Easy To Be Hard

"How can people be so heartless? " I woke up this morning with that song lyric stuck in my head. Funny since I haven't thought of the rock musical "Hair" for decades. Yes, it's funny but rather apt in light of the current political scene. If you can gauge anything from a Facebook newsfeed, it seems a lot of folks are perplexed and dismayed by what is going on with the current presidential campaign. Such nastiness and so little civility makes you wonder "[h]ow can people be so cruel".

What I wonder is where are all the Baby Boomers. What has happened to us, the peace, love, dove generation? Shouldn't we be calling the shots? Aren't there more of us demographically? Well, not anymore actually. According to the Pew Research Center, the Millenials were projected to surpass us sometime in 2015. I think they did since an recent article in CNN Money claimed the most common age in America last year was 22. As a group we Boomers are losing our grip and perhaps our perspective. 

C'mon, there are still well more than 60 million of us and we know kindness. We know love. We know how to make our voices heard. So let's say something. Let's try to do something. 

Find your inner Woodstock. Dig out your Army Surplus clothing. Put on your Birkenstocks and wear some flowers in you hair.  Well, in all seriousness, at least speak up! 

With thanks to Galt MacDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni, I will leave you with some  additional lyrics -

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend ...

Another Day with the Gov'ner

This one has been in the draft stages since the first week in December  I wanted to calm down a bit before launching into a political  rant, but time hasn't done much to heal this wound. It's also very difficult to write calmly about this guy's antics.



Paul R. LePage is my governor and I couldn't be more embarrassed by that fact. Perhaps you've heard of him. He has brought a lot of publicity to the great State of Maine and most,  if not all, of it has been negative. He campaigned on the promise of telling the president to go to hell. As soon as he "won" the election with a paltry 38% of the total vote, he gave his 22 year old daughter the high-paying job of  assistant chief of staff. Then there was the Martin Luther King Day snub where he said the NAACP could kiss his ass. And who can forget the  the women with little beards statement?  Then, let's see.  Hmm. There was the Department of Labor mural removal debacle. And? I'm sure I must be forgetting a few more gems, but that was just in his first year.

His second year has had it's crazy moments, too, but the point of this post is not to list all of the Gov'ner's failings and flubs as fun, yet incredibly time-consuming, as that might be. Fast forward to December 5, 2012, when I was a guest at the Swearing-In Ceremonies for the 126th Maine Senate.  It was Opening Day for the new legislature, a day typically filled with great anticipation, hope, pride and camaraderie   The program included a notice  of  a quorum to the governor and the house , remarks by the governor, administering of oaths, some ceremonial stoking of the fire (I didn't exactly get that part), and other fun stuff. It's important to note that families and friends were in attendance. It wasn't your typical state house work day and it should have been free of political bile. Someone should have told LePage that.

Oh, did I mention the part about the "stalker"? What stalker you ask. Well, the alleged stalker, spy, paparazzi, what have you that our governor believed was being paid by his opponents (think enemies) to dog  him. Remember this was the first day for the governor to welcome and look ahead to working with the newly constituted senate. Remember that family and friends were present and happy to share in a memorable moment. What did he say? Well, he didn't exactly say congratulations. He basically said call off this guy. You are being disrespectful. That's ironic. Oh, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's the the video -

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What did you think of that? I hope you could hear him over the crying baby. Remember family and friends were present. It was a ceremonial event. Talk about disrespect. That old pot kettle thing. Man, we the people of this great state are in big trouble and, yes, we all need a helmet.

You Need a Helmet if You’re Target

That’s right. Target needs a helmet and I need one every time someone asks me if I’ve joined the boycott of a business that has been nothing but supportive of equal rights in the past. My father was a union man and I learned at an early age never to cross a picket line, but there’s a big difference between a line of striking workers and a line of people who are merely playing nasty politics. Targets is caught in the cross-hairs of a very big gun aimed, and please pardon me for this, at the wrong target.

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the 5/4  Citizen’s United decision, I was surprised at the large number of tweeters and bloggers ranting about the result. How could all of those individuals have had the time to read an extremely long judicial opinion replete with concurrences and a 90 page dissent, study it, analyze it, and write confidently about it so quickly?  Unfortunately, most of them had not read it. However, this isn’t the place to expound upon complex legal issues, the scope of the First Amendment, the significance of 5/4 decisions, and the intricate, inner workings of the third branch of government. The bottom line is that case made it legal for any organization, whether a non-profit, a union or a corporation, to spend its money on political advertising and campaigns.  Justice Kennedy wrote "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

So what did Target do? The corporation made a perfectly legal $150,000 contribution to MN Forward, a Minnesota organization promoting economic development and job growth. Why would they do that? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s because Target, headquartered in Minnesota, is a business and economic growth is good for business.  MN Forward gave money to several candidates from both major parties, including one Tom Emmers, who is pro-business but opposed to marriage equality. Good for Emmers; bad for Target.

Target Corp. has long had a reputation for being gay friendly. It provides benefits for domestic partners of its employees. It sponsors the annual Twin Cities Gay Pride Festival in Minnesota. It scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index in 2010. MSNBC, the so-called liberal news channel, refused to air MoveOn.org’s big Boycott Target ad. Target apologized. (Note to self- possible blog topic - You Need a Helmet when reading about people apologizing for things they did even if they weren’t wrong)

The boycott was a bust. Why? The entire thing was unfair and the organizers simply picked the wrong target. I’m off to Target now. Don’t yell at me as I go in and, please, don’t throw anything at my head in case I’m not wearing my helmet.