Post-election mysteries

Kamala Harris in Reno, Nev., a few days before the election. (Photo by Brycia James)

Questions for America
 that I cannot answer

Four years ago, in the weeks leading up to Election Day, my wife Bonnie Schupp was deeply worried. "I don't want Trump to be the last president in my lifetime," she told me.

 Election night was tense, the result too close for comfort -- and the accelerant for Donald Trump's "Big Lie" alleging rigging.

 We had for weeks watched Bill Maher's HBO show, "Real Time," in which the comedian/social critic repeatedly warned that Trump would not leave office willingly. Then, like prophecy, came the January 6 insurrection -- a riot and invasion of the Capitol which Bonnie and I watched, transfixed and horrified. 

I assured her that the attack would not change the result, that Joe Biden would be inaugurated as scheduled two weeks hence. Days before the inauguration, Bonnie found out she had aggressive pancreatic cancer. 

We watched the inauguration together. Though she knew her own time remaining was limited, Bonnie was relieved for the future of others and the nation she loved that Biden was president. She died two months later. 

Four years down the road, it is my turn to worry. No, I'm not on the edge of death. But I'm anfew months older than Trump. His health status (both physical and mental) has always been a mystery couched in vague assurances, but I've had some challenges of late. Like a brush with mortality just two months ago. And I had hopes, as Bonnie did, that Trump would not be the last president in my lifetime.

 Now it seems he might be, assuming Trump has four years without an intervention of fate and I don't. And I fear for the future of the nation that I love, but now have a harder time understanding.

 I've read numerous stories and heard TV pundits in the election aftermath assessing reasons for the failed Kamala Harris campaign. 

The economy? She offered proposals to help families and vowed to take on companies for price-gouging. Trump blamed her for not fixing the economy during her four years as vice president. Not that she had the power to fix the inflation of higher consumer prices, mostly the result of initial shortages during the pandemic and the simply relationship of supply and demand.

 He harped on America as a failing nation, claimed only he could fix it, and tariffs were the answer -- despite the warnings of experts that tariffs amount to a tax on consumers through higher prices and would fuel a new inflationary spiral. All this nonsense when unemployment was at a record low, wages higher, interest rates finally dropping and the stock market at a record high. America is hardly failing economically.

 Illegal immigration as an invasion of criminals was a constant theme, and inevitably the few recent cases of undocumented aliens linked to murders -- including one if Maryland -- served Trump's purposes for political exploitation. And even when the House and Senate had reached a bipartisan agreement on legislation to deal with uncontrolled border crossings, Trump got his legislative sycophants to kill it. He needed the issue to remain as uncontrolled as the border. 

Trump as the problem-solver? How many times has he been asked for his promised plan to "fix healthcare" to replace the Affordable Care Act? In four years as president, there was none -- only a Republican attempt to scuttle the ACA that was foiled by the late Sen. John McCain.

 Or for many voters, was it simply the fact that Trump's opponent was a woman of color? They were just looking for excuses to vote for him? 

More than a dozen former key aides in his presidency urged Americans to vote for Harris, saying Trump was a danger to the nation. A fascist, even. Others in his administration or took part in schemes to subvert the Constitution were convicted of crimes, imprisoned, disbarred. But Trump himself, the crime boss, despite his New York state conviction on fraud charges, will not lose a day of his freedom and doubtless as president will scuttle all federal cases against him.

 How could more than half of the participating electorate vote for him? I cannot fathom it. President-elect yet again, four years after his defeat by Biden, despite his innumerable faults and failures as a human being and from 2017 to 2021 in office. What voters chose to ignore, forgive or forget is astonishing, but inevitably offers a clue to their psyche.

 I am left to ask how anyone who lost a family member to Covid could ignore, forgive or forget Trump's lies and ignorance in his public response to the pandemic and undermining of public health science. More than a million Americans died. He at one point voiced the idea of people injecting bleach as a cure, among other preposterous suggestions, as he undermined the work of experts studying the virus and their push for wide acceptance of the quickly-developed vaccines to help contain it.

 I am left to ask how any military veteran could ignore, forgive or forget President Trump deriding the courage and sacrifice of the nation's defenders. among other insults. "Suckers and losers," he said in minimizing visits to the American cemeteries in France where many lost in World War II are buried. Or his stated suggestion of using the nation's military to deal with Americans exercising their free speech right of protest. (All this from an obvious draft dodger in the Vietnam war era whose alleged bone spurs must have been miraculously cured.)

My neighbor's lawn

 I am left to ask how any police officer could ignore, forgive or forget President Trump inciting the crowd he summoned to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally and failing to intervene as a mob's ensuing attack on the Capitol injured 140 police officers and contributed to the deaths of several. Close to a thousand people eventually were convicted on criminal charges related to the attack. Trump has called them patriots and vowed to pardon the many who are now serving prison terms. (In my own neighborhood in Pasadena, Maryland, a police officer who brings home his county patrol car after work flies a Trump "no more bullshit" flag outside his house and has a line of lawn signs adjacent to his driveway declaring he was voting for law and order, and for "felon and hillbilly.")

