Month: October 2016

I never cease to be amazed at how ungrateful we are for the service of our combat veterans.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War thousands of veterans began dying from strange forms of cancers never seen before.

When it became apparent that the cancers were the result of their exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange designed and used by our government, the government denied all responsibility and resisted any discovery of their role in its use and manufacture for decades.

I have written extensively about this abdication of responsibility many times over the past decade following the death of my closest friend, Larry Hackett, from cancer caused by Agent Orange.

While almost fifty years has passed since the government exposed its soldiers to this poison, the Veterans Administration, after years of denying that the chemical caused these deaths, has now begun to acknowledge the claims of veterans for disability benefits for the damage it has caused.

Congressman John Katko and former Congressman Dan Maffei each introduced the Lawrence J. Hackett Jr, Vietnam Veterans Agent Orange Fairness Act. It would provide a comprehensive study of measures including compensation for veterans and their survivors.

The Act has languished in the House Veterans Affairs Committee. It has two co-sponsors there and none in the Senate despite entreaties to both New York senators and other serving on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

Still, I continue to read the all too frequent obituaries of men dying in their sixties from cancer, who are Vietnam veterans. I don’t guess at the cause of the cancer anymore.

The government fares no better when it comes to veterans returning from Afghanistan, Iraq or the Gulf War.

We witnessed scandals in the Veterans hospitals involving wait times, lack of psychological, psychiatric and counseling services for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, resulting from the horrors that they witnessed or survived while serving in these wars. The suicide rate among these veterans is staggering.

This past week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon has been demanding that veterans of the California National Guard pay back thousands of dollars of re-enlistment bonuses and tuition benefits paid to them as an inducement to re-enlist for additional combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The newspaper stated that as many as ten-thousand veterans are affected. It published stories involving veterans who were injured and awarded medals for service during these tours. Many of them have had their wages garnished and judgements affecting their credit filed against them. Some have lost their homes because of this. Others have lived on a bare subsistence level as they paid back thousands of dollars.

In most of the cases it appears that the affected veterans lived up to their commitment and served successive combat tours.

Needless to say, they feel betrayed.

They have good reason to feel betrayed.

According to the New York Times, when California National Guard officials sought relief from Congress several years ago, it refused to act because of the cost of forgiving these debts.

Shortly after the Times article appeared, The Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, ordered the Pentagon to suspend these collection efforts until a new review process could be instituted.

No mention is made of making whole those veterans who have already paid back the bonuses or benefits or been subject to garnishments and other onerous debt collection measures.

There are two elements to this crisis that ought not to be forgotten.

The first is that the bonuses were paid to National Guardsmen to induce them into accepting a combat mission overseas.

Most people enlist in a state National Guard unit because they want to serve in domestic crisis, such as climate disasters, that occur within their state. None of them anticipated the repeated deployments to foreign combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan as many in the guard have had to endure.

The second is that the repeated deployments were made necessary because the manpower quotas essential to fighting a war in two places could not be met.

The only alternative to repeatedly deploying state National Guard units would be the return to a draft.

If a draft were reinstituted, unlike the Vietnam War, not just sons but daughters would be subject to it.

That would certainly set new terms of debate about the wisdom of our use of military force overseas.

In the meantime, ten-thousand veterans who have been victimized by our government because they accepted bonuses and benefits they accepted in good faith for service they performed will have to wait in financial limbo until the government decides how to make this right.

Ten years ago, as I stood next to my best friend’s casket in a cemetery I saw a member of the military color guard pass a folded flag to his widow and tell her it came “with the thanks of a grateful nation.”

I wanted to scream then.

I want to scream now.

In the forty-six years that I have been eligible to vote, I have never failed to do so.

It doesn’t matter whether the election was for a Federal, State or Local office. It didn’t matter if it was a primary or general election. It didn’t matter whether I was living in New York or away at college. I always cast a ballot either in person or by absentee.

It has always been my firm belief that if you don’t exercise your right to vote then you forfeit your right to complain.

