A few basic truths

A former president has been indicted for alleged crimes of fraud. He has pled not guilty on all counts. Last year, his company and its CFO were found guilty of tax fraud and was penalized by $1.6 million. A few years before, while president, he settled a case about his Foundation and he had to repay the $1.6 million he used for personal purposes before the Foundation was terminated and monies distributed.

The former president may be charged with additional alleged crimes, one for election meddling, one for mishandling classified documents and one for his role in the January 6
insurrection against Congress.

Yet, a few more truths are as follows. His MAGA base will dig in further in support of their belief the former president can do no wrong. And, a few more Republicans may peel off and actually look at what the grand jury of peers has accused him of.

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“Verdant canopy of lies” – resume inflation is growing

Jack Shafer of Politico wrote the following opinion piece earlier this week that should concern each of us called “Opinion | The George Santos Caucus Is Growing – Resume inflation on Capitol Hill is getting out of hand.” Here is the first few paragraphs, with a link to the article below.

“The verdant canopy of lies tended by Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) requires no summary here. They’re so thick and leafy that they now block the sun from the forest floor. But he’s not the only freshman member who struggles when self-reporting. According to a recent Washington Post investigation, Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) can’t keep her ethnicity straight, claims to have grown up destitute and neglected when she didn’t, and appears to have incorrectly portrayed herself as the victim of a home invasion. (Luna has contested the Post story and won one correction and a clarification.) Meanwhile, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has claimed to be an economist (he’s not), re-rendered his minor position as a reserve sheriff’s deputy into a career as a crime-fighter cracking down on sex trafficking, and inflated his participation in non-degree classes at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth into claims of having attended their graduate schools.”

Resume inflation is not a new thing and has been going on for years. But, now it is far easier to check whether a person is embellishing their resume or flat out pulling a “Santos.” The young congressman has been so over the top with his “canopy of lies” that he may be removed from Congress by his own Republican constituents. He is facing an ethics investigation at long last after the Speaker realized the Santos problem would not go away. Yet, it should have never gotten this far. The leaders of his party should have loudly cried foul and not placed Santos on two committees.

We deserve better than this. We already know many politicians cannot be trusted to tell us the truth more than they do not, but lying about who you are and what you have accomplished to such a degree is just simply not right. There is a reason why some politicians want to squeeze out the press and restrict what books you can read. They want to make it easier to lie to our faces.

Everyone has told white lies and untruths over the lives. To say they have not would cause a question. Some have told only a bare minimum and felt bad out them when they do, while others approach the same level of lying of certain politicians whose names evoke whether they are being deceitful when mentioned. Santos is in a master class of resume inflation.

To be frank, an investigation is warranted and if found culpable, action should be taken against Santos. At the bare minimum, he should be censured and be prevented from serving on any committees. Just because he can represent his district does not mean the rest of our country should be exposed to such deceitful governance. Yet, if culpable, then he should not be seated in my view. The lawsuit members of his own party in his district are pursuing to have him removed is interesting.

The question that should be asked is “how can you trust a person who has lied to this extent? Yet, in our tribal politics “our liars are better than your truth tellers.” In Santos’ party it goes further than that “our liars are better than our truth tellers.” And, that is an embarrassingly scary thought. We need the truth. We need to know who you are if you want our vote.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/23/george-santos-caucus-elections-00084048

I am not mistaken, I was misquoted (a reprise)

George Santos is not the first politician to be caught in a lie. I wrote the following in 2013, before the age of Trump. You can tell as if it was written later, examples of his untruthfulness would be hard not to include.

On our way to school this morning, my son and daughter were arguing over who said what. My son told his sister that she is acting like a politician and uttered, “I am not mistaken, I was misquoted.” I almost ran off the road it was so funny. It reminds me that you cannot hide from your comments in this day and age. They may be taken out of context, but they have been recorded somewhere, so you cannot disown them.

Last year, Charles Barkley, the former basketball player and current sports analyst, got some flack for what appeared in his book. His classic response was he was “misquoted.” To which the reporter replied, “But Charles, it is your autobiography.” Of course, we learned that Charles did not write his autobiography, but he least could have read it first.

Doonesbury is one of my favorite comic strips. In my paper, it sits right above Dilbert another favorite, which is a neat two for one reading. For about a week, Doonesbury was lampooning presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his inability to remember the hazing incident in high school. As the story goes, Romney and other students were offended by an effeminate look on another high school boy. So, they took it upon themselves to hold him down while they cut his locks. To this day, Romney’s co-conspirators are mortified and shamed by their past actions. One actually saw their victim a few years ago and apologized profusely. It goes without saying the victim remembers the incident.

