I favor Barack, myself. That's okay -- I know people who favor Hillary, and I think no less of them. My reasons for backing Barack Obama are, possibly, unique to me. I can explain them, but I can hardly require others to agree with me. Here they are:
My parents were born in 1914 & 1919, respectively, so they grew up Depression children. They were both Roosevelt Democrats, and their stories of FDR were inspiring to me as I grew up. Like him or not, I gather he had at least three things going for him: 1) He was a gifted speaker, using rhetoric to support, console, reassure, and rally a nation facing a profound economic crisis that affected everyone, and then the attack on Pearl Harbor and our subsequent entry into WWII. 2) He got things done. You can argue about the New Deal, but it did something. You can argue about his foreign policy, but it did something. 3) He got us into a just war.
I was born in 1956. Here's my personal report card on the presidents in my lifetime:
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Not a great speaker. Got things done, though (I love the Interstate system). Not sure about the Korean War. Final grade: B-
John F. Kennedy: Great speaker. Got some things done (space program, Peace Corps); didn't get other things done (civil rights; foreign policy crises). Got Vietnam started. Final grade: B
Lyndon Johnson: Not a great speaker ("my felluh Muricans"). Got some cool domestic things done (civil rights -- for which I give him, as a Texan, extra credit). Escalated the Vietnam War rather than shutting it down. Final grade: B+
Richard Nixon: Terrible speaker -- it's never a good sign when you're that easy to satirize. His accomplishments in foreign policy (China) are vastly outweighed by his bungling of the Vietnam war, and I can't think of a domestic accomplishment to offset Watergate. Vietnam turned out to be an unwinnable war. We withdrew after killing far too many of everybody: our troops, the South Vietnamese troops & civilians, and North Vietnamese troops & civilians. Yes, we should have respected the sacrifice of our military men and women when they came home; that's a national shame I hope we've forever learned not to do, but I wonder why our current leaders don't respect their sacrifice by not inflicting it so cavalierly on a new generation of military personal and families. Final grade: D- (I gotta grade on a curve, and someone is actually worse. See below.)
Gerald Ford: Not a great speaker. (Personal disclosure: My opinion of Ford's speeches was warped by the fact that my dad went to law school with him and said when Gerry spoke in class, he was particularly bland and vacuous.) Can't think of anything bad he did, nor anything good. He tried to heal the nation after Watergate: enh. Didn't get us into war, though. Final grade: C.
Jimmy Carter: Not a great speaker as president. No great accomplishments while in office, and the hostage crisis was not his finest hour. (Can't help thinking FDR or Truman would have done something...) Didn't wage war, though. Tough one for me, but I have to say it. Final grade: C+ (Final grade as a former president: A+ Truly, he lives and thinks as we all should, but don't.)
Ronald Reagan: Not a great speaker, for me personally. Joviality does not a great president make, I think. I personally have a hard time naming his accomplishments, perhaps because I don't think trickle-down economics made sense. (I'll concede he advanced the conservative Republican agenda; you'll forgive me if I don't list that as an accomplishment. If you think that was great, write your own blog.) I think he endorsed the notion that we (Americans) get it all and pay nothing for it, which is one of the reasons our environmental & energy policies are so screwy now. Iran-Contra was a problem too, and either he tacitly endorsed that, or he was asleep at the switch. I can't really hold Granada against him, but I don't think he gets credit for the hostages being released on the day he took office, nor the collapse of Communism. (I'd give the nod to Mikhail Gorbachev for that one.) Final grade: D+
George H. W. Bush: Not a great speaker (think Dana Carvey's "Not prudent at this juncture"; see Nixon, above). I totally give him credit for raising taxes, and I think he was right to do that. No big surprise that it was political suicide. Doesn't matter, it was what we needed and I'm glad he did it. Hated his domestic policy, though -- 1,000 points of [expletive deleted], if you ask me. I do give him points for getting the Kuwait/Iran thing right. Too bad his son couldn't leave well enough alone. Final grade: B-
Bill Clinton: Great speaker, even if Darrell Hammond skewered him on SNL. (No, I wasn't a great Bill Clinton fan, but even I was able to stomach the State of the Union when he did it.) Didn't get health care done (recognizing that it needs doing doesn't really count, particularly as he darn near left it undoable for a political generation); did get welfare reform done.* Economy boomed, and he actually accomplished a surplus. Whoo-hoo! Did not take us into war -- unless you count Kosovo, which I don't. Final grade: B
George W. Bush: Worst speaker of the bunch. Seriously -- worse than Nixon. (Nixon actually was a pretty smart guy, regrettably.) I can't think of a good accomplishment, and the list of bad ones keeps being written. (Latest example: he's threatening to veto a tax incentive for renewable energy like wind and solar because it's funding would come from cancelling tax incentives for oil and gas companies. I mean, seriously -- that's not even close to passing the smell test after the record profits Exxon & the like have posted recently. Let them fund their own damn exploration! Insanity.) And he fails the "unjust war" test worst of all, particularly as he has created the very condition he lied about to get us in there. I have some sympathy for John McCain's predicament -- he may be right that we have to stay in there because now (NOW!) there are terrorists in Iran because Bush took away the dictator keeping al-Qaeda out. And don't give me that "But Saddam was a brutal dictator" crap -- we've been supporting brutal, torturing Right-Wing dictators in South American for years. Final grade: F
