17 October 2013 –

It’s All About The Name Of The Game                                                    

Let’s put aside crises of the day and consider an important question:  Should the Washington Redskins owner, Dan Snyder, change the name of his football team to something less offensive?

This is not breaking news.  The same issue was broached with the previous owner, Jack Kent Cooke, in the 1970s and 1980s.  Mr. Cooke’s answer was always “No.”  A month ago, USA TODAY reporters asked Mr. Snyder if he would abandon the name.  His response was equally blunt: “Never…it’s that simple.”  

It’s that simple if we believe that keeping an eighty-year-old name is the team owner’s constitutional right of property.  It’s that simple if we see those pressuring for a name-change as self-serving agitators.  Such simplicity, however, sets unavoidable battle lines, and agitators will most likely control the conflict’s tempo.  I suggest Mr. Snyder sidestep the acrimony and fist-pumping that infest such arguments.  I suggest he reverse his stance and base his actions on the concept of propriety.  Mr. Snyder should announce that it is respectful and decent to find a new name for a football team that actually spent its first season in Boston as the Braves.  Mr. Snyder should announce that it is appropriate and polite to change a name that lost its context when the team moved from Boston to Washington, D.C., in 1937, and no longer employed the part-Native American coach whom the Redskins originally meant to honor.  Mr. Snyder’s ultimately simple response should be that propriety, not political correctness, suggests a name change.  He would keep fans and defang enemies. 

I see two methods for Mr. Snyder to find a new team name.  The first is to invite Native American leaders to a conference in D.C. to discuss new names which should evoke virtues such as courage, steadfastness, and strength.  The leaders who refuse to attend should be ignored.  Those who attend the conference and agitate should be ignored.  Those who present and discuss new names should be praised and incorporated into the team’s public image.  These leaders also should be given box seats at every home game against the Dallas Cowboys for the next thirty years.  The new name, proper and embraced by all, could then continue the Native American theme that has been with the team since its inception.     

The second method is to pick a team name that identifies the team with the region.  The Houston Oilers, Minnesota Vikings, Washington Senators, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Dallas Cowboys are examples of sports teams’ regional ties—ethnic, historic, and economic.  Just as he might do with Native American leaders, Mr. Snyder could consult with regional leaders in selecting a new name.   

Mr. Snyder could even combine regionalism with a Native American name, but that is difficult because the tribes that lived in the D.C. region don’t have the familiar names or historical fame of the tribes of other regions. 

A specifically regional name also may not travel well if the franchise—heaven forbid—moves to another city.  In 1961, the Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul and became the Minnesota Twins.  An expansion club was formed in D.C. and took the name Washington Senators.  But these Senators moved to Dallas in 1971, left their name behind, and became the Texas Rangers.  

On the other hand, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles before the 1958 season and were still the Dodgers.  Sports writers had invented the name in the early 1890s when Brooklyn fans were referred to as “Trolley Dodgers” because the ball park was hemmed in on two sides by trolley tracks.   Hmm… I wonder how the name would have fared if the team had moved to San Francisco instead.  By the late 1960s, writers could have referred to the S.F. team as “Draft Dodgers.”  The President just announced that immigration reform is his next big political issue.  Will some writer in Los Angeles now refer to its baseball team as the “ICE Dodgers?”  Just wonderin’.     

So, Mr. Snyder has at least two ways to change his team’s name for the better.   If he opts for a regional name, I suggest he focus on capturing the essence of the Washington D.C. culture and economy.  Something that fans will instantly recognize. 

How about the Washington Wafflers? 

What do you think?   If you want to help Mr. Snyder choose a new team name, please send your suggestions to the Atascocita Observer.   

12 October 2013 –

What About Going Broke Don’t We Understand? 

Should we worry hugely about the ongoing government shutdown and the looming deadline for raising the debt ceiling?  I suggest that we should look past the screaming and sniping by politicians, bureaucrats, and media.  They divert our focus to the secondary issues, such as a specific sidelined government program or who was hurt by partisan exploitation.  They want us to avoid thinking about how the government—elected officials and agency bureaucrats—have spent us into a strategic crisis that only heroic means can resolve.   

The single biggest threat to the United States is that we the people, represented by our elected and bureaucratic officials, are spending ourselves into bankruptcy.  Self-absorbed economists natter bankruptcy into incomprehensible silliness; but, a simple presentation of the numbers should scare all sensible Americans. 

The federal government’s debt rose above one trillion dollars in the Reagan administration and has been rising at a geometric rate with each new generation of government.  If a family financial advisor were counseling today’s Uncle Sam, she would assess that he is a pander of expensive things to family members in exchange for docile perpetuation of family addictions.  The advisor then would search for a family member who has enough individual strength and maturity to take over the family finances. 

How bad is our problem?  Our government spends at about 25% more than it collects in taxes and has been doing so for several years.   The US government now owes more in unsecured debt—credit card debt to us every day people—than all 317 million Americans make every year.  Seventeen trillion dollars.  That is 17 with 12 zeroes behind it: $17,000,000,000,000.  The tipping point to national insolvency approaches.    

In the meantime, our elected officials hiss at each other across partisan ramparts.  They bemoan the uselessness and profligacy of Obamacare, the blatantly unconstitutional budgetary processes of the last five years, and who is the meanest in their governance.  However, they collectively are the uncle who blames anything and everybody but himself for his addiction.  The real and present danger to the United States is our national debt and the refusal of our elected officials to put on their big boy pants to stop the madness.      