 I am left to ask how any good union member could ignore, forgive or forget Trump's blatant contempt for organized labor (and forget, by comparison, the incumbent Democratic president joining auto workers on their picket line during their strike in battling for a fair contract).

 I am left to ask how so many American voters could ignore, forgive or forget the incessant lies of Trump, his obvious lack of empathy for anyone other than himself and his family, his personal greed, his theft from charity, his con-man frauds, his racism and xenophobia, his abuse of women, and his crimes -- indicted by grand juries in multiple states, convicted in New York, and proving through millions spent on lawyers to delay justice that laws and the Constitution at the bedrock of America for more than two centuries do not apply to all.

 And I am left to wonder how those voters will perceive the results of their choice four years hence. I might not last that long, but suspect they will find themselves paying the piper. To say nothing of the likely global damage that may never be undone.

   

 Roadside commemoration

Families, union leaders assemble

to unveil highway marker for

longest U.S. strike by public workers

 

Tom Holler unveils historical marker along Route 135.

 Mountain Lake Park, Md. -- Time is unrelenting. The past fades from memory. But not this week, in the remote and mountainous western corner of Maryland, where a crowd of more than 100 gathered by a rural roadside to commemorate the longest strike by public employees in United States history.

Culminating a years-long effort spearheaded by retired steelworker and union activist Len Shindel, the ceremony featured brief remarks by labor leaders and even a couple of local politicians before the unveiling of a highway sign along Route 135 remembering the seven-month strike by the Garrett County highway workers who repaired the roads, built the bridges and, perhaps most important, plowed the snow in the long, cold winters.

Unions don't come naturally to conservative and largely Republican Garrett County, where you don't have drive far to see the signs, flags and banners of allegiance to the failed Trump reelection campaign. Along Route 39 just west of Oakland, the county seat, a Trump/Pence sign had been altered -- the name of the former vice president/running mate removed and replaced with a three-letter word to read Trump Won.

Another property along the highway sports a sign declaring, "Fuck Biden and Fuck You For Voting Him."

The political landscape likely was a little less bitter in 1970, when the highway workers -- earning less than two dollars an hour and lacking the job protections of a strong union -- sought recognition of the traditionally urban-based American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The three-member board of county commissioners -- all Republicans -- refused. The employees waited until April, after most of the long snow season had passed, to go on strike.

It didn't end until November, after county voters ousted the incumbent commissioners and replaced them with three Democrats who on taking office voted to recognize the union and then reached agreement on a contract. Oddly, as far as anyone could remember, Garrett County hasn't elected a Democrat to the board of commissioners in the half-century since.

During the long battle over union recognition, the commissioners fired the men who refused to return to work and attempted to replace them. That August, the commissioners summoned the new hires to Oakland and brought in a school bus to ferry them to the highway department garages and begin work.

The union had sent members from Baltimore to intervene. And they did so in dramatic fashion, flattening the tires, breaking the windows and ripping out the ignition wires, as state police troopers watched without intervening. That some of the union reinforcements were black did not go unnoticed in a county that, at the time, was pretty much all-white...  and to this day still has relatively few residents of color.

In a cavernous meeting hall behind heavy oak doors, angry voices could be heard -- one of them berating the police lieutenant in charge of the troopers for allowing "those "n-----s" on the bus when "there's no n-----s in Garrett County!" I was among a group of reporters in the lobby there who overheard the exchange. Three of the journalists had an ear pressed against the door, and nearly fell into the room as the disgusted lieutenant opened the door to leave the meeting.

The strike also featured a few other explosive incidents -- with dynamite -- at targets including a bridge, and the fence around the property of one of the commissioners. A striker later was given a jail sentence after pleading guilty to dynamiting the fence.

Many of those at Tuesday's gathering were children and widows of the strikers. Of the 139 county road workers, only about half a dozen survive.

One of them is  Friendsville resident Troy Wakefield, 84, who said he drove a truck for the highway department for 30 years. "Everybody stuck together back then," he told me. "The union even made my house payment."

The union sent a car caravan on a 200-mile drive to Garrett County to bring food and other supplies to the strikers, and raised money to keep the men and their families financially afloat.

Longtime union leader Glenard S. Middleton Sr., executive director of AFSCME's Maryland Council 67 and vice president of the Maryland-D.C. AFL-CIO, emphasized in his remarks that the union and the workers here in "God's country" are family.

Donna S. Edwards, a former social worker who is president of the Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO, told the crowd that unions are not about being Democrat or Republican -- but about achieving fair salaries and protections that enable workers to support their families and communities.

