The Country of Texas

A sort of trial balloon started moving around the Texas email circuit in 2009 when someone named "Dallas" suggested that Barack Obama's election to the presidency was sufficient cause for Texas to secede from the Union.

Now the balloon has been updated to suggest that Obama's re-election would be sufficient cause for Texas to secede from the Union. I am a native Texan, and thus received a copy of the proposal in an email last week from a lifelong Texas friend.

Writing for "The People of Texas," the author says, "We Texans love y'all, but we'll probably have to take action if Barack Obama wins the election. We'll miss you, too."

Texas would secede in summer, 2013, and elect George W. Bush President of Texas. "The Country of Texas" would have everything it needed to survive, the author said: plenty of oil and gas, including natural gas; a thriving computer industry; top-flight medical care and research; lots of excellent colleges and universities; an "intelligent and energetic" work force unhindered by "a bunch of unions;" essential control of paper, plastics and insurance industries, a well-armed, easily mobilized civilian militia with the Texas Rangers to back them up; total sufficiency in beef, poultry, hogs, and several types of grain, fruits and vegetables; three of the 10 largest cities in America; and three of America's 10 largest ports.

"There isn't a thing out there that we need and don't have," said the author. "Don't regard this as a threatening letter. It's just a note to give y'all something to think about."

So I did think about it, and I agree there isn't a thing out there that The Country of Texas needs and doesn't have. Hey, they'll all be under 65, too, since everybody on Social Security and Medicare will have to leave.

I’d think twice about G.W. Bush, though. He’ll cut everybody’s taxes, then as soon as he sniffs out WMDs in Las Cruces or Lawton or somewhere, he’ll deplete the treasury faster than you can say Billie Sol Estes. I think they should consider Jerry Jones instead. But wait: he ain’t natural-born; he was born in Los Angeles. I'll be danged, Bush ain’t natural-born, either (Connecticut)! Maybe one of them could work, if they-all don’t have a lot of birthers down there.

I emailed my old friend and said I will still come see him sometime, if I can get through Customs.

Solving for x again

I hated algebra, and so read with interest a long commentary in the Sunday New York Times titled, "Is Algebra Necessary?" by a retired professor named Andrew Hacker.

I happen to think algebra, though hated, IS necessary, and I read the piece looking for a specific word that would support my contention. And then I found it.

"But it’s not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar," Hacker wrote.

Now join me on the living room couch on a day in 1987, next to me and my daughter Jessica, who was in eighth grade. She hated algebra also. I was trying to help her with it. After a few minutes, she said, "I. Can't. Do. This." Neither could I it turned out. Oh, I remembered the basic steps in solving for x, but I had learned it a certain way, in 1956, and it was being taught a different way now.

The rest of the day, I wondered why my daughter should be grinding her teeth down to nubs over a subject that, most people agreed, she would never use. I tried to think if I had ever used it, and in the midst of that thinking decided it would make a good column. I was writing three columns a week for The San Diego Union at the time, and thought this was a subject with which many readers would identify.

And so, in those hours that afternoon, I discovered the necessity for algebra. Algebra is the kindergarten of philosophy, I don't care what Andrew Hacker thinks. After several grades of manipulating hard numbers, eighth-graders become advanced enough in their thinking to be ready to think in the abstract. They have to solve for x.

Which was precisely what I was doing. I wrote a column that day which said that writing a column was nothing more than solving for x, and that knowing how to do that began with algebra, which was the kindergarten of philosophy. Sitting at my computer, algebra was practically a bird sitting on my shoulder. Still is, chirping away as I key these words. In fact life itself has turned out to be one big old x, requiring constant solving, sometimes requiring professional help.

I am not alone in stating this argument. In the very first Comment following Dr. Hacker's piece, Commenter Mike wrote: "Algebra is a foundation stone for our ability to think critically as are philosophy and logic." So, see?

Tavis Smiley's TROUser comment

Tavis Smiley on CBS's "Sunday Morning" this morning invoked a TROUser sentiment in a short essay he said was "a cautionary tale about what happens to a country that drifts so far away from any notion of fundamental fairness for its citizenry, that we end up a nation of the rich - and the rest of us."


Any time I see a reference to The Rest Of Us in the media, I'll refer you to it, with a link. To read the Tavis Smiley essay, go here.

Please, not another smoking gun

Many TROUsers are old enough to understand the meaning of the phrase, "The cover-up is as bad, or worse, than the crime."

