"Mueller and the resistance" Letter to the editor Tom Denton

Mueller and the Resistance

Meg McArdle of the Washington Post, like other conservative columnists, condemns a “cosmopolitan class,” bent on reversing the 2016 election results, that now stands humbled for pinning its hopes on the Mueller report. ( https://wapo.st/2JYxkb8https://wapo.st/2JYxkb8)  To that group she connects the “#resistance” that “made things worse.”  Note: I identify with the “resistance,” and I didn’t hold my breath Waiting for Mueller, glued to every media report.  I would have celebrated a report with clear, prosecutable evidence, but didn’t organize my actions anticipating it.    Let's not forget the purpose of the investigation--exploring Russian interference in our election--or the voluminous evidence that did emerge, unchallenged, from Mueller's search:  evidence of the Trump team's shockingly unethical behaviors; many guilty pleas to crimes committed by Trump associates; streams of examples of Trump's lies, self-dealing, and violations of norms that have held our political establishment together for centuries.

Further release of the report's details will offer new revelations that will diminish Trump's current bravado.  Nevertheless, I accept the report's general conclusions . . . and will continue to do what I've been doing for the past two years.  In 2017 we elected local county legislators.  In 2018 we worked for a year to elect a congressional representative in a swing district, state legislators whose victories led to a Democratic takeover of Albany, and a county sheriff who ousted an incumbent.  This year we plan to put in office a county executive, more Democratic legislators, more town officials.  And of course, in all of this we are preparing for 2020.  We are doing the work.  We haven't relied on a great Mueller gift.  This resistance is doing the hard work.  We haven't been "contravening civic norms,” as McArdle claims; we've been using them.

McArdle draws a misleading caricature of the opposition to Trump, one that is more accurately pointed at her own political class of pundits and that doesn’t describe those of us working at the ground level.

Publishing history:

Daily Freeman                      3/28/19

New Paltz Times                   4/4/19    

"Labels" Letter to the editor Tom Denton

Labels

My mind has been reeling lately, tortured by this question:  What am I?  A liberal or a moderate or a progressive Democrat?  Because I must be one, not the other, or so I’m told.   If I support universal, single payer health care, I must rally for Medicare for All—now—to be progressive.  If I can’t imagine all the items in the Green New Deal happening immediately after the 2020 election, I must be a despised moderate.  If I believe in free tuition for community college but not for all college students, I am . . . liberal?  If I espouse principles of social democracy, must I accept the label of democratic socialist?

Reports from the House Democratic conference recently included stories of ascendant progressives raising the specter of primaries against moderates, those entrenched and newly elected.  A war of blue vs. purplish blue is rumbling.  Master strategist Nancy Pelosi seems better  able to bring Donald Trump to heel than to corral her own legislators. 

Stop!  The Democratic party, indeed, needs the next two years to define itself, preparing to battle Trump’s vision of America.  Its voice must be authentic and must speak to the challenges that citizens face in their everyday lives.  But most people will not vote for an ideology.  They’ll listen for and support policies and programs they can recognize and believe in. Moreover, they’ll choose a person who will articulate their hopes.  If the nominee’s platform lacks the tight consistency of ideology, so be it.  If Trump and his GOP party are going to be defeated in 2020, this Best in Show primary competition might well choose a happy mutt.

Publishing history:

Albany Times Union online  3/25

"Ranked choice voting an effective process" Letter to the editor. Andi Weiss Bartczak

To the editor:

In any primary or election you get only one vote;, winner take all.  Think about the presidential primary coming up.  Do you really like only one candidate or would you be okay if one of several  won ?

 If we had ranked choice voting, as do the voters in Maine, you wouldn't have to choose just one.  And you wouldn’t be really disappointed if a candidate that would have been your third choice won.

