami (not much further). The mind boggles at such a scenario. For what? Cubans have it little worse and in some cases better than some of the people of the supposedly free countries of Latin and South America. It would be purely a grudge match, but Bush, as we know, is no stranger to that sort of motivation.

Far better to engage Cuba as we engage China, that paragon of human rights. Throw open the doors, end the trade embargo, let Americans go there and Cubans come here. Before you know it, Cuba will look like every other Caribbean island and life will go on. But don't let the exiles seize power and turn Cuba into a clone of every other Latin American country, where the rich have houses with walls and broken glass.

Posted by David at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not everyone is disturbed by the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. Some fundamentalist Christians see it as a sign of the approaching End Times, and better yet, of the Rapture. Some of their nearly giddy comments are collected on a blog at the link. Rapture, for those of you who haven't read the 38 volumes in the Left Behind series, is supposedly when certain Christians will be raised into Heaven without dying, sparing them from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Anti-Christ (Hillary Clinton? Nah...). If one of the Rapturees happens to be flying a big jetliner at the time, too bad for the passengers. The reason they're so excited is because a big Mideast war, the Battle of Armageddon, precedes the Rapture. Hey, maybe that's why the Bush Administration isn't doing much of anything to stop the fighting. Here's Stephen Colbert's take on the whole mess.

The whole idea is so nutty you can't help but laugh--until you see the news of 54 Lebanese civilians, possibly 37 of them children, dying in an Israeli bombing attack. I've held off from commenting because I believe strongly in Israel's right to exist, and have no love for Arab terrorists. But this bombing will be the Guernica of this war. The fighting has to stop.

Posted by David at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is Pride Fest weekend in Harrisburg, and for the first time, regional gays and lesbians held a Pride Parade along Front Street, ending at the Pride Fest site in Riverfront Park just north of Shipoke. I'm never crazy about the festival being so close to my neighborhood, not because of the nature of the events, which are pretty tame, but because of the religious extremists the festival never fails to attract. My worry is that a more unstable follower of these churches might decide to commit violence. All the nonsense about "Hate the sin, love the sinner" aside, a lot of the Christian right preaching and denunciation of gays sounds a lot like vehement Nazi hate speech toward Jews in the 1930s.

I walked up with my daughter to watch some of the parade. Though somewhat disorganized, it was loud and exhuberant, even including some cross-dressing beauty queens riding in convertibles. Some of the marchers, like the ones in the photo above, were determined to take back the God issue. And while most of the protesters were as dedicated to their own misguided Christianity as one might expect, a couple did look like reluctant draftees, somewhat embarassed to be holding those signs. Couldn't say 'no' to the preacher, I guess.

Posted by David at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another day, another assault by House Republicans on average Americans.

In one of the more cynical moves in modern political history, House Republicans last night coupled an increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour with permanent elimination of the estate tax, or nearly so, on the wealthiest American families. That bill, if it makes it through the Senate, would cost the nation $268 billion over the first 10 years. Think of it as a payoff to Westmoreland County billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who played a major role in funding the rise of the crazy right (see my blog post of two days ago on Scaife). It is a tax break the super-rich don't need and the country can't afford.

But wait--it gets worse. In a separate bill, the House last night approved a pension reform act that would, among other things, give companies legal immunity from employee lawsuits when they try to force through pension changes that would harm some current employees but improve the company's bottom line. This may be an attempt to limit the impact of a 2003 court ruling in the Cooper vs. IBM case, which held that IBM's conversion of its pension plan in the late 1990s to a so-called "cash balance" pension plan constituted illegal age discrimination.

Both bills face a rocky road in the Senate, where various Republican chairman are said to be furious with the House over one thing or another. Apparently a whole bunch of business tax and regulatory breaks that were intended by Senate Republicans to get Democratic votes for the pension bill were stripped out and put in the awful minimum wage bill.

Ultimately, there is really only one cure for all this: return Congress to the control of the Democrats in November and elect a Democratic president in 2008.