Progressives ignore the importance of individual property rights and government thrift.  But these principles were important to our Founders.  To paraphrase the essayist John Jay Chapman’s famous quote about slavery, “There was never any moment in our history when slavery [to a large national debt] was not a sleeping serpent. It lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention [about government budgetary processes]. “  Alas, today, the Executive Branch and Congress have abandoned almost all constitutionally mandated budgetary processes.  The Executive Branch and its gargantuan regulatory agencies increasingly obligate and deny monies by fiat, and Congress allows them to do so.  The President has ignored his constitutional obligation to present a budget to Congress for consideration in the budgetary process, and Congress has allowed him to do so.  The Senate has refused to consider the myriad budget bills passed by the House, enabling the Executive Branch to rule by continuing resolution.  Continuing resolutions and executive fiat are sure-fire formula for wasting of vast amounts of our money. 

Does this self-induced mess really threaten our nation’s security?  I posit that our increasing federal debt is the greatest threat the United States has faced since the Civil War.  US government debt to other nations and to their financial institutions lessens our ability to make independent decisions in both domestic and international arena.  My years of working civil-military issues with allies, friends, and enemies, have taught me that durable sovereignty is the result of the deliberate use of all a nation’s instruments of national power.  Economic, military, internal political, and diplomatic power work together to sustain a nation’s sovereignty in the world.  The most important of these instruments, however, is economic power.  The other three instruments are effective only if they are sustained by a vibrant economy and an unencumbered government.  All national power collapses if a country loses control of its finances.  The Soviet Union’s economic collapse, quickly followed by its military and diplomatic collapse in 1989, should be a sobering example of what can happen to a corrupt “superpower.”  

We are on a similar road to ruin if we don’t revert to wisely established constitutional principles of economic governance:  present yearly budgets, debate them, balance them, enact them, and hold to them.  Anyone on either side of the aisle who is not faithful to that process is part of the problem and not part of the solution.  

3 October 2013 –

The World War II Memorial Belongs to My Uncle Walt

June 2004.  The World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., had just been dedicated—forty years late, but finally open.    We were stationed in D.C., and my cousin, Ron, also lived in the area.   Ron had invited his parents to town to visit the new WWII Memorial, and asked if we would like to accompany them.  Of course!  Escorting Uncle Walt and Aunt Rosemary that day would turn out to be one of the brightest memories of my military career. 

Uncle Walt was the last living brother of four who served in WWII. He was the captain of the first gun turret on the USS Boise, a light cruiser that fought in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.  He was decorated for bravery during the Battle of Cape Esperance on 11-12 October 1942, when Japanese shells hit near the first gun turret and killed three of his men.  Until he died just a few years ago, my uncle was proud to introduce himself by saying, “Hi.  I’m Walt Coleman, USS Boise, World War II.” 

Walt was the only one of the four brothers to see a monument built in their honor.

My oldest uncle, LeRoy, for whom I was named, was a sailor on the USS Northhampton.  On 1 December 1942, a Japanese torpedo sent the Northampton to the bottom of Ironbottom Sound in the Battle of Tassafaronga off Guadacanal.  LeRoy and fifty-four of his compatriots were killed, sixty-two years before their memorial was dedicated.  

My father, Burt, was an army sergeant in WWII.  He was drafted into the Army in 1940 as part of the wholesale transition of young men from the Civilian Conservation Corps to military service.  He was wounded in the battle for the Aleutian Islands.  He suffered from shrapnel wounds, and died in 1963, fifty-one years before the dedication of his memorial.

My Uncle Johnie served on the USS Chester and saw combat in the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942.  He fell ill and stayed in the hospital for ten months before returning to full service stateside.  Uncle Johnie married late in life, had no children, and died while working on a train in Montana, two decades before his memorial was built. 

At home, my grandmother proudly displayed in her front window in Glendive, Montana, the only memorial available to her sons-in-arms:  three blue stars, one gold.  She died in the late 1960s, never to know her sons would have their own monument decades later.

My wife’s father was a colonel in World War II.  He commanded a P-38 reconnaissance group, flying hundreds of missions, ”unarmed and unafraid,” out of New Guinea.  He was deployed overseas for thirty months during the war and retired in 1959.  He died in 1973, 31 years before his memorial was dedicated. 

One of my greatest honors was to wear my father-in law, Colonel Maughan’s, WWII colonel’s rank, a “War Eagle”, on my flight cap as I, in uniform, escorted my Uncle Walt, in a wheelchair, around his memorial.  That day, as he often did, Uncle Walt wore a baseball cap emblazoned with “CL-47 USS BOISE World War II.”    Other men and women also wore baseball caps or pins identifying their right to be at their memorial.  Everyone introduced themselves.  They shook hands firmly, all equals now, commenting how glorious it was to be there that day, remembering together days long past.  A young father asked Uncle Walt to tell his little boys about courage and hardship, and what it was like to be on board ship during a war so many years before.  Walt was pleased and proud to do so.

That was nine years ago.  The WWII veterans who visited the memorial that day stood on their ground.   The veterans who this week visited the Memorial still own that ground.  They bought it by saving civilization.  Their blood, and that of their fallen compatriots, render the ground and the monuments sacred. 

No matter how important we think our contributions to this country are today, you and I are merely visitors to, and should be humble guardians of, this memorial.  Sadly, people with similar birthrights—parents and grandparents who sacrificed so much in WWII—literally barricaded the  monument against visitors for their own careless purposes.   Shame on them for assuming that they had such a right.     

We have little time left to give tribute to the World War II veterans still among us.  Certainly nothing should be more important during this self-induced fiscal crisis than welcoming them to their own memorial and honoring them for changing the course of history, for having “preserved us a nation.”