So there you have it. About the candidates, here are my predicted grade ranges:
John McCain: Not a bad speaker, but not great. His potential accomplishments, or lack thereof, rather depend on whether he'll do the same switcheroo as Dubya, only in the other direction. When Bush ran in 2000, we heard a lot about compassionate conservativism, but that sure didn't seem to be a part of his presidency (with one teeny exception: inexplicablyly he funds HIV services worldwide). Well, we're now hearing a lot of mainstream conservative positions from McCain as he panders to the Christian Right, the anti-immigration crowd, and so forth. If we get the old McCain for president, he could be very good for the country: election reform would be a great boon to our political process! If we get the new, Genghis Kahn-version of McCain -- well, that will just be very sad. He'll be maintaining a bad war, which is a thankless task. Potential grade range: anywhere from a Reagan-esque D+ to a LBJ-style B+
Hillary Clinton: I'm not a fan of her speaking style, which isn't as rousing as her husband's. She has accomplished a lot as New York's junior senator, so we might really do well. I worry, though, that she'll be a micro-manager who gets bogged down in details and her paranoia goes off the charts, resulting in some really ugly stuff. I know she won't take us back into war unless she really needs to -- that's an area where I think a woman is an excellent choice. (Seriously -- moms know how to pick their battles with bullies.) Potential grade range: anywhere from a Nixon-like meltdown-causing D- to an outstanding A-.
Barack Obama: Great speaker. First one in a LONG time to inspire and heal, I think. I have real hope for his accomplishments because I think he understands the value of learning what works by trying lots of stuff, and then putting in place the one that works. Like Hillary, he'll get us out of Iraq and I believe he'll use a much more global/diplomatic approach to combating terrorism. And so he's the only one I can see getting an FDR-caliber A+. At his very, very worst, I can't see him getting lower than a Kennedy B.
But that's just me.
*Here's my sidebar on economics vs. entitlement programs: I'm all for entitlement programs. I would fund Headstart to the max. I would fund a huge increase in TeachAmerica. I would have sent in the Army Corps of Engineers to the Gulf Coast post-Katrina and told them to stay until. But, we have to get real about Medicare and Social Security. They will bankrupt us eventually, and while it surely has not helped to launch and fund a morass-of-a-military-campaign in the Middle East, that's chicken-feed compared to the two worst economic problems looming. I applauded Bill Clinton's welfare reform because I believe it's good to get entrenched programs out of the trench and re-formed. We have to do the same with our programs for the elderly.
The problem with Medicare and Social Security is that no one will ever vote against the interests of Grandmas & Pop-pops, particularly with so many of us heading inexorably into old age. We can't pick on old people -- they don't deserve it the way "welfare mothers" did. (For some reason, you have to demonize the recipient of an entitlement program before you can "reform" it.) Well, that's just crazy. How is it going to help Grandma & Pop-pop if the country is bankrupt? I am not suggesting we cut them off cold turkey, but we have to do something now about the money we're going to owe then. If we announced, "The minimum age will go up in X years," we have a chance to get people used to the idea. But we talk about the "third rail of politics" and do nothing. Boy, what a great suit the emperor is wearing today!
Friday, February 29, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Even-Handedness
I know people who revile the "other" political party -- on both sides of the aisle! I know Democrats who hate Republicans, and vice versa. (I'll admit, I don't know a lot of the latter sort -- after all, I'm a Democrat of sorts, and most of my friends manage not to revile me...)
I understand this attitude, but it's not how I feel. I'm more of a "Why can't we all get along?" type. At the same time, I don't really want everyone to agree. I just want us all to listen to each other. Even if this falls into the category of "know your enemy," I think it's a good idea.
Toward that end, I'm reading the February 25 issue of The New Yorker. It has a long article about John McCain and the Republican party. Fascinating stuff. I had not appreciated today's challenges for Republicans. Newt Gingrich thinks the GOP has to embrace the concept of being "pro-good government." Grover Norquist believes that the special interest groups that make up the Republican base can be grown to form a "supermajority" even though -- according to the article -- that group does not include voters who care about national security above all else. (It's hard to be anti-government but pro-national security, I guess.)
Now, this should sound familiar to us in the Endless Mountains. Conservative Republican candidates for Chris Carney's congressional seat are running ads on TV. I don't see how voters can tell them apart because they use the same buzz words: "immigration" and "conservative." (They can't use "security" as a buzzword because Chris has the goods in that area. And they can't use the oldie-but-goody, "economy" because the Bush administration has poisoned that well for the GOP.) These guys aren't our problem yet (by "us" I mean Democrats) as they have to face each other in the primary first. But it's useful to think about their ads now.