I have been a candidate for office seven times. I have run in three primary elections and four general elections. I have experienced the thrill of victory and the pain of defeat.

I have worked in countless campaigns for candidates seeking office at every level of government. I don’t have an accurate count of how many were successful and were not.

Sometimes the election involved an issue that was deeply personal to me.

In 1968, before I was eligible to vote, I worked in the Presidential primary campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy. The war in Vietnam was raging and I had many friends who both volunteered and were drafted and sent to Vietnam. Some came home safely, some came home badly wounded and some didn’t come home.

I though the war was a tragic mistake and I worked hard for any candidate who would end it so that any more friends or young men would be put in harm’s way.

Senator McCarthy wasn’t elected and the war continued under President Nixon into the next Presidential election.

In 1972, at the age of twenty-two, I ran in the New York Democratic Presidential primary election as a delegate pledged to Senator George McGovern, who also pledged to end the war. I was elected and went to the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach that summer where McGovern was nominated. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Nixon that November.

During Nixon’s second term, the nation learned about Watergate and the numerous crimes and “dirty tricks” that the Committee to Re-Elect the President had engaged in to bring about Nixon’s re-election.

Even though the Watergate scandal and criminal prosecutions ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation, nobody claimed that the election was ‘rigged.”

This year, before any votes have been cast, we are being told that the election is “rigged” and the outcome will have no integrity.

It is a curious claim because it comes from a candidate who didn’t utter it until he sensed that the election was slipping away from him.

He made no such claim during the primary season when he was winning each of the Republican Primary races.

He did claim that the results of the Iowa Caucuses were skewered by Ted Cruz who falsely reported that Ben Carson had discontinued his own campaign on the day of the caucuses.

I glean from this, that Trump believes, If Carson’s turnout had not been affected, that he and not Cruz would have won that contest.

That suggests a narcissism and self- grandiosity that is unparalleled even in politics.

What makes his claim that the election is” rigged” so incongruous is that the only evidence that anyone is trying to rig it, comes from the Russian intelligence sources who are hacking into the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Campaign officials and who are leaking them to their compatriot the accused rapist, Julian Assange, who is hiding out in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. They are trying to “rig” the election in Trump’s favor.

Yet, we hear no condemnation from Trump about this foreign interference in an election for our highest office.

Trump’s claim that the election is “rigged” rests upon the racist premise that voter fraud occurs on a massive scale among African-American voters. He has issued a call to arms to his Neo-Nazi, alt- right supporters to become vigilantes on Election Day and “monitor” voting in inner-city precincts. This is recklessness that borders on criminal.

In my lifetime, I have seen demagogues like Alabama Governor George Wallace seek the Presidency by appealing to the worst instincts of the American people.

Even as Wallace must have known that he would be defeated, he didn’t attempt to foster violence on the day of the election or undermine the integrity of the outcome.

I can think of no candidate in history who has done this.

Our full and free elections throughout our history have been a beacon for the rest of the world.

I’ve thought long and hard about what should be done to someone who would undermine our democracy in this way.

Only one thing comes to mind.

Lock him up.

I have a four year-old granddaughter whose favorite color is purple. She has a purple bedroom, purple coats, purple sweaters, and purple sneakers. If she could make it happen, everything in her world would be purple.

She also has demonstrated an interest in music. No visit to our house is complete until she sits down at my keyboard and bangs on the keys and pushes all of the instrument buttons.

In retirement, I decided that one of the ways I would try and keep my mind active and occupied was to learn to the play the piano.

There is a music gene in our family but I didn’t get it.

My sister, Mary, got it and took piano lessons and learned to play beautifully throughout her childhood. I can remember how happily our father gave up his Sunday afternoon professional football games so he could sit in an auditorium and listed to ten or twenty children he didn’t know play a recital piece before my sister came on. If he was lucky, he only missed the first half before he could listen to her and sneak out.