Posted by David at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been following the events in Westmoreland County surrounding the tragic death of Louis A.J. Farrell, 14, the Hempfield youth who was killed by a shot to the head from a pistol owned by State Sen. Bob Regola, R-Westmoreland. The state police are still investigating the matter, refusing to label it either a suicide or homicide or accident. Louis was found dead in the woods behind his parents home last Saturday morning. Regola, a right-winger who defeated the Legislature's leading progressive, Sen. Allen Kukovich, D-Westmoreland, in a bitter campaign in 2004, was in Harrisburg with his wife Friday night accepting an award from the Pennsylvania Sheriff's Association. Regola is a strongly pro-gun legislator who supposedly has told people he feels a need to go armed while in Harrisburg.

What continues to intrigue me is Regola's 16-year-old son, Robert Regola IV. News accounts have said Farrell had access to the Regola house to take care of the family pets while the Senator and his wife were away. Yet the Regola son didn't accompany his parents to Harrisburg. So he couldn't take care of the pets? Seems a bit odd. Or didn't his parents trust him to do that? According to news accounts, young Regola returned to the family home, which is next door to the Farrell's, about 10:30 p.m. last Friday. Farrell was last seen alive by his older brother at 10:15 p.m. Louis and young Bob were supposedly friends.

I'm sure the state police are examining a range of possibilities in the death. I won't speculate on what those might be. And of course, it might just be suicide. But even if it was, how did Louis find the gun, which authorities have stressed was not left laying around?

Posted by David at 06:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the living, breathing arguments for a stiff inheritance tax and high taxes in general on the wealthy continues to be Richard Mellon Scaife, the Greensburg, Pa., newspaper publisher who more than any other person promoted and funded the rise of the crazy right over the past 25 years. Among other things, Scaife funded the "Arkansas Project" that sought to dig up dirt on Bill and Hillary Clinton and did much to make American politics the current snakepit that it is. Scaife publishes the Greensburg/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, but his real money is inherited. You can read more about Scaife's role in the rise of extreme American conservatism in David Brock's book, "Blinded By the Right."

So it is with no small amount of schadenfreude that I give you the link to a story in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about a lawsuit filed by Margaret "Ritchie" Scaife against her husband seeking return of a few, small trinkets from the household, and her little dog, too. Among the items is the painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, "Man With Derby Hat," valued, probably conservatively, at $1 million. The Scaifes have been separated since last year. Kudos to whomever dug this one out of the county courthouse in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, and to the Post-Gazette for publishing it.

Posted by David at 06:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was awakened twice last night by the noise of helicopters heading to or from Pinnacle Health hospital in downtown Harrisburg. The first time was the worst. It sounded like the damn thing was hovering right over my house in Shipoke. This happens all the time. My children say it's scary. When Pinnacle began helicopter service three years ago, it said the helicopter service wasn't going to be used for scooping up car accident victims to bring them to the hospital. The stated purpose was to get referrals from smaller hospitals for advanced medical services. Somehow I doubt that a lot of referrals for this sort of thing are made at 1 or 2 in the morning. Basicly, Pinnacle wanted to grab some of the business going to Hershey Medical Center and Geisinger Medical Center, which already had helicopters. We neighbors in Shipoke were supposed to suck it up like good little midstaters.

Far more important than the noise issue is the safety issue. Medivac helicopters crash somewhere every year. There is no excuse for these helicopters flying at low altitude over Shipoke or other neighborhoods in the city when there is a wide river that can be used as a flight path to the Pinnacle helipad, which is a short distance from the river across a section of Riverfront Park. If a helicopter is going to crash, better it be in the Susquehanna River then into a block of homes in Shipoke. One can only imagine what might have happened on the ground if a medivac helicopter that crashed in Washington, D.C., last year had come down in a residential neighborhood instead of the Potomac River.

Pinnacle, headed by Dr. Roger Longenderfer, at best pays lip service to neighborhood noise and safety complaints, but you can send yours to him at P.O. Box 8700, Harrisburg, Pa. 17105, or e-mail him at rlongenderfer@pinnaclehealth.org. The Pinnacle switchboard number is 231-8200. Pinnacle isn't about to voluntarily give up or limit the helicopter landings. This is both an economic and prestige issue for the hospital. Important hospitals have helipads. Unimportant hospitals don't. Only the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can force them to make changes. The FAA accepts helicopter noise complaints at 9-AEA-NOISE@faa.gov or 1-718-553-3365. Keep a log of dates and times.