"Conservative" is easy -- that is political shorthand for pro-life, pro-guns, pro-death penalty, and anti-gay marriage. Those are Norquist's special interest groups. But the immigration issue is tricky. The Republican party of my childhood (think Barry Goldwater -- that's how old I am!) was the party of small & big business. Now, I have to tell you -- businessmen have mixed positions on illegal immigration. If your business only makes money because the people you pay to pick the fruits & veggies (or whatever) work cheap and don't, uh, require a lot of paperwork (if you know what I mean), you're not necessarily jumping up and down in favor of stricter oversight of undocumented workers.
The people who rev up on the topic of immigration are in two groups: workers who resent -- not unreasonably -- the idea that undocumented workers get jobs without having to pay taxes, etc., and taxpayers who are concerned -- also not unreasonably -- that illegal immigrants cost us money by being drains on government services. There are points to make for both groups. Illegal immigrants would LOVE to pay taxes! That's because they would love to be legal. That doesn't make the anti-immigration crowd happy, of course, but it's true. And for the taxpayers? Well, I wonder how the economics really break down -- certain sectors of our economy rely on cheap labor, and undocumented workers are highly motivated to work for not a lot of money. If you could magically eliminate all undocumented aliens from the U.S., would we be economically better off, or worse off? I don't know -- and I rather suspect the figures could be tweaked to come out either way.
My point is, immigration is not a simple issue, even for those groups who want it to be a simple issue. And that's the problem the Republicans have in other areas. John McCain believes that the Iraq war is a rallying point for the GOP, but it isn't really. I recently saw the awesome documentary, No End in Sight. I highly recommend it for everyone, in both parties. Democrats like me will be horrified by a few key individuals (it's hard to respect Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld after this movie) but will gain a respect for the very hard work, under perilous conditions, the troops put in to accomplish the impossible. Republicans -- well, a hard line pro-war Republican could argue with some of the conclusions the movie proposes, but it's hard to see how anyone could watch the movie and not think of all the mistakes that were made. Even if you supported the war, this movie will point out all the things that could and should have been done better. After all, almost all the people interviewed supported the war, just not the way the Pentagon chose to do it. Given our actual record in Iraq, how can the Republicans rally around the war? (You can support the troops, and I do. But some of us think that three and four consecutive tours of duty isn't "supporting the troops," it's misusing the troops. Supporting the troops is getting this mess sorted, and fast.)
But here's the kicker for me: we got lucky with Chris Carney: he's mainstream, a good family man (we know what that's code language for!), has military and counter-terrorism experience, and he's smart! He's been surprisingly effective in his first year, bringing in money and working to bring jobs to the area. I really have a hard time thinking of a reason why we'd want to get rid of him. Okay, I can think of one reason. If you're a Republican, he's one vote for (some, not all) Democratic initiatives. But maybe we here in a poor county want a Democratic congressman as long as Democrats are in power in Congress...?
And that's where evenhandedness gets you: Do you support an effective congressman who has been bringing money into the county, or support a Republican candidate simply because he's a Republican. We all know that longevity is the key to pork barrel politics; if Chris isn't defeated this November, he might be in for a long, long time. The national and state Republican party officials would hate to see that happen, but we live here! We should be asking ourselves what's in our best interest.
After we balance all the issues, that is.
I understand this attitude, but it's not how I feel. I'm more of a "Why can't we all get along?" type. At the same time, I don't really want everyone to agree. I just want us all to listen to each other. Even if this falls into the category of "know your enemy," I think it's a good idea.
Toward that end, I'm reading the February 25 issue of The New Yorker. It has a long article about John McCain and the Republican party. Fascinating stuff. I had not appreciated today's challenges for Republicans. Newt Gingrich thinks the GOP has to embrace the concept of being "pro-good government." Grover Norquist believes that the special interest groups that make up the Republican base can be grown to form a "supermajority" even though -- according to the article -- that group does not include voters who care about national security above all else. (It's hard to be anti-government but pro-national security, I guess.)
Now, this should sound familiar to us in the Endless Mountains. Conservative Republican candidates for Chris Carney's congressional seat are running ads on TV. I don't see how voters can tell them apart because they use the same buzz words: "immigration" and "conservative." (They can't use "security" as a buzzword because Chris has the goods in that area. And they can't use the oldie-but-goody, "economy" because the Bush administration has poisoned that well for the GOP.) These guys aren't our problem yet (by "us" I mean Democrats) as they have to face each other in the primary first. But it's useful to think about their ads now.
"Conservative" is easy -- that is political shorthand for pro-life, pro-guns, pro-death penalty, and anti-gay marriage. Those are Norquist's special interest groups. But the immigration issue is tricky. The Republican party of my childhood (think Barry Goldwater -- that's how old I am!) was the party of small & big business. Now, I have to tell you -- businessmen have mixed positions on illegal immigration. If your business only makes money because the people you pay to pick the fruits & veggies (or whatever) work cheap and don't, uh, require a lot of paperwork (if you know what I mean), you're not necessarily jumping up and down in favor of stricter oversight of undocumented workers.