Say there are three candidates, A, B, C .  You choose as your first choice candidate C.  You mark as your second choice B.  Your third choice is candidate A.   Candidate A gets the most votes, but not a majority.  Candidate C got the fewest votes, so all those who chose candidate C have their votes counted for their second choices.  Maybe this time candidate B has the most votes but not a majority.  So the remaining candidate with the lowest number of votes, candidate A, is eliminated and the votes of those who voted for candidate A are counted for their second (or third) choice.  This time candidate B has a majority of votes and wins the election.  She/he was your second choice, so wouldn't you feel better than if you got to vote for only candidate C and then candidate A won?

   Like ranked choice voting?  Let your state senator and assembly member know.  The state legislature has to change the rules for voting and now is the time to start talking about it.

 Andi Weiss Bartczak

Publishing history

Albany Times Union 3/20/`9

"Naming Names" Letter to the editor Misha Harnick

   The recently introduced concepts of “political correctness” and “cultural misappropriation” are reaching the point of hysteria.  

   Item:  If there is no Black actor or singer available, Othello is not being played with black face any more.   In that way, the explicit references to his “blackness”, that are instrumental in the play and opera,  make the conflict meaningless!   (Compare: NO ONE objected when Denzel Washington played Hickey in “The iceman cometh” last year, despite the fact that the denizens of that sleepy bar would unlikely so lovingly embrace a black man in their midst!)  Al Jolson became one the greatest entertainers with his blackface: he donned it on as a tribute to the black performers, NOT to denigrate them!

   Item: Buildings get renamed after a huge amount of money is donated:  thus there are now Koch theatre and Geffen Hall in the Lincoln Plaza.  Buildings  and institutions should bear names conveying their function: thus “New York State Theater” was just right and the New York Philharmonic would make more sense to play in “Concert Hall”, rather than some rich donor’s named facility.  

   Item: Triboro Bridge was a perfect name, clearly denoting its function (what did RFK have to do with the building or purpose of it???)   Tappan Zee Bridge was clearly coming from Tappan across the Hudson (Mario Cuomo was a very decent guy, but why should the bridge bear his name?)

   Item: George Washington Bridge too is only an honorary name…But wait: there may be a campaign somewhere brewing to rename it since Washington owned slaves!

   Item: renaming SUNY dormitories to erase names of long-dead slave-owners seems preposterous.   Agreed,  naming student dorms after New Paltz founders does not necessarily make too much sense and they would be indeed be better called some flower names, or activity names.  I am totally baffled by “…students testified as to how living and eating in buildings named for slave owners impacted their lives.”   HOW?  Were they not able to sleep, worrying about the slaves?   Was food making them sick, as they contemplated the long dead slaves?   What about students living in the dorms BEFORE the movement to rename: were their lives also impacted?  Believe me, I am only trying  to point out that those sentiments are artificial, result of the current hysteria.   (Americans have always been fond of hysteria: just think about the Salem witchhunts – yes, genuine witchhunts, unlike the currently so labeled legal investigation – marvelously presented in “The Crucible”.)

   I wonder: is there someone a campaign brewing to rename George Washington Bridge (also purely an honorary name) so that Blacks and all of us who naturally condemn slavery – whether then or now, and yes, it is still with us today -- don’t feel “distressed” driving across? 

   No decent person can condone slavery in any shape or form, it is a reprehensible way to treat people.  Yet it has been around even before Christianity which itself has brought about many many deaths in the name of higher “beings” and powers.  And unlike today, when slave trafficking abuses primarily white (yet foreign born!)  women, already ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire used captured peoples as slaves.In the 18^th-19th century North America, slavery  was the  modus operandi (and let us not forget that even some slaves themselves owned slaves!), just like today people buy and own their gadgets, whether they need them or not. 

 

   In my view, renaming the dorms because the names belong to long long dead slaveowners, is a misguided move.   I feel for the bearers of those names who may start feeling ostracized.    Hopefully, New Paltz Village/Town will have more common sense and will not start removing names of those families from our streets and areas.