Our elected officials, especially the federal ones, can also bring pressure. For example, check out this news release from Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, responding to citizen complaints on Long Island about noise from helicopters flying between New York City and the resort areas of the Hamptons. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., lived in Shipoke years ago when was an aide to State Sen. Doyle Corman. He or U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter or Rep. Tim Holden ought to step in.

Here is what I say needs to be done to eliminate or minimize the helicopter noise and safety problem in Harrisburg:

1. Limit the flights to daylight hours. If they absolutely must come at night, let them land at the airport in New Cumberland and bring the patients by ambulance from there. If these are truly not critical emergency patients, that shouldn't be a problem.

2. Ban overflights of Shipoke for safety reasons. No excuses. Approaches and departures from the Pinnacle helipad must be over the river, not populated areas.

3. Require the helicopter services to use lower-noise helicopters. Some helicopters are much noisier than others.

We aren't required to give up our safety and peace of mind for the greater glory and success of Pinnacle Health.

Posted by David at 05:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To the surprise of no one, President Bush yesterday vetoed a billl sent to him by Congress that would have allowed federal medical research dollars to be spent on establishing new lines of stem cells from frozen human embryos that would otherwise be discarded by fertilization clinics. Why do these extra embryos exist? In vitro fertilization doesn't always work on the first try, so several embryos are typically created. The ones at issue here are leftovers. No one has ever seriously proposed banning this practice because it would condemn many couples to childlessness who otherwise might be helped. One-day-old embryos have no consciousness. Using them for medical research and the possibility of saving many lives down the road is not considered wrong by all theologians.

The President created this problem in 2001 when he ruled that federal dollars--without which little serious medical research is accomplished--could only be spent on existing stem cell lines. These were said to number 67, but turned out to number only about 22, and many of these were useless for medical research because of cross-contamination by mouse genes. His action brought embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. almost to a halt, although it continues at full throttle in places like England, Singapore, and California, which created a state funding program to get around the Bush blockade.

I suspect in 40-50 years, when all the truth about Bush has been revealed, we'll learn that he knew all along that he was writing a death sentence for one of the most promising medical advances to come along in decades. The veto yesterday was for the religious right, a sop to their disappointment at his inability to deliver on flag-burning and gay marriage. At the veto ceremony, he surrounded himself with a couple of dozen couples who have adopted so-called "snowflake babies" raised from frozen embryos. I'm glad they did that, but adoption isn't going to save all those frozen day-old embryos. The parents whose eggs and sperms created them aren't about to casually let them be adopted by wingnuts. Or liberals, for that matter. It's a highly personal thing.

Bush put his veto signature on the bill in private, with no cameras present that could create a tape loop to be replayed endlessly in the fall campaign to send Republican congressmen and senators to electoral hell. The ceremony with the parents and the "snowflake babies" was held afterward. It was a shameless display of political pandering that will hurt real people--those who might have been saved if stem cell remedies for a host of dread diseases had been developed sooner. A veto override attempt will probably fail, and I predict that some legislators who voted for the bill will now vote against override to appease the religious right.

Just another day in the Eight Lost Years in America.

Postscript: U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who is up for re-election this year, stands to be a big loser from the veto. Yesterday, the House failed to pass a bill introduced by Santorum to require the National Institutes of Health to fund research into adult stem cell research. According to AP, some Democrats didn't want to give Santorum and other conservatives the political cover this bill was intended to provide. Adult stem cells are not taken from embryos but don't have the same ability to morph themselves into things like new kidneys, etc., that embryonic stem cells are believed to have. The religious right has held out adult stem cells as a supposed moral substitute for embryonic stem cells, but if you buy this argument, you are giving up most of the promise of embryonic stem cells to achieve medical marvels. It isn't even half a loaf.