The people who rev up on the topic of immigration are in two groups: workers who resent -- not unreasonably -- the idea that undocumented workers get jobs without having to pay taxes, etc., and taxpayers who are concerned -- also not unreasonably -- that illegal immigrants cost us money by being drains on government services. There are points to make for both groups. Illegal immigrants would LOVE to pay taxes! That's because they would love to be legal. That doesn't make the anti-immigration crowd happy, of course, but it's true. And for the taxpayers? Well, I wonder how the economics really break down -- certain sectors of our economy rely on cheap labor, and undocumented workers are highly motivated to work for not a lot of money. If you could magically eliminate all undocumented aliens from the U.S., would we be economically better off, or worse off? I don't know -- and I rather suspect the figures could be tweaked to come out either way.
My point is, immigration is not a simple issue, even for those groups who want it to be a simple issue. And that's the problem the Republicans have in other areas. John McCain believes that the Iraq war is a rallying point for the GOP, but it isn't really. I recently saw the awesome documentary, No End in Sight. I highly recommend it for everyone, in both parties. Democrats like me will be horrified by a few key individuals (it's hard to respect Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld after this movie) but will gain a respect for the very hard work, under perilous conditions, the troops put in to accomplish the impossible. Republicans -- well, a hard line pro-war Republican could argue with some of the conclusions the movie proposes, but it's hard to see how anyone could watch the movie and not think of all the mistakes that were made. Even if you supported the war, this movie will point out all the things that could and should have been done better. After all, almost all the people interviewed supported the war, just not the way the Pentagon chose to do it. Given our actual record in Iraq, how can the Republicans rally around the war? (You can support the troops, and I do. But some of us think that three and four consecutive tours of duty isn't "supporting the troops," it's misusing the troops. Supporting the troops is getting this mess sorted, and fast.)
But here's the kicker for me: we got lucky with Chris Carney: he's mainstream, a good family man (we know what that's code language for!), has military and counter-terrorism experience, and he's smart! He's been surprisingly effective in his first year, bringing in money and working to bring jobs to the area. I really have a hard time thinking of a reason why we'd want to get rid of him. Okay, I can think of one reason. If you're a Republican, he's one vote for (some, not all) Democratic initiatives. But maybe we here in a poor county want a Democratic congressman as long as Democrats are in power in Congress...?
And that's where evenhandedness gets you: Do you support an effective congressman who has been bringing money into the county, or support a Republican candidate simply because he's a Republican. We all know that longevity is the key to pork barrel politics; if Chris isn't defeated this November, he might be in for a long, long time. The national and state Republican party officials would hate to see that happen, but we live here! We should be asking ourselves what's in our best interest.
After we balance all the issues, that is.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
My First Commissioners' Meeting
Hey, I went to my very first commissioners meeting.
Susquehanna County has three commissioners. For the first time in a lo-o-ong time, two are Democrats, MaryAnn Warren and Leon Allen. The third is Mike Giangrieco, a man who could do voice-over work for the actor Joe Mantegna if his day job (lawyer) and other day job (county commissioner) somehow faltered.
You know, it would be easy to think the little dramas I witnessed today fell along party lines. I gather that just isn't so. Yes, there were a couple occasions -- most notably the passage of the 2008 budget -- where Commissioner Giangrieco voted in opposition to the Democrat commissioners. Despite several questions from the press and members of the public, Commissioner Giangrieco declined to explain his vote. Can't say why he did that; it gave him a rather churlish look, but it was clearly his right to vote without explanation. At the same time, I had sympathy with those who wanted to know why.
I'm not used to seeing politics up close like this. I'm used to politicians -- in both parties -- who have something to say, or just like to hear themselves talk. It was odd to see an elected official refuse to explain why he thinks he's representing the voters better by voting against the budget. Some of the public appeared to believe he might know something about the budget and if he did, they wanted to know too. Others seemed to think he just needed to explain himself.
Here's what I wanted to know: Don't these people talk to each other? My limited experience with government (I worked for New York State's Health Department for a while, and both my parents were civil servants back in the day) is that there's a public face to what's going on, and a private face. If Commissioner Giangrieco had a problem with the budget, maybe he should talk with Commissioners Allen and Warren to resolve that problem behind the scenes. And maybe he's doing that. I hope he is.
If he voted no simply to be obstructive, though, where was the political value for him? Why not make a mini speech during the public comment period? Why not expose the Democrats for whatever failure he might claim they're guilty of? I hate to criticise a guy I first set eyes on just three hours ago, but it's hard to see how he wins this way.
Same thing with the issue of gas leases. I'm new to this one, but two very articulate and knowledgeable guys showed up to the meeting to make a very firm and specific point about gas leases. In particular, they want the county commissioners to look at the possibility of taxing the companies that lease gas rights from landowners. Here's what I understand is going on: Susquehanna County is very poor in industry, but it's got a lot of land. Private landowners are being approached by gas companies who want to lease the gas rights on these parcels. It can be big money -- if you have 100 acres and get offered even as little as $50 per acre, that's $5,000 for doing nothing more than owning land.