Which leads us to Romney, who cannot recall the incidence and referred to it as high school hijinks. I have written in an earlier post the failure to remember is as bad as the incident, since he is now an adult. At age 53, I can remember all the dumb ass things I did in my life and I feel remorse if I offended someone.  Since I try to do the right thing, I cannot always remember those, as they far outweigh my misdeeds. But, I can make a list of infamy very quickly and tell you how bad I feel even today.

Doonesbury had an appropriate field day with Romney’s lack of memory on this. My favorite remark was when Romney was lampooned for not being able to remember a “hate crime.” I would have felt much better about Romney if he owned up to his mistake and said this was an occasion where I screwed up in my youth and I feel horrible about it. It would have been even better, if he had reached out to the individual. And, I don’t want to let him off the hook for his hijinks either. While I did dumb things in my youth, I was never part of group that physically tormented one person.

While we are on Doonesbury, I was reminded the other night about their most famous lampooning that of George H.W. Bush, which went on for the rest of his political career and was even applied to his son. I was watching the HBO documentary “Reagan” which is  quite even-handed and, as a result, quite good. The first act of George’s that started us down the path of misquoting is he is caught on video referring to Reagan’s economic plan as “Voodoo Economics” when he was running against Reagan for the GOP nomination. After becoming his Vice President, he was later asked about these comments. He said on video that he never said that. The documentary shows the footage of him doing so.  As a sidebar, he was correct as Reaganomics did not work except for the wealthy.

If that were not enough, later during Reagan’s worst episode, the Iran-Contra affair where Reagan actually did something illegal and could have been impeached, Bush said he was not in certain meetings and did not have anything to do with the affair. The testimony and meeting notes showed that he was. Note, Reagan and Bush survived because Oliver North fell on the sword for his commanders and took the heat. So, Doonesbury started portraying Bush as a disembodied helmet. When he spoke, the words were evoked from underneath the helmet. To this day, if the senior Bush is included in the comic strip, he is referenced in this manner.

One of my favorites, though, are the immortal words of Senator John Kyl when he was caught in an erroneous comment about Planned Parenthood last spring (I believe it was last year). When his incorrect comments were pointed out to him, he said something close to don’t misinterpret what I say as a factual statement. I had to re-read this line three times because he is in essence is saying I am lying.

I know I have hit on several Republicans. I don’t dislike Reagan or the first Bush and I thought they did some good things during their presidencies. I also think Bill Clinton did some great things while he was President, but he uttered one of the most famous statements and then nitpicked it later when it was proven to be false. Bill Clinton will be remembered for two things. He was an effective President. And, he was a philanderer. So, when he stared into the camera and said slowly and emphatically “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” he was lying. When caught in the lie he spent a lot of time nitpicking over the word “is.” To do this day, I still don’t know what he was talking about, but he did have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky in every one else’s book.

Reagan also lied to the American people about the Iran-Contra affair. But, he did come back later and say he was wrong. That won him some Brownie points at least. Clinton never did a full mea culpa at least not to my satisfaction.

Let me close with the recent story about the tragedies going on in Syria. The ambassador for Syria was telling a reporter that the government did not have troops in Homs where a massacre was occurring. The reporter listened and said “But your tanks are rolling in Homs” while the footage was being played on the news. What Assad does not realize fully is we can see and hear what is going on. This is not like when his father did the same thing thirty years ago.

We are a world of imperfect people. We do and say dumb things. I am not saying that everyone should tell everyone their dirty laundry, but when it gets out in the open, take your medicine and say “yes, I screwed up.” I am big on context as you may have gleaned from earlier posts. When someone is quoted out of context, they should say “yes, I said that, but here is the context of why I said that.” It is like Newt Gingrich saying he was misquoted when he appeared with Nancy Pelosi on the global warming commercial noting he was wrong about denying global warming. When running for President, he said he really did not mean it when he denounced what he earlier believed. In other words, he double downed on denouncing. So, like double negatives, two denounces make a positive.

So, politicians and leaders, let’s practice our new statements for future use. You will need them.

– “I was wrong and feel terrible about it.”

– “I did say that and hear is why I said that.”

– “I screwed up. I will fix what I have done and will try to do better.”

– “I used to believe that way, but after doing more research and with the benefit of experience, I have changed my position.”

I will like you more if you do. I am sure others will as well.

Holiday wishes for politicians, candidates and voters (ten years later)

Happy holidays to all. I wanted to close the year with a few holiday wishes to various constituencies – politicians, candidates and voters – as we move into a full campaign year. Please note this piece was written ten years ago, but still holds true.