I don't know when the phrase was coined, but many TROUsers identify it with the August, 1974, resignation of President Nixon, who was caught in a cover-up of the historic Watergate break-in in June, 1972.

Nixon denied any knowledge of the break-in for more than two years, until taped evidence was found that he had discussed the break-in with aides less than a week after the event. That tape became known as "the smoking gun."

I guess that's why "smoking gun" comes back into popular use when people refer to Mitt Romney's unreleased tax returns, and what could be in them. It doesn't even have to be illegal, as the Nixon smoking gun certainly was. This time, it is more about this confounding secrecy. It is enough just to have the suspicion that Romney might have some explaining to do, about what is in those returns, and the explaining could cost him votes (particularly among TROUsers, I would imagine), and thus be the smoking gun.

The very conservative Manchester UnionLeader, whose editors think Romney is too wishy-washy to be a legitimate GOP presidential candidate, said yesterday that he should release the tax returns immediately: "If Romney intends to win, he is going to have to make the tax forms public."

That is a 16-word salute to the fear of the power of the smoking gun. If it's not there, fine. If it is there, it will be found. If it is found after the convention but before the election, it's all over for the GOP. If Romney wins the election, and THEN the smoking gun is found, what then? As a TROUser, I don't want to find out. One smoking gun and the hole it shot in that president's legitimacy is enough for one American lifetime.



Last time, I mentioned that John McCain knows what is in those tax forms. So do a lot of people who worked for McCain in 2008 and are still stricken, like Steve Schmidt, that McCain passed over somebody like Romney for somebody like Sarah Palin. Steve Schmidt knows about Romney's tax forms. Ask him.

Want Mitt's returns? Ask John

Just a passing thought for the day: there is one other public person in a position of responsibility who knows what is in the famous tax returns that Mitt Romney refuses to release.

John McCain. When he vetted Mitt for the vice-presidency in 2008, Mitt turned over 23 years of tax returns to the McCain team. Why not just ask him?

Stirring the TROUsers

I am a TROUser. What is a TROUser? TROUsers are mainly, but not exclusively, members of the American middle class which has been forgotten, arguably neglected, by the nation's modern political and financial systems.

"TROU" is the acronym for "the rest of us." "It's hardly news," wrote Robert Reich of UC Berkeley last year, "that the near meltdown of America's financial system enriched a few at the expense of the rest of us."

Shortly after, Bob Schieffer of CBS, on "Face the Nation," said that in America there were the two intransigent political parties, and then "the rest of us."

With those two statements, I recognized myself as a TROUser. TROUsers may be to the left or right of middle (I am to the left), and we will differ on some issues, but we would touch neither left-wing socialism, nor right-wing extremism, with a ten-foot pole. What do TROUsers want, politically and economically? David Brooks in The New York Times put it nicely: "Anything that might give the working class a leg up."

What, in the news today, would have a chance of giving the working class a leg up? Resolving to defeat Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul who, through the Republican Jewish Coalition, pledged $6.5 million to support a "My Buyer's Remorse" media campaign, focused on Israel, to turn Jews who voted for Obama in 2008 away from him in 2012.

Such one-issue extremism (only part of the $100 million Adelson is reported willing to spend to defeat Obama) is something TROUsers can fight against. Defeating Adelson, of course, would contribute to defeating Mitt Romney, but that's not the point. Romney the Omitter is a substance vacuum. TROUsers are realizing they need to look beyond him, at people who support him, for someone or something of substance worth defeating. In this regard, the billionaire, one-issue Sheldon Adelson leaps off the page.

In the end, defeating Adelson means defeating Mitt Romney, but it is someone like Adelson who will motivate TROUsers to get out and vote, and that is really what the TROUsers are about. We are an unfunded and, so far, unorganized voter advocacy coalition, looking for the best chance to give ourselves a leg up this November.

12 dead this time

"12 dead after Colorado theater shooting"

Every time this happens, I go back to the eyes of 19-year-old James Buquet, who attended my journalsim class for five or six weeks in autumn of 1993, then dropped out, then a couple of weeks later shot to death four people and himself at a fitness center nearby. I knew he was in trouble, very angry, tense as a banjo string, from the first day of class. I could have referred him to counseling. They could have referred him to psychiatrists. But he still could have bought a gun, and come to my classroom (a thought which chills me still), since I’d fingered him, or to the gym, as he did. The point is, experts and cops can’t take real action on these people until they pull the trigger. None of them (Columbine, Va. Tech, Tucson, Aurora, others) had any trouble obtaining triggers to pull. So all day long now, people are asking “Why?” I hope the day is near, for the sake of all those dead people and those to come, when the question turns to “How?” and someone has the guts to answer it and turn the answer into law.