What landowners don't understand is that as soon as they sign that lease, they own less of their land than they used to, and that can cost them real money. It's as if they just sold something tangible, and if they were to try to sell their acreage, they'd discover just what that something was really worth. To put some numbers on this, suppose the land had been worth $4,000 per acre. The landowner got $50 per acre for the gas lease, but on the open market the land might now be worth only $2,500 per acre. That's a loss of $150,000 in land value in exchange for a quick $5K. Doesn't seem like such a good idea.
I had a chance to talk to Fred & John, the knowledgeable guys (staunch Republicans, mind you), after the meeting. I gather -- and this is not my area of expertise -- that this transaction is heavily weighted in favor of the gas operation, but it doesn't have to be. Landowners can protect themselves, first by not signing in a hurry, and then by taking some basic precautions in the negotiation of the lease, most importantly by implementing some sort of land management plan.
Look, I'm as new to all this as you are. But I can see a real problem when out-of-county (and, often, out-of-state) companies take advantage of poor & unprotected landowners. At the very least, we all need to know a lot more about this. I'll do my part in this blog, but where are the newspapers on this issue?
John & Fred were both pushing the commissioners to consider the possibility of extracting taxes from the gas operators. Commissioners Allen and Giangrieco both said they were studying the issue. I hope that's true -- I get it that this is a real freewheeling, laissez-faire county in some ways, and not too inclined to have the government poking its nose into private people's business, but some concern for the citizens of Susquehanna County before they're cheated is maybe not such a bad thing. Oh, and getting these companies to pay in taxes for the privilege of cheating our neighbors? That's not such a bad thing either.
Which brings us to the oddest political issue of the morning. Commissioners Allen and Warren are in favor of creating a fiscal administrator position for the county. In a deliciously bizarre quirk of politics, there is a job description drawn up, but we (the public) are not to know what that is because there is as yet no job. Okay, but can't we at least know what the person would do?
From what we could understand, Warren and Allen both believe that a fiscal administrator would be the person responsible for all grant dollars obtained and administered by the county. Now, this I know something about! When I worked for the AIDS Institute in the New York State Department of Health (yes, that was 20 years ago, but some things never change), the grant process for federal and private dollars was, literally, never ending. I don't care what the amount of the grant is, there's a lot of paperwork associated with it. You have to apply for it, get it, spend it (and there's a lot of paperwork associated with spending it!), then report back to the grantor about what you did with the money. I gather there are some pots of money the county is eligible for, only it's expected to spend its own money then seek reimbursement. That's even more complicated. Paper, paper, paper.
We did get a little sense of how this process is likely to be run currently. Earlier in the meeting, the board voted to appoint someone to the Growing Greener II Advisory Committee. Commissioner Giangrieco acquiesced to the reappointment of three Advisory Committee members, but objected to the appointment of a fourth. In the course of explaining why the fourth was an appropriate appointment, Commissioner Warren explained that the Advisory Committee came about when the county received a one-time grant of $1 million, of which only $13,000 was left. Hey, cool, I thought. I wonder what they spent $987,000 on. Not that I doubted it was spent wisely, I just wanted to know.
Well, I wasn't the only one. Someone in the public asked precisely that, and Commissioner Warren hesitated. The questioner persisted, was there a list someplace. Commissioner Warren thought about this and said, "Yeah, there's probably a list on my computer."
Now, I'm not in any way suggesting that Commissioner Warren has done anything wrong. In fact, it's likely a sign of her real commitment to her job that she maintained a list of how the money was spent. But I can tell you right now, if that hadn't been a one-time grant -- if that had been recurring funds -- we would have ensured it was only one-time. With every source of funds I've ever had anything to do with, there's a report generated showing how the funds were administered or those funds aren't renewed.
Well, if all Commissioners Warren and Allen wanted was for someone to take over the reporting duties, I could see Commissioner Giangrieco's and Treasurer Benedict's concerns. After all, why pay someone to do a job that at least someone (MaryAnn Warren) has been doing, in effect, as part of her job. But the issue is bigger than that. What if there are other grants and funding that the county could apply for? Who even knows about these funding streams? And if someone stumbled upon one, who would write the grant application? (Sidebar: someone in the public kept suggesting that this was just a matter of filling in a form. Like getting grant money was just a matter of writing out maybe a single sheet of paper, double-sided. Uh, dude -- the last grant application I saw was three inches thick, with separate addenda. Okay, so it was for millions of dollars under the federal Ryan White funding stream, but the point remains. There is no "form to fill out." Wish there was, but there isn't.)
And to sweeten the pot, Commissioners Warren and Allen were prepared to make the position contingent on performance. If the successful applicant didn't manage to bring more money into the county than that person's salary, the line item would get cut and the person fired. You can't get a lot more fiscally responsible than that.
So why do Commissioner Giangrieco and Treasurer Benedict oppose this measure? Again, it's hard to say. Treasurer Benedict raised the red herring of a financial consulting contract that no one knew about. I agree wholeheartedly we need to know more about that issue! But I don't see its relevance to the issue of someone with administrative experience who could oversee the process of obtaining grant funding and then maintaining that funding while seeking more and more funds. More funds means more for the county. Is there really a downside to that?