For all parties, I strongly encourage you to read “That Used to be Us” by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. The subtitle is ” How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We can Come Back” and I think it should be required reading for all politicians and candidates. The voters would be benefit greatly as well as it will help us keep the first two groups honest and focusing on the right things.

I wish for politicians and candidates to focus on things of import and less on platitudes. The 2012 Republican presidential debates have tended to focus on less important things and we need to ask tough questions about where we are as a country and how do we do what is needed on the major issues of the day. We have tended to dumb down the debates about issues that have been decided (abortion) or that run counter to what is actually happening (global warming). It is hard for me to take someone seriously who wants to do away with the EPA or will choose which judicial rulings he will obey.

I wish for politicians and candidates to think more before they speak. Our problems are complex and deserve well thought out answers. Herman Cain was toast long before his personal crises, as he had not done any homework in preparation for the most important job in the world. I also wish for politicians to tell the truth or use meaningful information to support a cause. Not all data is equal and biased survey data needs to be identified and ferreted out. I have taken a survey gleaned by Newt Gingrich’s team and, frankly, it was biased from the outset and I told them so.*

I wish for politicians and candidates to collaborate with others. They do not have all of the answers and some don’t have a good hand to begin with. So, it is imperative they collaborate with others across all spectrums. This is a major reason I am an independent voter. Collaboration is the key to our success.

I wish for voters to take everything a politician says with a grain of salt. With the infamous words uttered by Senator Kyl earlier this year when he was caught in a lie, “please don’t interpret my comments as being factual,”  he gave us the proper advice. Senator, we will take that advice to the bank. We will not believe anything you say from this point forward. The Democrats should not gloat as they have tended to misrepresent a fact or two, as well.

We voters also need to keep the politicians and candidates between the white lines. We should consider all portrayed facts or survey data in the right context. Who conducted the survey? Where did the facts come from? Does this person have a history, both good or bad, with the subject? Some congressman are supported by lobbying groups and they will vote 100% of the time on issues in favor of the lobbyist’s cause. Their opinions should be discounted as being overly biased.

Our problems need serious people and serious discussions to address them. Going back to the book noted above, we have wavered from our mission, but we can rectify our problems if we think long term and approach our problems together. If we continue our partisan bickering, we will likely fail in these endeavors.

Thanks for reading. I wish for each of you and all of us, a prosperous New Year.

*Note: Herman Cain, the pizza chain tycoon, got early press in his presidential candidacy for his simple 9-9-9 tax plan, as he called it. The problems started appearing when he could not explain what it meant and he started contradicting himself. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, started out strong in 2012 in his presidential run, but he fell by the wayside when his over-confident manner rubbed too many the wrong way. People forget his own party removed him as Speaker for similar reasons in the 1990s.

What would happen if…

The Mamas and the Papas sang the lamentation “Monday, Monday.” It is the least favorite day of the week, poor Monday. People do not want to go back to work and the snooze delay on the alarm gets a workout. So, let’s brighten this Monday by asking a few what if questions. What would happen if…

• All the money used to house, protect, garden, compensate and communicate for royal families with no power was instead used to provide scholarships or housing to people in need. Queen Elizabeth, you have been grand, but your role is not really that needed to run the country and being a ceremonial mascot (as my Political Science professor termed it) is an expense we do not need.
• Legislators, presidents and other elected officials had term limits. OK, will give you senators and presidents two terms, three for Congress members. And, no lobbying immediately following your tenures. If donors knew there is a time limit on their investment, they may be less inclined to fund candidates. With limited time, the candidates may devote more time to doing their jobs – right now two Senator terms counting twelve years amounts to less than eight years of work given the estimated fund raising time.
• Fact checkers at a press conference are armed with super-soaker water guns and each time the politician lied more than a little, he or she would get soaked. By the end of one of the former president’s press conferences, he would have one wet suit.
• Politicians who name call or label folks are sent to a corner to sit in time-out. Ted, go back in your corner. Not that one, that one is reserved for Donald. When you can debate without name calling, we will let you back into the discussion Of course, we may need more corners to rooms.
• Politicians should be like pro golfers and wear their funders’ logos on their shirts and visors. In fact, they should shed the suits, as that gives the appearance of more gravitas than many deserve by their words and actions. We will then see that said politician is funded by these six organizations. And, none of the euphemistic PAC labelling – tell us who really supports you. NRA, Exxon Mobil, Dupont….

That is enough for now. In my view, the world would be a better place if we did any of the above. It would be more fun and truthful, as well.