My daughter, Meghan, Claire’s mother, got the music gene. She took lessons in grade school and middle school. Her teacher was preparing her for competition when she was tragically killed in an automobile accident. Meghan was devastated and her interest in playing seemed to abate.

I took lessons from one of the nuns I had in parochial grade school for a number of months until the lumps on my head and the mild concussion I suffered during the lessons allowed me to stop taking them.

Claire has heard me practice during her weekend visits and has pronounced my music as “yucky.”

Despite this candid appraisal of my talent, I decided to get her a keyboard of her own to see if it would whet her appetite for learning to play.

Naturally, it had to be purple.

I went to Google and searched for a purple keyboard. To my amazement there was a 49 key purple electric keyboard with a microphone offered on Amazon which could arrive in time for her birthday. I place the order.

The day before her birthday, I received an e-mail from Amazon notifying me that the item was “backordered” and would arrive sometime between late October and late November. I cancelled the order.

I went back online and found the same purple keyboard offered by Sears. I placed the order and was provided with a U.S. Postal Service tracking number and an arrival date of two weeks later. It would be after her birthday but close enough for a late present.

I should have realized that I was in trouble when I entered the tracking number on the Postal Service tracking site and was informed that it didn’t recognize the number. I waited in vain and when the two weeks expired, I contacted Sears. They told me that the purple key board was lost in the mail but that they would arrange to have another shipped.

A couple of days later Sears e-mailed me that their supplier was out of purple keyboards and they would provide me with a refund.

Undaunted, I went back to Google and found a music company in California that had the same purple keyboard. I went to the web site and ordered one. They sent me an e-mail acknowledging my order and a delivery date in ten days.

On the twelfth day I e-mailed the company and told them I had not received the purple keyboard. They asked for twenty-four hours to review the order after which they informed me that my credit card had been declined and the order cancelled.

I immediately wondered, loudly, how I ever would have known that my credit card had been declined and the order cancelled if they were never going to inform me of that had I not inquired. Terri told me that she couldn’t handle hearing anymore about my travails trying to order the purple keyboard.

II decided to keep my thoughts and frustrations to myself.

I stewed for a couple of days and began exploring keyboards that weren’t purple but lying in bed at night I resolved that a keyboard that wasn’t purple just wouldn’t do.

I contacted the music company in California and asked if I had given them the wrong credit card number. They read me the information on the order and I had not. I explained to them that the card had never been declined and asked them to place the order again.

Two days later, they sent me an e-mail with a delivery date and a tracking number. I waited another day and went to the U.S. Postal Service website, inputted the tracking number and held my breath. The purple keyboard had been shipped and was enroute!

Several days later the package arrived.

We went to my daughter’s home that weekend and presented it to Claire. She was very excited about the fact it was purple. She plugged it in and began to bang on the keys and push the other instrument buttons.

My daughter said it was the loudest keyboard she had ever heard.

I pointed out that it had a volume control button with an arrow on it that you could hold down to reduce the volume.

She pressed it and said to me, “It doesn’t work, Dad.”

“I can send it back for a replacement but we might not get another one until she’s ten years-old,” I said.

Meghan said, “Okay, Dad. We’ll keep it but when we come to visit for the weekend I’m sending her into your bedroom in the morning to play it to wake you up.”

I just hope Claire learns a couple of tunes I like by then.

Several years ago, while I was recuperating from a knee replacement, I decided to learn to horseback ride-or to be more precise, mule back ride.

We had moved to Pompey four years earlier and Terri had returned to trail riding and it was apparent that it was a big part of her life. I wanted to share it with her.

She had purchased her mule, Franklin, at an auction and he was a “thoroughbred cross.”

For those who are unfamiliar with mules, they are a cross mating between a horse and a donkey. As a result they have an extra chromosome that renders them sterile and incapable of reproducing.

When Terri had her first veterinarian visit, the vet said to her; “I’m going to tell you three things about this mule. First; they are ten times smarter than a horse. Second; they are three times stronger than a horse. Third; they have impeccable memories, so don’t ever be mean to it because they will wait months and when you least expect it they will kick you in the head. Lastly, if you haven’t bonded with it in a few months get rid of it because you never will.”