Even my new best [staunch Republican] friends, John & Fred, were in favor. In their minds, a fiscal administrator would be someone to see the big picture, including issues like their pet topic of gas leases. (I gather there's potential liability issues for the county based on current Clean & Green laws. I don't know about this, so I hesitate to suggest that Fred & John are right. It certainly sounded like something I'd look into.)
So, when staunch Republicans support a measure that is intended to make money for the county and thus for its citizens, why would Commissioner Giangrieco and Treasurer Benedict oppose it? We didn't find out at the meeting. Maybe Commissioner Giangrieco made himself available to the press afterwards for a probing interview. Maybe we'll get to read about it in next week's newspapers.
Or maybe not.
Let's just say, I'm not holding my breath.
Susquehanna County has three commissioners. For the first time in a lo-o-ong time, two are Democrats, MaryAnn Warren and Leon Allen. The third is Mike Giangrieco, a man who could do voice-over work for the actor Joe Mantegna if his day job (lawyer) and other day job (county commissioner) somehow faltered.
You know, it would be easy to think the little dramas I witnessed today fell along party lines. I gather that just isn't so. Yes, there were a couple occasions -- most notably the passage of the 2008 budget -- where Commissioner Giangrieco voted in opposition to the Democrat commissioners. Despite several questions from the press and members of the public, Commissioner Giangrieco declined to explain his vote. Can't say why he did that; it gave him a rather churlish look, but it was clearly his right to vote without explanation. At the same time, I had sympathy with those who wanted to know why.
I'm not used to seeing politics up close like this. I'm used to politicians -- in both parties -- who have something to say, or just like to hear themselves talk. It was odd to see an elected official refuse to explain why he thinks he's representing the voters better by voting against the budget. Some of the public appeared to believe he might know something about the budget and if he did, they wanted to know too. Others seemed to think he just needed to explain himself.
Here's what I wanted to know: Don't these people talk to each other? My limited experience with government (I worked for New York State's Health Department for a while, and both my parents were civil servants back in the day) is that there's a public face to what's going on, and a private face. If Commissioner Giangrieco had a problem with the budget, maybe he should talk with Commissioners Allen and Warren to resolve that problem behind the scenes. And maybe he's doing that. I hope he is.
If he voted no simply to be obstructive, though, where was the political value for him? Why not make a mini speech during the public comment period? Why not expose the Democrats for whatever failure he might claim they're guilty of? I hate to criticise a guy I first set eyes on just three hours ago, but it's hard to see how he wins this way.
Same thing with the issue of gas leases. I'm new to this one, but two very articulate and knowledgeable guys showed up to the meeting to make a very firm and specific point about gas leases. In particular, they want the county commissioners to look at the possibility of taxing the companies that lease gas rights from landowners. Here's what I understand is going on: Susquehanna County is very poor in industry, but it's got a lot of land. Private landowners are being approached by gas companies who want to lease the gas rights on these parcels. It can be big money -- if you have 100 acres and get offered even as little as $50 per acre, that's $5,000 for doing nothing more than owning land.
What landowners don't understand is that as soon as they sign that lease, they own less of their land than they used to, and that can cost them real money. It's as if they just sold something tangible, and if they were to try to sell their acreage, they'd discover just what that something was really worth. To put some numbers on this, suppose the land had been worth $4,000 per acre. The landowner got $50 per acre for the gas lease, but on the open market the land might now be worth only $2,500 per acre. That's a loss of $150,000 in land value in exchange for a quick $5K. Doesn't seem like such a good idea.
I had a chance to talk to Fred & John, the knowledgeable guys (staunch Republicans, mind you), after the meeting. I gather -- and this is not my area of expertise -- that this transaction is heavily weighted in favor of the gas operation, but it doesn't have to be. Landowners can protect themselves, first by not signing in a hurry, and then by taking some basic precautions in the negotiation of the lease, most importantly by implementing some sort of land management plan.
Look, I'm as new to all this as you are. But I can see a real problem when out-of-county (and, often, out-of-state) companies take advantage of poor & unprotected landowners. At the very least, we all need to know a lot more about this. I'll do my part in this blog, but where are the newspapers on this issue?
John & Fred were both pushing the commissioners to consider the possibility of extracting taxes from the gas operators. Commissioners Allen and Giangrieco both said they were studying the issue. I hope that's true -- I get it that this is a real freewheeling, laissez-faire county in some ways, and not too inclined to have the government poking its nose into private people's business, but some concern for the citizens of Susquehanna County before they're cheated is maybe not such a bad thing. Oh, and getting these companies to pay in taxes for the privilege of cheating our neighbors? That's not such a bad thing either.
Which brings us to the oddest political issue of the morning. Commissioners Allen and Warren are in favor of creating a fiscal administrator position for the county. In a deliciously bizarre quirk of politics, there is a job description drawn up, but we (the public) are not to know what that is because there is as yet no job. Okay, but can't we at least know what the person would do?