Posted by David at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a fascinating story in the Los Angeles Times today about the unusual number of former Pittsburgh Steelers who have gone to that great stadium in the sky in recent years. Eighteen former players have died since 2000. It's one of those cases, like the East Pennsboro High School deaths of several years ago, that will never be solved, but will keep people talking and speculating for years. Looks like Ben Roethlisberger really did dodge a bullet.

Posted by David at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly approved a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, one of the more important laws we have to guarantee the freedom of minorities to vote. Assuming President Bush doesn't veto it--I doubt even he would do that--this should lay the question to rest for another quarter century.

The law was headed for what Republican leadership thought was an easy and politically advantageous renewal before certain Southern Republican congressmen and anti-immigrant congressmen began screaming bloody murder and brought the process to a halt. The embarassment finally became too much for the GOP and the renewal bill was allowed to go to a vote yesterday.

Posted by David at 06:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With the calls from the far right to hang journalists, or put them in the gas chamber, or prosecute them for treason for exposing the crimes and policy disasters of the Bush Administration, I thought wingnuts everywhere might enjoy this photo of the site of some actual hangings on April 10, 1945. Three non-Jewish German men who tried to save their village of Brettheim in Baden-Württemburg from destruction by the American Army in the closing days of World War II were hanged from these linden trees by S.S. and Hitler Youth troops, the latter in their mid-teens. They are buried in the adjoining cemetery.

At the time, the S.S. (elite units which, unlike the regular German Army, were comprised of nearly 100 percent dedicated Nazis) was summarily executing any of their fellow citizens who were "defeatist" or "traitors," which they defined as not wanting to fight to the death against the Americans in the waning days of a war (it ended May 8, 1945) that anyone with half a brain could see was lost.

Two men from Brettheim, hoping to spare their village from destruction, had disarmed four Hitler Youth to prevent them from shooting at the Americans and bringing return fire on the village. The S.S. arrived that night and arrested one of the men (the other escaped), farmer Friedrich Hanselmann. He admitted his role in the incident and was sentenced to death. Brettheim's mayor and head teacher (who was also a Nazi) refused to sign the sentence and were likewise sentenced to death. Seven days after the hangings, with the S.S. forcing regular German troops in Brettheim to fight to the death, the village was destroyed in an inferno of American bombing and artillery. About 20 villagers died.

I was first told about this in the 1990s by relatives who live a few miles from Brettheim. I visited the cemetery again when I was in the area in May and shot these photos. It is a chilling story that has stayed with me. I see it as emblematic of the fate of Germans who were not fanatical Nazis, but who went along for the ride out of apathy or fear. In the end, they died, too, in bombing raids or murder by the true believers among their own countrymen. What was done to the Jews, or to the occupied nations, was finally done to them. There was no escape in keeping one's head down and remaining silent. Brettheim's fate ought to be a lesson to any people attracted by the temporary order and security a dictator can bring. There is always a price to pay for the evil of leaders.

The calls for the murder of journalists or Supreme Court justices in our own country are sick. Sure, these may be cries of impotent rage from far rightists who see their dreams of a permanent ascendency heading for the scrap heap--think of the coming elections as the approaching American Army. But like the diehard Nazis at the end of World War II, they are dangerous and can kill even as outside forces are closing in. We dare not ignore their threat. Anyone who publicly longs for the murder of journalists or Supreme Court justices ought to receive a visit from the police.

Posted by David at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's an odd fact: I graduated from Hope College in Holland, Mich., in 1975, the same year that House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan, graduated from my old school. But wait--it gets weirder. He and I were both political science majors, one of the smaller departments on campus. And...I don't have a clue who he was. We're talking a college at that time of 2,200 students and a political science department in which perhaps 20-30 members of each class were majors. It's not hard to get noticed under those circumstances, but Hoekstra managed to keep studiously under the campus radar.

This isn't a case of the Big Man on Campus, i.e., the student body president, going into politics later in life and running for Congress. I was active on the Hope College Anchor, the student newspaper. I knew a lot of people and knew of a lot more, but not him. What's more, I can't find anyone else who really remembers him. I asked around at the 25th reunion, at which he spoke. Nah. In contrast, consider Robert Shuller, Jr., son of Rev. Robert Shuller and now successor to his father at the Crystal Cathedral and Hour of Power TV show. He was also in my class, and likewise kept a low profile. Yet people knew he was around. Hoekstra was all but invisible. He did appear once in the Hope College yearbook, in the "Other Students" section, but that's the only evidence of him I was able to find.