If the commissioners in office 51 years ago made an error in judgment, it was failing to realize that in the state's most sparsely populated county, most voters were related to or friends of men on strike or were friends of others connected to them. And that likely figured in their election defeat.

The sign was unveiled by Tom Holler, a retired roads worker whose late father Roy was one of the strikers. He recalled walking the picket line as a 10-year-old with his father. "I was supporting my dad," he said.

"We came together to honor men, women and families who refused to be

Len Shindel, speaking at ceremony.

divided and fought successfully to move Garrett County forward in 1970," Len Shindel wrote later in a Facebook post, thanking county residents and families of the road workers who joined in support of erecting the sign, and helped organize the ceremony. 

 "This morning and in coming months and years, we need to continually ask ourselves if we are truly honoring the memory of those we commemorated by crossing our boundaries in the present to address the pressing need of working families in Garrett County for decent-paying jobs, affordable housing and the tools needed to win a stable future in an uncertain and challenging time."

 

 

Out-sourcing the news

Sun’s 'nation & world' page
latest in cloning journalism

There was a time when the sun never set on the British Empire.

And there was a time when you could almost say that about The Baltimore Sun, for all the foreign correspondents it had spread around the planet. London, Paris, Bonn, Rio, New Delhi, Moscow. Over the years, the countries changed with the times. There was Tokyo, then Beijing. Johannesburg. Mexico City. And its Washington Bureau was not too shabby, with a dozen folks reporting the goings-on of government just for Sun readers.

Nothing new about the cutbacks, really – what was left of the foreign offices closed last year. The Sun's Washington Bureau has pretty much become overview reports and analysis by the very capable Paul West.

The latest move, inevitable given the trend, is the source of The Sun’s “nation & world” page: Not Baltimore.

About the time I took leave of The Sun in 2007 with a voluntary buyout to end a 40-year career, unsettling plans were under way to replace the newsroom computers used for writing, editing and page design with equipment like that in the parent Tribune Company’s Chicago Tribune flagship newspaper. It would simplify production of news outside Baltimore – I foresaw a day when the national desk would be fully located in Chicago, with pages designed around advertising holes that would be common for every paper in Tribune chain.

I wasn’t the only staffer leaving the paper then, or in the subsequent series of other buyouts and layoffs that saw the reporting and editing staff shrink substantially.

So I really wasn’t surprised when I noticed the change on an inside page in Sunday’s news section: It was readily apparent from the jarringly different headline style and typefaces that the page did not originate in the Baltimore Sun newsroom or, necessarily, in a unionized newsroom.

Something you need to know about Baltimore natives, of which there are few these days in the newsroom: They’re xenophobic. Many of them, anyway. I haven’t sufferered from that malady beyond my intense dislike of the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Steelers, and what became of the Baltimore Colts, of course.

Now I have nothing against the cities of New York, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis – and I kind of like Chicago. But it just sticks in my craw when folks from there come here, take over and muck things up so badly.

This is not to say that Jim Puzzanghera, Maura Reynolds and James Oliphant are bad journalists. They’re fine, I’m sure. They’re the folks whose bylines appeared in Wednesday’s “nation & world” page atop an identifying line stating “Washington Bureau.”

Trouble is, Toto, it’s not the Baltimore Sun Washington Bureau anymore. They’re Tribune folks covering the news for papers in Baltimore and probably every other city in the financially bankrupt chain -- although not in same shrunken format for the company's "major" papers in Chicago and Los Angeles, I'm told.

It’s the price readers across the nation are paying for consolidation of the newspaper industry: Unique and varied reporting is diminished. The Fourth Estate is weakened.

I remember when The Sun redesigned the back page of the Maryland section, back when it had a Maryland section, to compete with the colorful weather page produced by USA Today. (Now the weather report in The Sun is minimized on an inside page, pretty much the way it was decades ago.)

The news stories, alas, are following suit – smaller, minimized inside. Except there aren’t nearly as many stories as in USA Today. And if you hunger for national and international news, The Sun is in eclipse.

A newsroom friend told me the change took place last Thursday, and others likely are coming – more national and international news created, edited, designed in Chicago for readers in Baltimore, and a likelihood there will be ever-fewer copy editors and page designers needed locally to produce The Sun. There might even be a redesign so the ugly typefaces and headline fonts used in Chicago are duplicated in Baltimore.

As I said, I’m not surprised. I saw it coming. Maybe the readers didn’t even notice, it’s such “inside baseball.”

Once upon a time, The Baltimore Sun was among the handful of U.S. newspapers on the desk of the President.

Not much point in that these days.

Baltimore as comic fodder

Jay Leno noted Wednesday night the proposal in Baltimore for a restaurant serving up sushi on topless women.

“Is that a good combination?” Leno asked. “Naked women and seafood in a city famous for crabs?”

Today’s fortune cookie message:

You find beauty in ordinary things. Do not lose this ability.

Daily number: 538