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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain View News Saturday, October 5, 2024

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. PRESIDENT

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Susan Henderson

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CONTRIBUTORS

Michele Kidd

Stuart Tolchin 

Harvey Hyde

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee


POLITICS AND PRESIDENTS

The unabridged title: “Politics and Presidents: A Historical 
Hopefully Hysterical Peek”

Happy Birthday to Jimmy Carter. He turned 100 on October 1st. The first 
president to make it to 100. Bravo. 

Now, watching highlights of the recent Vice-Presidential debate took me back to the 
Richard Nixon, John Kennedy presidential debate of 1960. This may surprise or even 
shock you but going into the debate Nixon was favored to win the election. 

Nixon, ill the day of the debate, arrived and promptly refused stage makeup. Kennedy, on 
the other hand (or face) wore stage makeup. The result? Kennedy looked and sounded 
young and energetic, while Nixon looked pale, old, sickly and tired. Had Nixon not agreed 
to a televised debate most historians believe he would have won the 1960 election. 

Nixon, after he lost the Governor’s race in 1962, announced we wouldn’t have “Nixon” to 
kick around anymore. He was wrong. We had to wait only 6 years when he beat Hubert 
Humphrey and became President in 1968. It was then 6 years later in 1974 when we got 
around to kicking “Tricky Dick” out of office.

Some political scientists hypothesize the presidential candidate with the most hair has 
a leg up on winning. Let’s see, John Kennedy won, certainly having more on top than 
Richard Nixon. In 1968, Nixon lucked out when relatively hairless Hubert Humphrey 
became the Democrat nominee. Nixon won by a hair lol. You might have thought the 
Demos would learn their lesson and you’d be wrong. In 1972 they pitted hair challenged 
George McGovern against Nixon (who won by about 80,000 hairs). In 1976, the Dems 
found the hair helmet candidate they could get behind: Jimmy Carter easily beat the hair 
challenged incumbent Gerald Ford.

1980 was a close race with both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan blessed with “hair 
helmets”. Reagan won. You had Ronnie’s star status versus Jimmy’s less than stellar 
performance as President. Might have been the lines at the gas stations in 1979 that finally 
did Jimmy in.

Getting us to1984, Reagan ran against a reasonably hairy Walter Mondale. Mondale lost 
in a landslide because he criticized Reagan’s fiscal deficit. Mondale said he would cut the 
deficit by raising everybody’s taxes. Reagan, the better politician, announced he had no 
plans to raise or lower taxes. Surprise…Reagan ended up raising taxes. But he, somehow, 
made you feel good about voting for him.

“Read my lips, no new taxes.” In 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush ran for president 
using that campaign slogan. He beat Michael Dukakis. Dukakis doomed his fate the 
moment he climbed into a M-1A1 battle tank. He might have saved himself, but when 
his head popped up into view wearing s Snoopy-like helmet his chance at victory was 
doomed. To cement his loss, he ignored advice and ran his own campaign. His defeat was 
listed as the result of missed opportunities, poor judgment and undeniable arrogance.

I’ll leave our in depth election memories there. In 1992 we got a teeter totter presidential 
cycle: 8 years of Bill Clinton, then 8 years of George W. Bush, and finally 8 years of Barack 
Obama.

Select quotes to make you smile (hopefully):

“Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.” Dwight Eisenhower

“I would have made a good pope.” Richard Nixon

“No.” (President Carter’s daughter Amy when asked by a reporter if she had any message 
for the children of America)

“Vote early and vote often.” Al Capone

“Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and 
cutting hair” George Burns

“I’ve left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a 
cabinet meeting.” Ronald Reagan

“When they asked George Washington for his ID, he just took out a quarter.” Steven Wright

And finally my favorite political quote; first in French: “Je suis Marxiste – tendance 
Groucho” 

Translated in English: “I am a Marxist – of the Groucho tendency”.

President Jimmy Carter celebrates his milestone 100th birthday on Oct. 1, he 
sets a new record for the longest-lived president in United States history. It's a 
title he's held since March of 2019, and a record he's broken with each birthday 
since.

STUART TOLCHIN

PUT THE LIGHTS ON

 
WAS THERE A DEBATE?