Clearly he didn’t know Terri because God hasn’t created an animal that she isn’t bonded with.

After I completed physical therapy I began taking riding lessons. The instructor had a “lesson horse” who taught me that he was in charge and wouldn’t do anything I wanted him to do.

During this uplifting experience, Terri bought a second mule.

It was a female quarter horse cross that she named “Tulip.” She told me it was my Father’s Day gift. After I watched it take off with her at a dead gallop and she had to turn it towards a tree to get her to stop, I told her; “I don’t thinks so. Thanks but no thanks.”

I continued to take lessons and also began to scan ads on Craigslist and the weekly shopping newspaper for livestock sales. I liked the idea of buying a mule because they have an undeserved reputation for being stubborn. Rather than stubborn, they are exceedingly cautious and will not go anywhere or do anything that they perceive to be dangerous to themselves. I reasoned that if I was going to be on the back of a large equine, while in my 60’s, I didn’t want it doing anything that it thought was dangerous either.

After a few months I came across an ad for a mule for sale in Pennsylvania. We drove several hours to see him.

The woman who had him said his name was “Harry.” He was a draft horse cross approximately seventeen hands tall. She said he came from one of the Catskill resorts that offered riding to their guests.

He was the saddest animal I had ever seen.

He was standing in a single stall in manure over his hooves. You could count his ribs. His still had his winter coat despite it being May.

Mules are notorious herd animals but he had been separated him from his companion, adding to his misery.

My reaction to his plight must have been apparent because the owner volunteered that she had “rescued him.”

“How much do you want for him? I asked. “$ 750.00,” she said quickly. “Here is a check,” I said, “I want a vet check and then will be back with a trailer in a few days.”

On the way home Terri and a friend who had come with us asked, “Do you think he’s right for you?” “I don’t know,” I replied,” but I just can’t leave that animal there. I think we are the ones doing the rescuing here”

A few days later the woman faxed me the vet check, done by her vet, and it showed he was 15 years- old, was under-weight but had no diseases.

We returned to Pennsylvania with a friend who generously agreed to trailer him back for us and loaded him up for the trip home. The trip was very distressing for him because he had to stand in a trailer in his emaciated condition for several hours. When we arrived home he was genuinely in a lather.

We boarded him at the barn where I was taking lessons, while Terri was having her three stall barn built. I visited him each day to walk him and bond while he gained weight. Always doubtful whether his name was really “Harry,” I changed his name to “Donovan” after my favorite Fenian figure Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.

We had our own vet and an equine dentist examine him. One estimated he was twenty-five years old and the other closer to thirty. I enjoyed telling people that I had a mule that was my age.

Over the course of several months he gained between 200 and 300 pounds.

In time, I went for a ride on him with my riding instructor. He was absolutely docile and willing to do anything you wanted him to. In short, he was “push button.”

I now relished telling people that “Terri lives with four jackasses and three of them are trainable.”

When the barn was completed, all three of the mules moved home with us. Both the herd loyalty and the pecking order was established quickly. Franklin was the boss, Tulip was their siren song and Donovan was just happy to be part of it.

We rode on the trails surrounding our property and sometimes trailered to areas where riding was permitted.

Donovan and I were in complete sync with each other. He didn’t want to trot or gallop and I didn’t either. He was happy to follow Franklin, Tulip or whatever horse or mule that was in front of him and enjoy the scenery. I was too.

He did have one habit I would never be able to break him of and I really didn’t want to.
He would walk with me on his back for ten feet and then stop and eat grass. Walk ten more feet and stop for grass again. This was our endless procession on our rides. I once told Terri that if Donovan and I had to ride to California, we would both be dead from old age by the time we got to Ohio.

I wasn’t the only one he let up on his back. People of all ages rode him from my granddaughter, Claire, at age two with her parents walking along next to her to a friend who was my age and hadn’t ridden in decades. For many of our friends, he was their first riding experience and he hooked them all into deciding to take lessons.