So my theory, naturally, is that a parallel universe existed at Hope College at that time. I was in one, and Hoekstra and the "Other Students" were in the other. All of which makes a good segue to the real topic of this post, which is Hoekstra's angry letter to George W. Bush complaining about secret intelligence gathering programs that appear to be illegal and which are separate and beyond those already disclosed by the New York Times and others.

I have to say, I didn't see this coming. Hoekstra seemed like a Bush true believer. When the story first broke about the National Security Agency's eavesdropping on the phone calls of American citizens, Hoekstra rushed to defend Bush. At the time, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Holland Sentinel, his hometown paper and my former hometown paper. It was published, and maybe it had some impact. Read it and be the judge:

To the Editor:

Having listened to Rep. Pete Hoekstra this morning on National Public Radio defend the Bush Administration's decision to violate the law and eavesdrop on Americans without court approval, this Holland native has these questions:

Is there anything George W. Bush could do that Rep. Hoekstra would not rush to defend?

And does he want to be remembered as a bitter-end defender of Bush as he drives at breakneck speed down the Nixon Road, or does he want to be remembered as a statesman who put the public interest above the interests of his party?

David DeKok,

Harrisburg, Pa.

Well, I got my answer, but it wasn't the one I expected. Congratulations! Pete, I suspect you'll be leaving the Bush universe soon and returning to the parallel universe in which I and most Americans reside. Welcome back. I guess our professors Al Vanderbush and Bob Elder must have had an impact on you after all. Jack Holmes will forgive you eventually. Even when you lose your chairmanship after the Democrats take back the House this November, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing and avoided becoming Bush roadkill.

Posted by David at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Neil Young is 60, a few months older than George W. Bush, and we can only imagine what the two of them might talk about if they went out to dinner together to celebrate being around for six decades. "You the feller that wrote that Ohier song?" And so forth.

I didn't have the opportunity to see Jonathan Demme's film about Young, "Heart of Gold," on the big screen, and am not certain if it ever played at the Midtown Theater in Harrisburg, where I usually see my movies. But I watched it on DVD on Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday afternoon and plan to buy it for my collection, it's that good. Filmed over two nights in Nashville at the theater that used to host the Grand Ole Opry, it is as good as a concert film gets. The DTS soundtrack is wonderful.

Young is the rare rock musician who continues to turn out great new music as he gets older. Unlike the Beach Boys, who played in Harrisburg on July 4th and can't even come close to reproducing in concert the great studio sound of their early hits, Young is as good as he was in his late 20s. That's when he was in Buffalo Springfield ("I Am a Child"), then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young ("Ohio"), then a solo artist ("Sugar Mountain," "Heart of Gold," "Like a Hurricane," etc., etc.) He has always taken a schizoid approach to his solo work, sometimes the hard-edged rocker with Crazy Horse, sometimes the plaintive folkie and country guy. His two hearts capture both sides of the mid-to-late 20th century American music scene in one, very creative man. Yes, I know he is Canadian--it comes through in many of his songs. But he recorded them in America and has lived in Marin County, California, for decades.

It is the folk-country persona we see in "Heart of Gold." Recorded over two nights in the same theater in Nashville that originally hosted the Grand Ole Opry, Young sings most of the songs on his "Prairie Wind" album and then finishes off the show with old songs, mainly from his 1972 "Heart of Gold" album and his 1978 "Comes a Time" album. He recorded "Prairie Wind" in a few days of work after he was told he had a brain aneurysm, but before returning to New York for the surgery. The concert was after the surgery, which he came through just fine.

Director Jonathan Demme, who made the "Stop Making Sense" movie about the Talking Heads, knew Young from the song he wrote for Demme's movie "Philadelphia." The camera work and editing and lighting is first-rate, something that can't be taken for granted in indoor concert films. For me, the emotional high point of the concert comes near the end, when nearly everyone in the band picks up a guitar and joins Young in a "wall of guitars" for Ian Tyson's song, "Four Strong Winds." For us aging hippies, it is a magical moment.