 Last night I waited for the Vice-Presidential debate and 
next I watched many summaries of what the networks told 
us we saw and now I present to you, my impressions. First 
question, who won? Answer, there was no winner but we 
the public are the Big Losers. I do not know how closely 
you have been following the pre- election posturing but 
allow me to identify the parties. Both men (yes they are both men, good old 
White Christian men with families; and both are substantially younger than 
the current President and the ex-President.) They both are from the Midwest 
and identify as middle class. Both seemed eager to point out that they did not 
disagree about everything and in fact had many similarities. Very scary. The 
differences in America are huge and should have been reflected in the Debate

 There were differences of course in their manner of presentation. 
Governor Walz, identified himself as a High School teacher and High School 
Football Coach and longtime member of the military. He explained that he is 
a long-time NRA member who always carried a shotgun in his car. Not much 
of a rebel. Other than at the last minute of the debate he went out of his way 
to not ruffle any feathers and identified himself as someone who worked with 
representatives on both sides of the aisle during his 12 years in Congress prior 
to his four-year term as Governor. He is now the Democratic candidate for 
the Vice-Presidency.

Senator J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee, also tells us he is from 
the middle-class and had a deprived childhood as the result of his mother’s 
drug addiction. Nevertheless, he managed to earn a full Scholarship to Yale 
Law School leading to important connections, a job in venture capital and 
marriage to a brilliant classmate. He appealed to these venture capitalists 
and although having no political experience was selected to receive the huge 
donations leading to election to the Senate in 2022 at the age of 38. He 
differs from his opponent in that he does not stay in any one position for very 
long which may reflect his huge ambition. I wondered why he desired to be 
Vice-President a position of little responsibility His major traits seem to be 
slickness and willingness to change political positions. He is a salesman only 
interested in selling himself. I think that is his obsession

 All right, here is my take-away which I formulated this morning. In 
one of my first articles for this paper written in 2008 prior to the Presidential 
election of Barak Obama, I predicted that during my lifetime, Americans 
would witness the demise of the Republican Party. Well folks, it’s already 
happened. Republicans are no longer a party but are simply a Trump cult. The 
most instructive moment of the debate was when Walz directly questioned 
Vance as to his belief about the 2020 election and Vance would not answer 
saying that he only wanted to talk about the future. Of course, his immediate 
future requires him to not contradict Trump’s Big Lie regarding the 2020 
election. Now I will try and explain this willingness.

Vance foresees a time after Trump’s election when Trump will be 
forced to leave office for reasons that are already obvious. Presto, Vance is 
now President surrounded by incompetent Trump cronies now even more 
bewildered without their leader. Vance will be free to recreate an America 
to his own liking and the liking of his benefactors. No more burdensome 
Democracy, and Separation of Powers. Who needs elections?

What will happen to the rest of us, especially those of us who did 
not go to Yale or possess billions? Really, I hope we never have to find out, 
but I am very worried. The Debates made little mention of what we, the 
public, must do to protect our future. In previous articles I have described 
books like Nexus and What If We Get It Right. These books emphasized 
that what is necessary is self-examination and the formation of neighborhood 
communities that together work to save the planet from the man-made 
destructive environment. We must unite in our efforts and fill the vacuum 
created by incompetent and uncaring leadership. We do not need J.D. 
VANCE. There is no Debate!! 

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HOWARD Hays As I See It

“If one of us goes to jail, we will 
be the first person to go to jail in 
the Mississippi welfare scandal” - 
Mississippi Today reporter Anna 
Wolfe

 

Digging into Project 2025 - the 
report by Trump’s people financed 
by Trump’s backers laying out a 
Trump agenda that Trump says he 
knows nothing about - three things 
stood out to me this week:

 

First, an infatuation with block grants. Department 
of Education? Abolish it - just send block grants. 
Healthcare support? Block grants. Anti-poverty 
programs or anything else? Block grants - leave it to 
the states.

 

On the press, the report doesn’t repeat Trump’s “enemy 
of the people” depiction, but calls for defunding PBS 
and NPR. It rejects press entitlement, encouraging 
the president to be more selective in granting access. 
Trump’s Justice Department secretly seized emails and 
phone records of journalists reporting on the Russia 
investigation. New Attorney General Merrick Garland 
ordered a stop to that practice. Project 2025 calls for 
Garland’s order to be reversed.