From what we could understand, Warren and Allen both believe that a fiscal administrator would be the person responsible for all grant dollars obtained and administered by the county. Now, this I know something about! When I worked for the AIDS Institute in the New York State Department of Health (yes, that was 20 years ago, but some things never change), the grant process for federal and private dollars was, literally, never ending. I don't care what the amount of the grant is, there's a lot of paperwork associated with it. You have to apply for it, get it, spend it (and there's a lot of paperwork associated with spending it!), then report back to the grantor about what you did with the money. I gather there are some pots of money the county is eligible for, only it's expected to spend its own money then seek reimbursement. That's even more complicated. Paper, paper, paper.
We did get a little sense of how this process is likely to be run currently. Earlier in the meeting, the board voted to appoint someone to the Growing Greener II Advisory Committee. Commissioner Giangrieco acquiesced to the reappointment of three Advisory Committee members, but objected to the appointment of a fourth. In the course of explaining why the fourth was an appropriate appointment, Commissioner Warren explained that the Advisory Committee came about when the county received a one-time grant of $1 million, of which only $13,000 was left. Hey, cool, I thought. I wonder what they spent $987,000 on. Not that I doubted it was spent wisely, I just wanted to know.
Well, I wasn't the only one. Someone in the public asked precisely that, and Commissioner Warren hesitated. The questioner persisted, was there a list someplace. Commissioner Warren thought about this and said, "Yeah, there's probably a list on my computer."
Now, I'm not in any way suggesting that Commissioner Warren has done anything wrong. In fact, it's likely a sign of her real commitment to her job that she maintained a list of how the money was spent. But I can tell you right now, if that hadn't been a one-time grant -- if that had been recurring funds -- we would have ensured it was only one-time. With every source of funds I've ever had anything to do with, there's a report generated showing how the funds were administered or those funds aren't renewed.
Well, if all Commissioners Warren and Allen wanted was for someone to take over the reporting duties, I could see Commissioner Giangrieco's and Treasurer Benedict's concerns. After all, why pay someone to do a job that at least someone (MaryAnn Warren) has been doing, in effect, as part of her job. But the issue is bigger than that. What if there are other grants and funding that the county could apply for? Who even knows about these funding streams? And if someone stumbled upon one, who would write the grant application? (Sidebar: someone in the public kept suggesting that this was just a matter of filling in a form. Like getting grant money was just a matter of writing out maybe a single sheet of paper, double-sided. Uh, dude -- the last grant application I saw was three inches thick, with separate addenda. Okay, so it was for millions of dollars under the federal Ryan White funding stream, but the point remains. There is no "form to fill out." Wish there was, but there isn't.)
And to sweeten the pot, Commissioners Warren and Allen were prepared to make the position contingent on performance. If the successful applicant didn't manage to bring more money into the county than that person's salary, the line item would get cut and the person fired. You can't get a lot more fiscally responsible than that.
So why do Commissioner Giangrieco and Treasurer Benedict oppose this measure? Again, it's hard to say. Treasurer Benedict raised the red herring of a financial consulting contract that no one knew about. I agree wholeheartedly we need to know more about that issue! But I don't see its relevance to the issue of someone with administrative experience who could oversee the process of obtaining grant funding and then maintaining that funding while seeking more and more funds. More funds means more for the county. Is there really a downside to that?
Even my new best [staunch Republican] friends, John & Fred, were in favor. In their minds, a fiscal administrator would be someone to see the big picture, including issues like their pet topic of gas leases. (I gather there's potential liability issues for the county based on current Clean & Green laws. I don't know about this, so I hesitate to suggest that Fred & John are right. It certainly sounded like something I'd look into.)
So, when staunch Republicans support a measure that is intended to make money for the county and thus for its citizens, why would Commissioner Giangrieco and Treasurer Benedict oppose it? We didn't find out at the meeting. Maybe Commissioner Giangrieco made himself available to the press afterwards for a probing interview. Maybe we'll get to read about it in next week's newspapers.
Or maybe not.
Let's just say, I'm not holding my breath.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Young Democrats
I've just come back from the Second Annual Young Democrats breakfast. Chris Carney, our congressman, was there, as was Trey Casimir, who's running for state senate in the 23rd District. Leon Allen and MaryAnn Warren both spoke.
It sounds like it should have been boring, right? A "rubber chicken" dinner, only at 9:00 a.m. on a snowy Sunday morning.
Well, it wasn't. It was friendly, and fun, and lively, and most important of all -- it was energizing! I say that because it energized me.
But first, a backstory. I'm pretty allergic to politics. Like working in a sausage factory: you just don't want to know how it's really done. When George Bush defeated John Kerry, though, I tried to get involved in Philadelphia, where I lived during the week. I joined the local alternative movement, and went to a few meetings. But I got just a wee bit exasperated when the group -- quite united in their disgust of then-current political regime and its war -- started to fight each other over what was the right way to implement change. One faction thought we should run for local political office (committee person positions and the like), another thought we needed to work on national issues, still another thought something else. Me? I thought we needed to work on getting the media more comfortable representing progressive positions as viable. But I saw all the other suggestions as good ones too. They just weren't the suggestions that energized me.