You'll have an opportunity to hear Neil Young on tour this summer with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. They'll be at Hershey Statdium on Aug. 25. Catch him while you can. You won't regret it. I imagine George W. Bush has heard a couple of Neil Young's songs on the radio. But I doubt he listened very closely. Not like you.

Posted by David at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That's a variation on an actual headline that ran in Harrisburg magazine years ago, when it was still run by the unceremoniously booted former Patriot-News editor Ron Minard. Minard, now in the Great Beyond, loved headlines like that.

The Shipoke flea market is held every summer on the Saturday after July 4. I'm always amazed how early people start showing up. Most residents set their tables up around 5:30-6 a.m., and customers begin arriving in droves shortly thereafter. There probably is a slightly higher class of items offered for sale here than in some neighborhood flea markets--we're a literature loving bunch, and books are plentiful. Walking past the booths spread out in Riverfront Park along Front Street, I also noticed many movies on videotape for sale, including a bunch from us. I think people are finally abandoning the VCR , and that's why so many tapes are on the tables. Kind of like when vinyl LPs began showing up at yard sales after the advent of the CD.

The event ends with a neighborhood picnic in the Shipoke playground that is the "social event of the summer" here, more or less. There are more than a few psychic wounds among neighborhood residents from the June 27-29 flood scare, but nothing a little wine and fellowship won't heal.

Posted by David at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now comes word that the Bush Administration, trying desperately to kill the remainder of the New Deal/Great Society programs that made America great even as the elections are closing in, has hired some hack law school in Texas to devise a way to gut the Freedom of Information Act in the name of national security.

The Freedom of Information Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and strengthened by Congress and President Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s. It allows anyone to request documents on almost any subject from the Federal government at modest or no cost. It has been used by countless journalists, historians, businesses and average citizens to find out what the federal government is up to. It is a crucial tool to maintaining our democracy. I used it in writing my book, Unseen Danger, about the Centralia mine fire, and again in my long-running book project on the history of GPU, the company responsible for the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Bush's people argue that too much information is available to the public and terrorists about the location of critical public facilities such as the TMI nuclear plant. The theory being, I guess, that being able to see the TMI nuclear plant from 10-15 miles in any direction won't be enough to give away its location to some future Osama bin Laden or Timothy MacVeigh. There have always been exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for legitimate national security information.

In fact, the "model law" envisioned by the Bush Administration would likely be used to deny scores of legitimate requests for information having nothing to do with national security. In practice, it will be used by hostile or even just overly cautious bureaucrats to deny any documents related to power plants, especially those embarassing to the nuclear industry. It is important to recall that earlier in the life of his junta, Bush directed federal agencies to use whatever means it could find under the existing FOIA law to deny requests for documents. In the past, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, the presumption had been the other way: that federal agencies should try to find reasons to release documents.

The long and sad record of softball treatment of the President by the press continued this week with the Great Leader's appearance on Larry King Live. Bush knows an interview with Fox News, where even more worshipful treatment would be likely, would carry far less credibility than knocking softballs from Larry King out of the park.

Posted by David at 07:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I did some poking around on the Internet and found some interesting informaton about Dr. Joel N. Myers, founder and CEO of AccuWeather, Inc., of State College, Pa., the leading private weather service in the United States. Myers didn't just give a single, $2,000 donation to Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in 2005. He has donated regularly to Santorum and other Republican candidates and political action committees. No Democrats need apply. His total since 1991, according to the Federal Elections Commission, is $6,600 to Santorum, $44,850 to all Republicans including Santorum. He was a major donor to the misbegotten Scott Paterno run for Congress against U.S. Rep. Tim Holden in 2004. Interestingly, neither he nor his brother Barry, executive vice president of AccuWeather, have given anything to Santorum since the
the storm hit about that $2,000 donation. But donations to other Republicans have continued, most recently a $5,000 donation in March to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Given all this it's not surprising AccuWeather has signed on with the "skeptics" of global warming. When you join a church, there are certain things you are asked to believe through faith, not fact.

Posted by David at 05:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)