We learned that if you left a stall door even slightly ajar, he would get it completely open and lead the Franklin and Tulip on a merry chase down the road to visit the horses penned there.

I vividly recall one beautiful spring morning when I was working in my home office with the windows open and suddenly heard the clopping of twelve hooves headed down the road. After an hour’s chase with a bucket of grain, Donovan surrendered and let us throw a lead rope lightly around his neck and return him to the barn with the other two plodding along behind him.

From that day forward, Terri hung a sign on the inside of the barn door that said “Bed check for Naughty Donovan.”

In time, he became less sure footed, would begin to stumble and didn’t have the endurance or the strength to go on rides. It took him longer to get up from rolling and the pain in his knees was evident. His teeth no longer permitted him to chew grass or eat hay. His vision and hearing began to fail.

He went peacefully the other day.

He is buried in the lower pasture, just above the pond where we all gather on nice days.

He may have been the nicest sweetest animal I ever encountered.

He brought a lot of joy, good times and fun to the lives of many people.

He will truly be missed.

On September 16, Donald Trump made a truly news breaking announcement. He announced that President Obama was born in the United States.

This announcement wasn’t news to anyone.

What made it newsworthy, “amazing” or “ astonishing” as Trump might say was because Trump was the leading proponent of the ridiculous theory that the President wasn’t born in the United States and was therefore an illegitimate President.

Trump wasn’t the first to call into question President Obama’s citizenship.

There is been a long line of Republican candidates who are “birthers,” including Sarah Palin, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, former Louisiana Senator David Vitter, former Governor of Arkansas and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Michele Bachman, Congressman Nathan Deal, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, Congressman Mike Coffman and a number of talk show hosts including Rush Limbaugh and current Trump shill, Sean Hannity.

There is no question, however, that the loudest voice in the birther movement was (and perhaps still is) Donald Trump.

Trump began his campaign to undermine the President’s legitimacy in 2011 despite the fact Obama had released his Hawaiian short form birth certificate in 2008 when questions arose because his father was a British subject born in Kenya. At one point Trump claimed that he had sent private investigators to Hawaii and told a television audience that “you can’t believe what they are finding.”

Since Trump never disclosed what they found, we’ll never know whether it was believable.

Trump wasn’t alone in this pursuit. Joe Arpaio, the Sheriff of Maricopa County surrounding Phoenix, Arizona actually sent an investigator to Hawaii at public expense to try and unearth that the President wasn’t an American citizen.

Arpaio has been repeatedly held in contempt by the U.S. District Court in Arizona for racially profiling Latinos.

He once famously marched male detainees through the streets of Phoenix, forcing them to wear pink underwear. Maricopa County has paid forty-three million dollars to settle claims for deaths and injuries to inmates in his custody during his tenure.

It’s safe to say that if Arpaio had been born thirty years earlier, he would have been prosecuted at Neuremberg at the end of World War II.

While Trump has dropped the “birther” claim, for now, Arpaio is still pursuing it, contending that The President’s long form birth certificate released by the White House in 2011 is a forgery.

Trump’s fixation on the President’s citizenship and immigration in general is curious, given the fact that two of his wives, Ivana and Melania are immigrants. When questions were raised about Melania’s status, the Trump campaign announced that she would hold a news conference to answer all questions. Instead, it released a letter from an attorney vouching for her legal status and provided no additional information.

Apparently Trump’s taxes aren’t the only issue that will remain undisclosed and unresolved.

While Trump continues to stonewall on the issues of his tax returns and his wife’s immigration path to citizenship, he is still in pursuit of other details from the President’s life.

He has offered money to the President and anyone else who can disclose the President’s passport records, college applications and his transcripts of his college grades.

You might ask what motivates Trump in these pursuits of the President’s life history ?

The answer is race.

It always has been.

Racism is an integral feature in Trump’s character and life story.

It always will be.