One day, I said as much. "Why are we arguing?" I asked. "Why doesn't everyone pick the thing or approach that excites them and go do something toward that goal? Then we can maximize the effort and see what works." Another woman, a sociologist (she said), retorted angrily, "We're NOT fighting!!" and then went back to fighting.
I never went back.
Fast foward to my move fulltime to Susquehanna County in 2006. I signed up to be a Democrat -- definitely the minority party up here -- and settled back into my usual complacency. Politics, like sausage-making, is a job I expected someone else to do for me. But when I had signed up as a Democrat, I must have said something about having done election-rights work for the Kerry campaign. (I'm an attorney, although not one with any special election rights experience, but an attorney is an attorney, so I helped out in Throop on election day 2004.) Karen & John Hoffman, our party chairs here in Susquehanna County, latched onto me and got me involved in the election for 2006. Happy to help out.
Since then, I've been modestly and tangentially involved in a couple things here. Sitting at the breakfast this morning, I got excited again about the possibilities here. Democrats make up a greater percentage of the electorate than in the past few decades, we have two Democrat county commissioners -- and thus a majority -- in Montrose, and Chris Carney has been working hard even in the 13 months he's been in office to get "green collar" jobs in NE Pennsylvania. I think it's a great time to be a Democrat, but it's also just a great time to be politically active.
So I'm finally going to do what I had wanted to do three years ago: Contribute to the media. No offense to the two newspapers in Susquehanna County (the Susquehanna County Transcript and the Independent), but they're not the best source of information about what's really happening. Maybe it's the quality of the reporting, maybe it's their political bias, or maybe -- and I think this is the most likely explanation -- it's the pressure of too much work done by too few people. I just know that Susquehanna County can and should get more information than it does.
This, then, is my first entry to my political blog. I want to post about jobs, finances, energy policy, the awesome work done at the township level, how I don't think the political parties are the problem locally and a lot of other topics. Let's look at how we do things here in Susquehanna County. Let's celebrate the good stuff and work to improve the other stuff. And I want to know what you think. Leave a comment -- it's all good.
It sounds like it should have been boring, right? A "rubber chicken" dinner, only at 9:00 a.m. on a snowy Sunday morning.
Well, it wasn't. It was friendly, and fun, and lively, and most important of all -- it was energizing! I say that because it energized me.
But first, a backstory. I'm pretty allergic to politics. Like working in a sausage factory: you just don't want to know how it's really done. When George Bush defeated John Kerry, though, I tried to get involved in Philadelphia, where I lived during the week. I joined the local alternative movement, and went to a few meetings. But I got just a wee bit exasperated when the group -- quite united in their disgust of then-current political regime and its war -- started to fight each other over what was the right way to implement change. One faction thought we should run for local political office (committee person positions and the like), another thought we needed to work on national issues, still another thought something else. Me? I thought we needed to work on getting the media more comfortable representing progressive positions as viable. But I saw all the other suggestions as good ones too. They just weren't the suggestions that energized me.
One day, I said as much. "Why are we arguing?" I asked. "Why doesn't everyone pick the thing or approach that excites them and go do something toward that goal? Then we can maximize the effort and see what works." Another woman, a sociologist (she said), retorted angrily, "We're NOT fighting!!" and then went back to fighting.
I never went back.
Fast foward to my move fulltime to Susquehanna County in 2006. I signed up to be a Democrat -- definitely the minority party up here -- and settled back into my usual complacency. Politics, like sausage-making, is a job I expected someone else to do for me. But when I had signed up as a Democrat, I must have said something about having done election-rights work for the Kerry campaign. (I'm an attorney, although not one with any special election rights experience, but an attorney is an attorney, so I helped out in Throop on election day 2004.) Karen & John Hoffman, our party chairs here in Susquehanna County, latched onto me and got me involved in the election for 2006. Happy to help out.
Since then, I've been modestly and tangentially involved in a couple things here. Sitting at the breakfast this morning, I got excited again about the possibilities here. Democrats make up a greater percentage of the electorate than in the past few decades, we have two Democrat county commissioners -- and thus a majority -- in Montrose, and Chris Carney has been working hard even in the 13 months he's been in office to get "green collar" jobs in NE Pennsylvania. I think it's a great time to be a Democrat, but it's also just a great time to be politically active.
So I'm finally going to do what I had wanted to do three years ago: Contribute to the media. No offense to the two newspapers in Susquehanna County (the Susquehanna County Transcript and the Independent), but they're not the best source of information about what's really happening. Maybe it's the quality of the reporting, maybe it's their political bias, or maybe -- and I think this is the most likely explanation -- it's the pressure of too much work done by too few people. I just know that Susquehanna County can and should get more information than it does.
This, then, is my first entry to my political blog. I want to post about jobs, finances, energy policy, the awesome work done at the township level, how I don't think the political parties are the problem locally and a lot of other topics. Let's look at how we do things here in Susquehanna County. Let's celebrate the good stuff and work to improve the other stuff. And I want to know what you think. Leave a comment -- it's all good.
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