The princess of extreme individualism

This was in the chronically crowded parking lot at our local Trader Joe's a few days ago. I was lucky to land a space directly in front of the store. When I got in the car to leave, there was a black BMW 325-series sedan next to me on my left.

I started to crank the ignition when a young blonde got in the BMW. I decided to let her back out first. Ninety-five percent of the time, it's better that way. She backed halfway out of the space and stopped. As I say, it's a crowded lot with a layout that invites congestion, particularly right in front of the store.

I started the car and waited. The BMW didn't move. After 45 seconds (yes, I have great patience in parking lots – it's better that way), I decided it wasn't going to move, for whatever reason. So, seeing I had room to get around her, I backed out, and when I was even with the BMW's front windows, I glanced at the driver. She was texting.

Her car was half out of the space, and half into the bustling aisle behind, and she continued to text. I was more eager to depart the lot than I was to dwell on her behavior, so I backed on out. Then, I had to cross behind her. I recognized the peril, that that would be the instant she finished the texting and backed again, with proven disregard for anyone behind her.

But I made it, a blog already forming in my head: if you want an excellent example of how this country has not only become polarized, but atomized, by cascading devotion to self-interest, go take a spin in the nearest mall parking lot.

Then you can join me in contributing to a dialogue launched by The New York Times, addressing the national selfishness. The launch document was a July 4 op-ed piece, titled "The Downside of Liberty," by Kurt Andersen, who argues that this national selfishness had its roots in the individualism revolution (free love, hippies, etc.) of the late 1960s.

It was called the "hippie generation." But it wasn't just hippies. In the 1980s and '90s, it became the "me generation," as young people of all cultural persuasions discovered the pleasures of ignoring what Andersen calls "the civic good." But here is Andersen's epiphany: it didn't stop with cultural norms.

"Going forward," he writes, "the youthful masses of every age would be permitted as never before to indulge their self-expressive and hedonistic impulses. But capitalists in return would be unshackled as well, free to indulge their own animal spirits with fewer and fewer fetters in the forms of regulation, taxes or social opprobrium."

So the national selfishness reaches from texters outside Trader Joe's to managers inside Wall Street. Only Andersen doesn't call it "selfishness." He calls it "extreme individualism." I love that. It describes my Beemer princess precisely.

The working man's diploma

Saturday, June 30, 2012, was my last day as a full-time employee. On Sunday, July 1, I entered the ranks of the retired.

Accordingly, I am having a ceremonial look at my Social Security statement. My first contribution to Social Security was $109, in 1955. I worked for Abilene Blueprint Co. that summer, delivering blueprints around town on my bicycle. I was 12 years old. Thus I understood little about "Social Security." I did get a card, with my very own Social Security Number on it, and that made me feel important.

That was 57 years ago. I also worked for a florist, a lumberyard, two or three construction companies, an oilpatch drilling crew, Nabisco, the Post Office, the Abilene Water and Sewer Dept., Stanford University (library, lifeguard, bowling alley), the U.S. Army, The Abilene Reporter-News, The San Diego Union, and Grossmont College. It was a good working life. I still carry interesting stories from each of those jobs.

It was from Grossmont College (journalism professor) that I retired July 1, my last full-time job. I am 69, and I still understand little about Social Security, except how important it becomes, overnight, to me, along with Medicare, and how important that made me feel, waking up Sunday morning. Thank you, there, in Washington, D.C. I am going to frame that card you sent me in 1955, which today feels like a diploma.

Yes, THAT Michael Grant

Over the last decade, among the many things revealed to me by the Internet is the truly astonishing number of Michael Grants out there. Go ahead, Google them. You will get 110,000,000 results. In the No. 1 slot this morning is a Michael Grant who has written popular books for young adults, including "Gone." He is themichaelgrant.com. Any time you see a "the" in the url, it means somebody else already had whatever "the" modifies, in this case michaelgrant.com. Of all the Michael Grants that show up in the 110,000,000 results, only one is michaelgrant.com, and that's me.
I have been off the air for a couple of years. Damn near three, actually. In that time, Google developed a new blogger dashboard which I am learning to use this morning. This new dashboard has a hits graph right in it, which is convenient. But for me it shows almost 40 hits for July 9, 2012, which I appreciate but probably don't deserve, when my last blog was posted in December, 2009.
Any hits from now on I intend to earn. I am a writer, too, and I have a few things to say, before it is too damn late.