 

As for an independent judiciary, Project 2025 calls for 
a “vast expansion of the number of appointees in every 
office and component” of the Justice Department; more 
who are “politically accountable” - meaning beholden 
to the president. There’s elimination of civil service 
protection, so not following directions of a political 
appointee - be it illegal, unethical, or unconstitutional 
- could get you fired on the spot. Project 2025 also 
suggests the president has as much right to tell the 
judiciary what’s constitutional as they have to tell him.

 

This all came to mind while following a story out of 
Mississippi.

 

Anna Wolfe grew up in Tacoma, Washington, got her BA 
in Communications from Mississippi State, relocated 
to Jackson and joined the non-profit Mississippi 
Today. Six years after graduation, she and colleague 
Michelle Liu shared a prize for Investigative Reporting 
for their story 
on Mississippi’s 
“restitution 
centers” (“Think 
Debtors Prisons 
Are a Thing of 
the Past? Not in 
Mississippi”).

 

Last year (at 28 years old) she won a Pulitzer for her 
coverage of misuse of welfare funds and the involvement 
of Mississippi’s former governor, Phil Bryant.

 

By the late 2010s, Mississippi was receiving some $86M 
a year in federal Temporary Assistance for Needy 
Families (TANF) funding. These were block grants - 
with little if any accountability.

 

Rather than going to needy families, the funding 
instead supposedly went to programs - job training 
or whatever - and the non-profit set up to run the 
programs. But nobody seemed to know how many 
participated in the programs or if anybody actually 
benefited from them.

 

With no competitive bidding and dubious vetting, 
this non-profit was simply handed the contract and 
millions in public funds to take care of.

 

There’s this start-up drug company in Florida, 
involvement by former quarterback Bret Favre - and 
a meeting set up between the company’s founder and 
then-Gov. Bryant. From public funds, Favre was paid 
$1.1M for speaking fees and never spoke, $5M for a 
new volleyball stadium at the school where Favre’s 
daughter played volleyball and $2M to increase the 
non-profit owners’ personal investment in the Florida 
drug company.

 

Anna Wolfe reported on some $77M in questionable 
spending by Mississippi’s Department of Human 
Services under its head John Davis - “federal funds 
intended to serve the poor instead enriched his family 
and friends and paid for lobbyists, luxury vehicles, 
religious concerts, expensive getaways, publicity events 
with famous athletes” - not to mention an “African 
heiress gold bar scam”.

 

Only about 5% of the funds ended up with needy 
families. In 2018, as tens of millions of dollars were 
being funneled through Mississippi’s DHS office, 
11,700 families with children applied for $170 monthly 
in TANF benefits. 98.5% of the requests were denied.

 

As Anna Wolfe related to NBC, “Two days after the 
Pulitzer announcement we got the first threat of legal 
action”. Her investigation had led to the office of Gov. 
Phil Bryant, and the governor sued Anna Wolfe and 
colleagues for defamation.

 

To establish “actual malice”, the governor demanded 
all of Wolfe’s notes, records, internal emails - and 
everything on confidential sources. A county judge 
ordered she turn it over for him to review, or risk being 
jailed for contempt. That order is now on appeal to 
the state’s Supreme Court - with four of its nine judges 
appointed by former Gov. Bryant.

 

The point is probably not to send Anna Wolfe to jail, 
but to financially ruin Mississippi Today - hoping it, 
like so many local papers and local reporters, simply 
goes away. There’s also a clear message to anyone 
considering reporting on something they shouldn’t - 
and to any “confidential source” who might cooperate.

 

This story features unaccountable block grants, 
intimidation of the press and an executive confident 
the judiciary is there to serve his own personal interests, 
rather than the public’s - all things promoted in Project 
2025. To fight this and see that similar situations don’t 
spread nation-wide, Anna Wolfe is willing to go to jail. 
But all we have to do is vote.

 

Last month, the National Press Club awarded 
Mississippi Today its highest award for press freedom.


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